We’ve been Netflix subscribers for a while, and we use both the DVD rental service (2 at a time) as well as the Internet streaming service; Sullivan likes to watch kids shows on there, and I’ll watch some movies that I find too dubious to get on disc (they end up being good slightly less than half the time).

A while back, I had queried the Internet community about their feelings on the Roku box, a third-party product that streams Netflix movies directly to a television set. I had heard good things about it, but wanted some opinions from people I trust.

The general opinion was that it does indeed work as described, and the only negative thing I heard about it, anywhere, was simply that you have to add things to your queue via a computer, rather than browsing on the Roku itself. That seemed a very reasonable limitation, so we decided it was worth it to take the plunge.

Does the box deliver? In short, an emphatic YES.

Ordering

We ordered ours directly from Roku’s website, roku.com. They don’t sell many products, so the selection and finalization are very simple.

Basically, there are three different Roku boxes. The basic one is $80 and is SD (standard definition – suitable for old-style televisions, and 720i / 1080i flat panel TVs). The middle one is HD, for $100, and is suitable for newer televisions that support 720p / 1080p broadcasts (“HD” signals). The high-end one is $120 and is identical to the HD box, except that it has an extended wireless range.

Chris Hardie had responded to my inquiries initially and said that his Roku box works perfectly clear across his house, even across floors. I have used my laptop to stream Netflix and Hulu across my house as well, so this seemed reasonable; We elected to go with the middle model, Roku HD.

One really awesome feature of ordering directly from Roku’s website is that you can include a package of HD cables (1 HDMI, 1 component, 1 optical audio cable) for only $20 more! An HDMI cable will cost anywhere from $30 to $100 BY ITSELF, depending on where you purchase it! This package is approximately $80-100 of cables, for only $20 more. Wicked awesome.

Hooking it up

The Roku box came in a small box, along with the cable package, remote control (with batteries!), power cord, and a quickstart guide. It’s very small, and very light — 6″ x 6″ and a pound at most.

My Roku box, with a Chapstick for scale

Connecting the Roku box to your television is as simple as hooking up a DVD player or any other set-top box. In our case, we plugged in the HDMI cable to both the TV and the Roku, then plugged the power cable in, that’s it!

Once it was plugged in and connected, it immediately turned on. A friendly looking screen guided me through the rest of the setup process. It immediately found the nearby wireless network, and once I selected my network, it connected automatically.

One rather cool feature is that it gave me its MAC address when it was unable to connect to the Internet at first — we use MAC address filtering on our network. I was worried I was going to have to find out the address in a more roundabout way. I added it to my exception list and retried the connection, it worked.

With the Internet connection active, it updated the firmware, rebooted, and we were ready to go! The whole experience was painless — I think even a less tech-savvy person would have little problem with it.

I do not know how the Roku box deals with WEP / WPA encryption, but I assume that it would work with those as well.

The Interface

The remote control is how you interact with the device. It is very simple: Play/pause, fast forward, rewind, home, and four arrows with a “select” button. That’s it. Pressing “Up” takes you to the previous menu, and the rest are self-explanatory.

It’s very clean and easy to use. There are actually many other options aside from just Netflix — you can stream Amazon downloads and a number of other web-based video services. No Hulu yet, although the Roku community seems to be salivating over that possibility. From what I’ve read, firmware upgrades can add new features. You add additional “channels” to your Netflix via the Roku.com website.

Within the “Netflix” channel, you can see all the items in your Instant Queue, displayed as a cover-flow side-scrolling list. Once you select your item, a detailed screen allows you a number of play options, including resuming, starting over, rating, and removing from your queue. If it’s a series, you can select your episode from here as well.

The resuming feature is nice – if you began watching a program on your computer, it will save your location for when you watch it on Roku, and vice versa.

You don’t ever really turn the Roku off, but after a period of inactivity, it will activate a screensaver.

Streaming Quality

Sullivan and I christened the Roku by watching an episode of Bob the Builder. It worked really well! The quality was as good as one would expect from an HD television broadcast. There were no buffering problems. It played nice, sounded great, and worked just as expected.

Just because I was curious, I decided to try and push it to its limits.

While Sullivan watched Super-Why, I streamed yesterday’s episode of The Daily Show on Hulu, on my laptop. There was no-rebuffering.

While both of those were streaming, I also played a video on YouTube on my laptop simultaneously, still no re-buffering. I think the audio might have gotten out of sync momentarily, but it re-synchronized once the YouTube video stopped.

I have not tried streaming two Netflix movies at once (computer + Roku), yet.

Over the past week, we’ve watched many (literally: dozens) movies and only twice have I seen it rebuffer. I’m pretty sure it was just general network congestion.

It’s worth noting that my connection is Parallax DSL, which has a higher sustained data speed than Comcast does. (Comcast’s speed boasts refer to burst transmissions, and they are notorious for traffic shaping on long-term downloads). Your best gauge on whether or not it will work for you would be simply streaming it on your computer through Netflix’s own website. If you can stream their content on your computer, you’ll be able to stream it on a Roku.

Verdict

If you find that you like the Instant Stream offerings of Netflix, then the Roku box is definitely worth it. In our case, Sullivan really loves watching kids TV shows like Dora the Explorer, and Super Why!, and he watches them repeatedly, so we get a lot of mileage out of it.

The only thing I don’t like about it is that there’s no way to enable subtitles — I think this might be a limitation of Netflix itself, but it’s still kind of annoying.

Great value for the price!