Comments on: Can Roku Sustain?

By: jischinger

jischinger — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:57:03 +0000

torrents? oh, I remember those…
you don’t them any more everything is on web sites.
the day a dvd comes out it’s an automatic collector’s item.
the funny thing about this netflex device is the number of movies you can watch in a day rip and stream on a web site

By: marquisdejolie

marquisdejolie — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:05:14 +0000

I like “Modern Marvels” on The History Channel. But I don’t like homeless people. They smell of cabbage.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:38:44 +0000

You need a computer to specify what movies to put in your Roku queue; Mac, PC, Linux, Cray … anything that can run a web browser.

By: sukatra

sukatra — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:29:21 +0000

Oh my God. Not only is marily illiterate, wears an eyepatch, has only 7 teeth, and is a spelling Nazi, she’s also a neanderthal.

A Neanderthal Nazi. Obviously, those guys didn’t win their ethnic cleansing war.

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:13:17 +0000

MDJ: I still use rabbit ears. I don’t have cable. I am one of those people that have to buy the digital converter box. I still use Blockbuster.com and am perfectly happy with it; I can only watch so many movies at once. I have too many other things going on in my life to be watching 3 movies at a time.

By: Pablo

Pablo — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:50:55 +0000

You don’t need a PC with the Roku device! It hooks directly to your broadband and streams movies from your Netflix instant queue. You load the queue with a Mac, your iPhone, a PC, your local library’s public access computer, anything that has a web browser.

By: NutCheese

NutCheese — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:22:31 +0000

I steal everything for free. I need to show you how to get torrents.

By: Davis Freeberg

Davis Freeberg — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:14:13 +0000

I think that the PC is both brilliant and obnoxious. There are lots of people who want streaming video, but don’t have a TV. On the other hand, everyone of Netflix’s customers has to have a computer to use the service anyway. By leveraging the PC, it enables Netflix to make these boxes without the expensive memory that other solutions need. The Roku box is really just a wifi connection and a cheepo video processor chip, but if you take a look at things like Vudu, they have to have higher end processors, a hard drive and all kinds of computer guts that Netflix can skip out on. By harnessing the power of your own computer, Netflix can sell this box for $99 and still have Roku make a profit, while comparable experiences would run closer to $299 in order to make it work. There is talk of a non-computer box being released at some point, but if most of us had to choose between keeping our computer on all the time or an extra $200, I’m pretty sure that we’d cheap out.

As far as why I use the three at a time . . . I’m not exactly sure. Part of it, is that when I watch films I tend to gorge on them all at once. Having three discs, plus Roku (or Xbox w/ media center) gives me a lot of content to go through. I’m not sure that there would be enough films in the one at a time to satisfy my movie needs. This means that there are weekends like this past one where Netflix wins, but there are some weeks where I’ve been able to watch a dozen pieces of content too. I like this flexibility even if it’s more expensive. I think the other reason why I’m a 3 at a time subscriber is that there are still 90,000 titles that are exclusive to the DVD. The 10,000 Watch Now titles are great for a snack, but it would take me a year to watch an entire TV series if I was having to rent the other discs one at a time. Eventually, Watch Now should have most of their films and this would be a harder decision to justify, but for now I’d rather be able to spend the whole weekend catching up on Oz, then to worry about spending an extra $10 per month.

By: Nalts

Nalts — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:42:30 +0000

Ohhhh. You need a PC for this bastard? How retro. BTW- Davis. Why on EARTH would anyone pay more than the $9 amount. I don’t understand the incremental value of the higher packages if you’re using a Roku. Do you get to watch them at the same time or something?

By: Mark Schoneveld

Mark Schoneveld — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:16:44 +0000

I’m just bummed that the Roku doesn’t work with Mac yet. The Apple TV is eh, okay. Just got that.

Subscriptions for content might be the future for the industry, don’t you think? I dont’ see how different downloading would be from getting yr DVDs in the mail… saves Netflix a ton of money!