Goodbye Red, I have a new Love

They haven’t known me for sometime at the local video store. I like that. I didn’t much like the local video store, they didn’t have what I wanted and they charged late fees. They didn’t really much seem to care and I didn’t really much feel the need to care about them either! For years now I’ve been able to drive by the video store and shake my head at the poor bastards that still have to shuffle in and out arranging their lives around the video store. How did I escape their clutches? Netflix. Netflix with their ubiquitous red envelopes give me a whole new reason to come home and check the mail. Netflix carries everything I want. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Netflix so I don’t have to go on about them, but my days of the red envelopes may also be ending in the future.

The Netflix Player by Roku totally cuts out the middle man, good bye red envelopes. Hello – my new love – Roku.

How does it work? You buy the box for $99 and connect it to your TV. You use your Netflix account as you always do but now you setup movies and shows to watch in your instant queue. From your Roku player you play the shows from your instant queue. You can watch items in HD, pause, rewind and go forward. If you stop a video, and then what to go back it remember where you left off.

Right now you have limited selection of what you can watch instantly. Watching instantly doesn’t count against your DVD quota and depending on your plan will mostly likely be included in your plan cost. I’ve started watching items I’ve really enjoyed but I wouldn’t have used DVD slots in my plan to watch. As always you can also watch instantly from your PC without any additional items needed.

This is one of the most elegant and surprisingly usable dedicated devices I’ve seen in a long time. Everything here is almost perfect and Roku continues to add new capabilities to the box. They plan on expanding services beyond Netflix this year. As the literal incarnation of a web service, the Netflix Player by Roku is a true gem.

Now for the really geeky part:

Video and Audio Connections

• HDMI

• Component Video

• S-Video

• Composite Video

• Digital Optical Audio

• Analog Stereo Audio

Network Connections

• Wired Ethernet

• Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)