Academic

I?VE MENTIONED THE ROKU BOX BEFORE. Here?s a blog review from Ken Nelson. He likes it, too! ?Supe?

By Glenn Reynolds

I’VE MENTIONED THE ROKU BOX BEFORE. Here’s a blog review from Ken Nelson. He likes it, too! “Super easy to install. Works great. I?m quite impressed.” That was my experience, too.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Rosenfeld writes:

Here’s my two cents on the Roku box:

I bought myself a Roku XDS (the top-of-the-line model) from Amazon just before Christmas. It’s one of the best entertainment purchases I’ve ever made. Setup was a snap. It can do 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless, so it works great with my dual-band wireless-N router.

My Netflix streaming and Hulu Plus subscriptions cost me less than $20 a month, total. For that, I get current shows plus a huge library of past seasons and old shows, in 1080p. Amazon video-on-demand gives me access to recent movies. Plus, it has Pandora. I used to get far less than this from the cable company for nearly $150 a month. What
more could you ask?

Yeah, it’s bad news for cable companies.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Rob Minneman writes:

Since people are chiming in on the Roku box, I figured I’d give you my $0.02, too.

I bought a Roku HD right before Thanksgiving. Our family only has a 720p HDTV, so it seemed like the right idea. I love it; the Netflix streaming is great, and I think we’ll get onto Hulu Plus sooner or later. Plus, it’s got Pandora and MLB.TV.

So we canceled the cable. That saves us $55/month (and our cable bill is low, compared to some people I know!) So, for $70 (including the HDMI cable) we wiped out a $55/month bill. And $10/month in Netflix has wiped out our monthly movie rental charges of $15-20.

My only regret is that I bought a Roku HD, instead of an XDS, and upgraded our wireless router to dual-band. I’d have been better off with higher-speed equipment, I think, as we don’t often get HD signals across our lower-speed
wireless network.

I’ve got my Roku plugged into a Monster Powerline adapter. That works very well.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 02, 2011 (boomark / email).