To begin, I am not a huge fan of Apple products to begin with. Yes, I have an iPad, but that is certainly the limit of the distance I am willing to go with Apple at this point. With that said, with the release of the Apple TV for $99 USD, I was intrigued me. I decided to do some research into the streaming boxes available and make a decision on one (or multiple) to purchase. I quickly found that the best priced and feature rich device was called “Roku“. Roku offers its player in 3 varieties, most notable of the differences is the cheapest player (Roku Player HD at $60 USD) is 720p HD (highest resolution available on the AppleTV) and the middle version (Roku Player XD at $80 USD) at 1080p. Already, at $20 less than Apple’s device, there was better video quality. In addition, Roku already supports more content then AppleTV. So, I bought the Roku HD version.
My first experience could not have gone better. Setup took me about 3 minutes and I was online and streaming content from my Netflix account. Roku supports Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora, and so much more. As I write this post, I am watching an HD movie from Netflix and it is as if I had the Bluray version instead of a stream. The quality is superb. Audio, perfect. Roku is continually providing software updates that are adding to their already long list of supported content. After 1 week of ownership, Roku Player gets 5 stars. So good, in fact, that I am considering dropping my cable TV and switching completely to Roku. My only feature request… support UPNP so I can utilize my TVersity server with the Roku!