So, we've been entirely free of broadcast teevee since moving to the El Oh after mom died. Being a malformed Creature of the Internet I barely noticed, but television formed one layer of the Wife's psychic armor growing up and going cold turkey was tough, even with the sweet, sweet methadone of Netflix.
We had a grand total of three channels at our old place, two more than in my pre-cable childhood, but living within walking distance of The Insomniac (where, during a short stint behind the counter, The Wife accumulated a stock of True Customer Tales that make my meager offerings sound tamer than the official minutes of a Junior League conference) meant we never lacked for visual stimulation.
When the internet finally ended Bob's run we signed up with The Great Oppressor, an ethically distasteful necessity- transitioning from the cinematic oasis of The Insomniac to a cultural abattoir like Blockbuster would've been like replacing the Musée d'Orsay with a Thomas Kincaide gallery.
Like most modern retailers, Netflix substitutes shelf space for discernment- who needs taste when you can just stock one of everything? Which works fine in this context since the 'movie as object' lacks emotional weight- tapes and DVDs are naked solutions to engineering problems, not objects d'art garlanded with cultural mythology.
Which brings me, via back roads and detours, to my point:
Roku is the best thing ever.
It's like teevee without the endless, screeching advertising and scheduling problems. It's like DVDs without the moronic accusatory FBI warnings (which amuse the pirates and annoy the honest), endless boring previews and irritating, badly designed menus. In short, it's a dream, a Utopian idyll in a digital oasis where invisible, many limbed underlings attending to your every casual whim almost before you're aware they exist.
So, you ask (cynical child of Capitalism that you are), where's the catch?
The catch is the magic box which inflates this gossamer pavilion of wonderment runs $80-130, requires a network for sustenance and lives on 'instant' content from Netflix, so you want the 'unlimited streaming' account (3 DVDs out, $16.99 a month).
I picked up a basic wireless router from Netgear and was amazed and relieved by how painless the install was.
Hooked up the router, plugged in the Roku, configured my Netflix account, started watching stuff. As an unexpected bonus, it also works with Pandora, so now we can pump our favorite stations through the main stereo instead of my crummy computer speakers.
It isn't perfect, which early adopters have to expect. I usually wait on these things until they've been out for years and other poor suckers have worked out all the kinks for me.
The selection is comparatively piebald- Netflix has catalog of 100,000-ish DVDs, but only 17,000 streaming titles.
"Only" is enough to keep me busy for the next 20 years, assuming zero growth...and since streaming is THE FUTURE, at some point the big studios will adjust to reality and stop pressuring them to restrict availability. And then...what larks, Pip, what larks!
My only other complaint is the somewhat clunky selection menu.
Right now I've got 85 items in my Netflix 'instant' queue and scrolling through them in a line is somewhat tedious. I'm sure its fine for folk who use it as a supplement to their regular teevee diet and have a couple of things loaded up at any given time.
For the rest of us, some sort of a thumbnail grid system would be fantastic.
Load times are minimal, certainly less than the rigmarole imposed by current DVDs (the aforementioned ads, moral admonishments not to pirate, longwinded menues). Picture quality is excellent, which surprised me given the paucity of my internet connection. We switch to DSL from cable when we moved and it pretty much sucks, but Roku doesn't seem to mind. And I can download stuff or play games or whatever while The Wife immerses herself season 1 of LA Ink with no performance hit, so bandwidth isn't a problem.
TL;DR, it's fantastic, I have nothing bad to say about it, everyone should get one tomorrow. The limited streaming options still deliver riches beyond the dreams of avarice and the inevitable death of broadcast television means those options will only expand with time.
4 comments:
So...it does the same thing my Xbox does? I.e., streams your Netflix-on-demand to you?
As you say, this is truly the future. An unexpected bonus is that I've watched a good many more documentaries and "worthy" entertainments, as the paucity of available titles forces me to sample things that would have never made it to the top of my "real" Netflix queue. (I think the number of streaming titles in my on-demand queue is less than 20% of the number of titles in my physical queue.)
But I can start watching five minutes of a random title and decide if I'm in the mood for it or not. It's like flipping channels, but only with channels I was originally interested in.
I'm a big fan. Although Netflix did seem to go through and wipe out a great many dumb action-adventure titles from availability. Hence, my above comment re: choosing random documentaries.
Steve
I picked it up for netflix streaming, as the Wife would let a dude wearing a hockey mask and carrying a machete in the house before she'd approve a gaming console.
They have larger dreams than just Netflix, as witness their alliance with Pandora, Facebook, Amazon on demand, Flickr and their impending addition of MLB. But for now, Netflix keeps me happy.
I haven't felt confined by the limited availability as A: we still get our 'real' netflix discs every few days and B: the areas where they stream the most content dovetail nicely with my own cinematic predispositions (docs, foreign, 'art house').
There is absolutely room for improvement, but streaming is the future and the current studio driven restrictions on availability will be overwhelmed by the steel shod boots of progress on the march.
They have an unlimited streaming account that is only $8.99. You get just one disc out at a time though.
I still like getting my 'real' movies, but that'd be great for the poor unwashed masses.
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