by Jack Cutts

We’ve all been there…you’re a Netflix or Blockbuster Online subscriber and your latest movie sits shamefully gathering dust atop your TV cabinet or amongst that pile of mail on the coffee table. My wife and I recently finished our MBAs after having attended class several nights part-time after work for the better part of three years. Needless to say, that didn’t leave much time for watching movies.

Now that we have our degrees in-hand, it’s a different story. We can’t add movies to our Netflix queue fast enough. As if our current volume of TV and movie watching weren’t enough, last week I purchased a Roku player. This box attaches to your home theater system and connects to the Internet to stream movies direct from Netflix. While not everything that’s available through the Roku is available on Netflix “Watch Instantly” service, I don’t know very many people who prefer to watch movies sitting in front of a computer screen versus a nice, crisp HDTV. One thing to realize about the movies available through the Roku box is that they are most certainly NOT new releases. The newest movies available on-demand are often a year old or more. Many are foreign films or arthouse movies. That said, I have seen many good movies in the two weeks since I’ve owned the device that I certainly would not have seen otherwise.

  “So what’s this going to cost me?” you wonder. Unbelievably, beyond purchasing the Roku player for a one-time upfront fee, Netflix offers this service for no extra charge for those with an unlimited Netflix subscription which encompasses the vast majority of people I’ve ever known that subscribe to Netflix. In addition to movies from Netflix’s own library, you can also access movies through Starz (without any additional fees) and through Amazon’s on-demand service. Amazon’s offerings are not free of course, but in turn you gain access to newer content and more content in HD.

 Like any other category in the world of consumer electronics, there are many ways to skin a cat and the Roku player isn’t the only way to stream Netflix to your home theater. The Xbox 360 also has Netflix streaming capability and does not require any extra hardware but does require a subscription to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. Certain Internet-connected Blu-Ray DVD players from LG and Samsung also can access the download service and as of December 2008, TiVo users have been able to join the party.

I can’t say enough about how easy it was to set up my Roku player and how dead simple it is to start watching movies. The world of consumer electronics continues to amaze me and I welcome the day when ALL of our content is delivered via the Internet and we no longer require physical media like CDs and DVDs. The Roku box is a major step in the right direction.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 11:18 am and is filed under DTV Transition, How To. Reply to this post, or trackback from your own site. Follow responses to this entry through the comments RSS feed.