After extensive research and consideration i decided to go ahead and take the plunge and purchase the Roku XDS. The device is amazingly simple to setup but very versitile and flexible when it comes to content sources available for it. After connecting it to my wireless and then telling it i had a 720p television i was ready to start adding channels to my home screen.
The channel store has options available ranging from movies/TV shows (Netflix,Hulu Plus, Amazon Video On Demand), music (Pandora, Last.fm), access to Facebook, flickr, & Picasa web albums photo's, etc... I do have a problem with how you add some channels to your home screen. For example with Flickr once you open the channel they give you a long url that you must type into your browser on the computer and generate an activation code to give your Roku access to your account. This process wasn't complicated at all, however i was under the impression that i would not need my computer at all to add these channels. I would have liked the option to type in my Flickr credentials on the roku device and it connects right from the comforts of my sofa. This was by no means a deal breaker though.Video quality on this device is amazing even on my LG 32" 720p television. I used the $5 credit that Amazon gave me to rent "The Town" in HD and the picture and audio quality was flawless. After clicking on purchase it took about 10 seconds before the video started playing and throughout the entire video it never paused, jumped, or got distorted at all. I then started to play videos from Netflix and even though most of the video's i played were not in HD the quality was still very good and i completely forgot that the video was streaming over the internet versus streaming from my cable provider.
My one critique of this device relates to the USB port and the media browser. I plugged in my 500GB external hardrive with my iTunes library and several gigs of video on it and on the home screen the media browser icon pops up, cool. I click on the browser and start to browse the folder structure, i do not like the way it just shows generic folder icons for all folders. I was hoping that if it was a folder with pictures in it then it would show small icons of the pictures on the folder but nope. So after i navigate through the folder structures i began to realize that 95% of the videos i have will not play on the device. This was a huge bummer for me, i was expecting to have to convert some of the video into another format but not ALL of my videos. Roku definitely needs to work on supporting more video formats and making the interface a little cleaner.
Roku Feature Wish list
1. Support for the new Apple Airplay standard.
2. Improve the media browser interface and supported video formats
3. Improve the overall interface of the device. If i have 50 channels i have to scroll all the way to the right to get to a channel instead of being able to jump to a particular page and clicking on a channel.
Overall i am thrilled with my purchase and my only regret is that i didnt by this device alot sooner. If you are in the market for a device that can stream video, look no further than the Roku XDS.
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