Any Roku HD owners?

So, my living-room Xbox 360 recently red-ringed - again. It is a launch unit, and before they announced the extended warranty, I had opened the box; since, you know, it was out of warranty anyway. So, I repaired it myself using a kit from Llama. Worked great for a while, but now it's dead again. I'm tired of dealing with it: it's loud, unreliable, and honestly the downloadable content available on the Xbox video marketplace has gotten pretty stagnant. It's important to note that I used that Xbox almost exclusively for video and music downloading/streaming, and the occasional Rock Band party when my man-cave is too small.

Aaaaaaaanyway, since it's dead, I've decided to re-evaluate my living room entertainment options. What I want to do is this:

  • Download and/or stream shows and movies from a legit source
  • Stream music from internet radio like Pandora
  • Stream my own music collection and downloaded movies/shows from my PC in the other room
  • Support HD video content

My device of choice *must* be somewhat wife-friendly; though she's savvier than most, she still gives me "the glare" if something doesn't work correctly.

It looks like the contenders include: Another game console (360/PS3), AppleTV, a Mac Mini, a homemade HTPC (MythTV?), the upcoming Boxee Box, and the Roku HD. Of those options, only the Boxee Box and Roku come in at a price point that doesn't make me cringe. After all, all the device really needs to do is stream content from various sources. However, the Roku HD is only $100! Now we're talking. Netflix instant watching also looks pretty swell.

I'm aware that it doesn't stream from a local network source "out of the box", but custom channels like RoksBox are emerging which look very promising. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty in setting some things up, but like I said I want it to be wife-friendly.

So, are there any Roku owners here who want to chime in? Are there any devices I should take a second look at? Should I just read a book instead?

My fiance has a roku that she uses for watching netflix instant and pandora. They're pretty easy to use and work great. I'm not sure if it can be setup to stream from another PC, though. I've never looked into it.

From what I've read, Roku only supports a couple different music and video formats. So, I'm entertaining the following possibility:

Roku HD
+ TED for downloading tv shows
+ Handbrake in CLI mode to convert formats upon download
+ RoksBox to stream to Roku

Yes, the goal here is to ditch the cable box.

Are you totally against going Win7 Media Center? I have never used MythTV so don't know how it compares but since Win7 incorporates the 'Fiji' update that OEM's got for Vista which enables support for native clear qam you can do anything you want since you have a full fledge PC in the living room.

I know, I know, at first glance this seems to go against the 'Wife Friendly' context but there is a rule there, don't mess with it after you get it set up.

I have split my cable 3 ways coming into the living room, one for the TV itself (this is my tester), one for the analog input on my tuner and one for the QAM input on the tuner. Technically I can record two shows (1 HD via the QAM and 1 on analog) and watch another on the TV while those go but I rarely need to use it. I bought a Linksys DMA2100 back when they were being discontinued/discounted (now they're back up to $200+ on ebay) as an extender so have both my regular analog TV/DVR (replaytv) as well as the extender in the bedroom.

I pay for the second lowest cable package with my rinky dink cable company, which essentially gets me 22 channels on my analog signal (no box). For 30$ a month more I would get 30 channels more on this plan and have the 'Advanced Basic Package'. F that. Using the QAM signal I get all but 10 of the missing the channels in the Advanced package BUT I also get a few more and the digital music channels, I also get these on the TV, that is why it is my tester. I use the TV with Silicon Dust's resource site to see which channels I should be able to get via clear QAM.

The extenders are both the boon and bane of the current WinMC product right now. I would love to go pick up a second one for $150 but over $200 is definately a deal breaker and considering the only company actively making them is Microsoft in the form of a Xbox360 doesn't make it any better.

Now, most likely you can use MythTV to do a lot of the same sort of stuff, either way I am converted to the HTPC method, and like I said, once I got the channels/guide set up I basically don't F with it other that monthly patches. I can stream netflix from within Media Center and Hulu/Youtube/whatever from the browser. I can watch recorded, live and ripped DVDs on the extender as well as on the HTPC (though live TV shares the tuners so I can't watch two different QAM or analog channels at the same time unless the HTPC person wants to switch over to the TV (ie it doesn't happen)) but that's why I've started contemplating getting the HD Homerun, then any PC in the house with Win7 Home Premium or higher can become a HTPC as it is a networked tuner (though again I will be limited in tuners). There is also this $400 card with four digital tuners due out at the end of May but it is cable card and I don't want to even guess what my cable company would want to charge for that.

Finally, in a not related vein, my wife an I will play the "Let's see what other people are watching via video on demand" on the weekends since those channels too are unencrypted QAM signals that the TV (and MC if I chose to program them in) pick up.

Well, the issue would then be getting the Extender, which is what just died on me

Honestly, I wasn't very impressed using my Xbox 360 as a media center extender. That is, it brought up media center, but over my wireless-g connection, the UI was so sluggish as to be practically unusuable. Not sure why, it's just a UI; unless it's actually sending the entire UI over the wire. If that's the case, boo.

So, rather than an extender, I'd have to have a HTPC near the TV. That's where the injury to my wallet is too much to bear. That's kind of why I'm looking for a thin-ish client to stream from the Win7 pc in my home office.

Roksbox looks pretty cool.

Scripting those conversions seems like kind of a pain.

Why not something like a Boxee Box?

I know it's not out yet, but it should be pretty soon.

I have the Roku HD for about 18 months and have nothing but good things to say about it.

Navigation is intuitive. It's very easy to switch between Netflix Instant Watch content as well as streaming content from Amazon.com and other channels. It can be a bit clunky if you have a ton of movies/shows in your Instant Watch queue as you have to flip through each one (they're working to improve that, though). They've also recently added a bunch of new channels, including Pandora, but I haven't really looked into them.

The HD content from Netflix and Amazon.com looks great and you just need about a 5mb connection to stream it without any problems. Add an HD antenna and you can ditch your cable box easily (I did).

I use PS3 Media Server to stream video, music and pictures from my PC to my 360 or PS3. It tries to be DLNA compliant so it can be recognized by some TVs that have ethernet jacks like Bravias. The best part is that it doesn't matter what format your source is in because it's transcoded to mpeg2 on the fly. However, for HD content you're going to want at least a dual-core machine.

If the PS3 could get Hulu, it would be pretty good, as it covers the Blu-ray player as well, but it doesn't

That said, I think the new tivo is supposed to be pretty good.

baggachipz wrote:

Honestly, I wasn't very impressed using my Xbox 360 as a media center extender. That is, it brought up media center, but over my wireless-g connection, the UI was so sluggish as to be practically unusuable. Not sure why, it's just a UI; unless it's actually sending the entire UI over the wire. If that's the case, boo.

There are a couple of network settings that can improve the GUI responsiveness on the extenders, but the main problem here is wireless g streaming. It's just not up to HD streams. It can be done over n, but I still greatly prefer and trust regular wired ethernet. Maybe MoCA or powerline ethernet. But you just can't do it well on g in my experience if you want HD.

I love Win 7 MC. It's my DVR that records hundreds of hours of HDTV onto my own large cheap hard drive, it's my streamer for my ripped DVDs I have stored and meta-data'd up on the server, it streams video podcasts, etc, etc. I love the fact that I can record a show, start watching it in one room, stop it, go to another room and resume where I was on the first TV. Effortlessly. And program the DVR from any extender.

Right now I have two Clear QAM cable tuners along with an over the air networked tuner (HD HomeRun) for a total of 4 HD tuners. I'm going to add a Ceton 4 stream cable card tuner to get the premium cable stations when the Ceton is released soon. (Will move some of those other tuners to my desktop).

Tanglebones wrote:

If the PS3 could get Hulu, it would be pretty good, as it covers the Blu-ray player as well, but it doesn't :P

PlayOn serves up Hulu to PS3s. It's great.

*Legion* wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

If the PS3 could get Hulu, it would be pretty good, as it covers the Blu-ray player as well, but it doesn't :P

PlayOn serves up Hulu to PS3s. It's great.

The problem with Hulu on a HDTV is that the best you can stream is 480p.

Lester_King wrote:

Roksbox looks pretty cool.

Scripting those conversions seems like kind of a pain.

Why not something like a Boxee Box?

I know it's not out yet, but it should be pretty soon.

The Boxee Box is definitely on my radar. My only real concern is that it could turn out to be a turd (not likely), and that it only appears to have HDMI and not component HD output (I have an ancient rear-projection HD set, sans-HDMI). Other than that it looks really slick. I'm leaning towards trying the Roku HD for now and selling it on eBay if it doesn't work out. Mrs. Chipz has already stated her reluctance to ditching cable, so any process I undertake will be a slow one.

Thanks for the information, everyone. Any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

I have the Roku HD, and am running Windows Home Server with the MyMedia client/server combo (just Google "Roku MyMedia" since I can't post links yet). The latest beta is stable and reliable. I'd like to try Roksbox but I can't find a download link for it anywhere, and since I registered the private channel, I have not been able to access the Roku Channel store, either.

MyMedia streams music, video, and photos to the Roku, and there's a setup in it for Internet source streaming, which I have not yet taken the time to utilize. Roksbox has some cosmetics that are superior, but MyMedia functions nicely and is totally free. You could always switch between them if you want to.

For video conversion, I am using DVDfab HD Decryptor to make DRM-free ISO files, and then Daniusoft DVD to iPad converter to go from the ISO to MP4 files (the Roku is fine with M4V files, too, by the way). I switched to Danius from DVDfab because you can go to the Danius Facebook page and "like" it for free registration. DVDfab is not free for ISO-to-mobile file conversion, although DVD-to-ISO remains free.

There was a problem using Handbrake to convert to MP4; if the source file is larger than 2 gigs, audio tracks get out of sync with video. Going straight from ISO to MP4 with Danius, I am generating high-quality files from 2.6 to 3.5 gigs in size with perfect audio sync, and great video and audio quality.

Hope this helps.

Tried to edit, but it doesn't seem to work, so...

UPDATE 5 Jan 2012: Now running Roksbox. Using Freemake Video Converter to convert practically any format to MP4. I published a bit of "how to" on home streaming at scifiandgadgets.com but overall it's really pretty easy with Roku.

Anyone have any experience using Plex to stream to Roku?

I've been waiting to pull the trigger on a Roku, but it is missing two key features I really want in a media device: YouTube & DLNA (or equivalent).

I've got Plex Server set up on my pc already. First off, I'm wondering what the experience is like using YouTube through Plex. Does it support logging in to YouTube and accessing subscriptions? Can you also access lists you have created? Where does it go wrong if at all.

Also, how well does Plex handle streaming media from a pc over a wired connection? Any issues, problems, nits?

I messed around with this a year ago, so maybe some things have changed, but my experiences then were all very disappointing. Yes, it is "possible" to work in the grey areas around what Roku has constructed, but in my experience they either required use of some weird, invite only or gray legal area stuff, or like Roksbox and the 2 or 3 other similar things I tried, required manual setup and maintenance of a webserver (not so hard but can be frustrating to troubleshoot when it stops working the way you expected) and/or required conversion of all your files like Icesnake mentions. In the end I got rid of my Roku and just went for a HTPC.

I haven't tried Youtube through Plex but I have through XBMC, and it's just not that great. Yes you can log in and access subscriptions and favorited things, but beyond that I found it pretty limited and frustrating to use.

Since Plex and XBMC share some code or used to, I'm going to assume Plex can handle streaming media from a pc just fine. XBMC does. I have most of my media housed on my HTPC itself, from which I run XBMC, but I have some older media (DVD rips and music dowbloads) that still reside on my desktop PC and they all play just fine on XBMC on the HTPC.

Roku and Plex:

I can't speak to the YouTube part very well, as I've only messed with it a little but it seemed to work "ok".

However, Plex and Roku work great for my purposes. Nearly all of my streaming content via Plex consists of tv shows I torrent (I do pay for satellite TV that gets those shows, so I feel I'm in that grey area vs. flat out freeloading - another thread another discussion though). They work great and I've been happier with that set up that doing PS3 via any of the media server software. My Roku is the HD version so the streaming is via wi-fi, but I'm satisfied with the picture quality. It's not "HD" quality, but most of the time it's DVD quality and better than what would get if I used the satellite dvr.

I would highly recommend this setup for any local media streaming, plus the Roku works pretty slick with Amazon too. I don't have Netflix so cant' speak to that either.

Netflix on Roku is great, it was the first, or one of the first anyway, devices to include the dynamic streaming interface where it starts streaming at a lower resolution, then dynamically shifts up to higher resolution when more is buffered. It's pretty awesome. Was the one thing I liked most when I used a Roku.

Khoram wrote:

Netflix on Roku is great, it was the first, or one of the first anyway, devices to include the dynamic streaming interface where it starts streaming at a lower resolution, then dynamically shifts up to higher resolution when more is buffered. It's pretty awesome. Was the one thing I liked most when I used a Roku.

Huh. I kinda hate that, actually - I'd rather just have more buffering time and guaranteed HD

I've been without a TV for the past 2 years and just jumped back in with a slim Xbox 360. While I do have a few complaints about the UI (having to load a new 'app' for every little thing) I've been really impressed at how far it has come in the entertainment space. Hulu, HBO, Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Instant, ESPN, MSN, Xfinity On-Demand, Zune (Xbox) video - plus I use Connect360 to stream my entire music and photo collection from a Mac in the other room. I don't think there's a better all-in-one entertainment device on the market. It does the buffered HD streaming as well, which I like quite a bit.

PaladinTom wrote:

Anyone have any experience using Plex to stream to Roku?

I've been waiting to pull the trigger on a Roku, but it is missing two key features I really want in a media device: YouTube & DLNA (or equivalent).

I've got Plex Server set up on my pc already. First off, I'm wondering what the experience is like using YouTube through Plex. Does it support logging in to YouTube and accessing subscriptions? Can you also access lists you have created? Where does it go wrong if at all.

Also, how well does Plex handle streaming media from a pc over a wired connection? Any issues, problems, nits?

I was using Plex server from a PC to stream to a PS3 with DLNA. I upgraded to a Roku and it is MUCH better. Most of my content is mkv/m4v HD streaming from an i5 iMac and Plex transcodes it fine to the Roku on the fly with no problems, I have never noticed a stutter or hiccup. I have the Roku set to the highest "recommended" quality setting - 8mbps / 1080p and I am on wifi, the picture looks great, as good as or better than cable HD signals.

I really have no complaints other than the Plex interface on Roku is a little limited by the standard Roku layouts versus what you get running the Plex client on a PC, but it is still pretty good and much better than just a DLNA interface. I am not really a Youtube person but I believe Roku has a Youtube channel so I'm sure it is fine.

Besides that my only other complaint is the Roku Plex interface and Netflix interface both are missing the automatic "play next" feature when watching a TV series. I miss this from my PS3 Netflix streaming where the next episode in a series would just automatically start after 20-30 seconds when the previous one ended. On the Roku it is 3-4 clicks away instead.

Plus I bought a second Roku for the bedroom and got rid of Tivo in there, no need to have it anymore and it is nice to be able to access all of my media from either room. Both of mine are the Roku XS or whatever the $100 model is.

Symbiotic wrote:

I've been without a TV for the past 2 years and just jumped back in with a slim Xbox 360. While I do have a few complaints about the UI (having to load a new 'app' for every little thing) I've been really impressed at how far it has come in the entertainment space. Hulu, HBO, Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Instant, ESPN, MSN, Xfinity On-Demand, Zune (Xbox) video - plus I use Connect360 to stream my entire music and photo collection from a Mac in the other room. I don't think there's a better all-in-one entertainment device on the market. It does the buffered HD streaming as well, which I like quite a bit.

The Xbox 360 is the best media streamer in my house. There is NO other device with HBO Go, YouTube and DLNA streaming. The only place it loses points is having to be a Gold subscriber. I'd get another one for my other television, but I don't want to bump up against login issues.

I almost grabbed the Vizio Co-Star, but early reviews are luke-warm at best. It does have bluetooth though (which would be nice in the bedroom).

If only Apple would allow iOS apps on Apple TV, I'd pay twice what it costs right now... but I ain't shelling out for this mystical new device that's surely going to be overpriced for a television panel.

Also, I keep hoping the rumors are true about Microsoft making an Apple TV or Roku type of box.

If I didn't buy a 3 linksys DMA2100's on Ebay this summer I'd be looking at the Ceton Echo for an Xmas gift.

Given the price, if you're going to use it as a Windows Media Center Extender, wouldn't an Xbox 360 be easier to get a hold of?

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

If I didn't buy a 3 linksys DMA2100's on Ebay this summer I'd be looking at the Ceton Echo for an Xmas gift.

I was actually more interested in the Ceton Q. But now it seems indefinitely delayed.

Microsoft sorely missed the boat (again!) by not pushing Windows Media Center harder.

PaladinTom wrote:

Microsoft sorely missed the boat (again!) by not pushing Windows Media Center harder.

A lot of it was timing; Microsoft was too early to market. CableCard was younger and not well advertised and to get a system with CableCard you essentially had to buy an OEM box with it included. When Vista was released many people were not ready to use a computer as their DVR and there just weren't enough people interested in buying extenders. If you had an Xbox you could experiment but until you have a tuner in a PC you don't see the potential. The partner companies got burned because there wasn't enough traction for people to buy the extenders. QAM support was not native in Windows until Win7 or WinVista Fiji if you were able to get it/find it. The first 6 months I converted from my ReplayTV to VistaMC was one where I got used to crappy analog screen quality, migrating to Windows 7 for MC was an overnight success in my household.

As sad as it is, Microsoft's post about Media Center on the Building 8 blog is pretty dead on, WMC users are a minority, even a few million strong is a minority when it comes to the install base the size of Windows. MC isn't the easiest feature to configure either, since I don't use cablecard I can't use the 'simple' digital cable advisor. I have got to manually tune all of my channels, the average joe isn't going to be up for that.

Arise!

Heads up that Roku finally(!) has a YouTube channel. Only for Roku 3 right now though. I tested it last night on my wired Roku and it screams. It's the fastest YouTube app I've ever used. Better yet, it uses the DIAL protocol which works with the iOS apps and it supports HD. It's really nice.

As long as we're resurrecting Roku stuff...

I have a Roku 2 XS. Hulu streams *horribly* on it. Lots of stutters and freezes. Anything I can do? As far as I can tell it has no way to limit bandwidth or quality.

Amazon, Netflix, everything else works perfectly.

ccoates wrote:

As long as we're resurrecting Roku stuff...

I have a Roku 2 XS. Hulu streams *horribly* on it. Lots of stutters and freezes. Anything I can do? As far as I can tell it has no way to limit bandwidth or quality.

Amazon, Netflix, everything else works perfectly.

I have the same one and I think there are some bugs. People on the forums seem to think it has something to do with the bluetooth causing interference since the XD doesn't have the same issues. I usually do a hard reset to fix the problem.

Also there are some hidden screens where you can set fixed bit rates which helped for me over wifi:

http://mkvxstream.blogspot.com/2013/...

Edit: For me it was HBO go that would stutter like crazy and get worse the longer the unit was on without being rebooted so there may be some memory leak stuff going on too.

I don't watch a lot of Hulu Plus, but I haven't had any problems on my 2 XS that I recall.