ROKU HD REVIEW


I bought an old Samsung Blu-Ray player from eBay about a year ago. I had never owned a blu-ray up until that time. The first time I used it, I was hooked. I thought things couldn't get any better than HD. I was wrong. I thoroughly love the contrast, the crispness of Blu-Ray. But, since this was so old a player, I couldn't get the menu for Netflix for this player. I inquired about it to Samsung. They told me that it can download firmware updates (which it does), but I would have to buy a new Samsung Blu-Ray player and they have "great deals on them right now!" Yeah, I know when I'm being played. So, I just resigned myself to watch Netflix on my computer.

This past Sunday, I was surfing on the net and stumbled across something called "Roku." I had never heard of it in my life. It was something you could hook up to your HDTV and could use with your broadband router to access Netflix, among other sites of that nature. I thought, "Well, it must be about $150-200 at least." Nope. The version I got cost $59.00, plus shipping and handling. The Roku HD Hookup to your TV is a snap. Then all you do is go into your router settings in your browser and accept the MAC address. If you use encryption (and if not, why aren't you?) accept this new "device." That was the easy part. What caused me to be puzzled was the code it kept telling me to input at Netflix. I got online at Netflix and could not find where I could input that code it was spitting out. I looked for about five minutes before it dawned on me to go to the "instantly to your TV page." Duh. After that, the menu popped up for Netflix, Amazon (yes, they have about 75,000 streaming movies to offer), Major League Baseball (which will be starting soon at time of this post), Hulu and so on.

I must say that the picture quality is outstanding with the Roku HD. I have read online that if the router is more than 40 feet from the Roku HD box, the quality deteriorates quite a bit. I don't have that problem since my router is only about three feet from my Roku HD box. Now, there are some channels that I must say have lousy picture quality. But, the main reason I bought this thing was so I could see Netflix on my HDTV. It got tiresome watching it on my computer. But, all in all, I have to say I am very pleased thus far. If I have any problems or have a need to add to this post in the future, I'll be sure to do so.

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a paid endorser of the Roku HD. I just wanted to let people know this thing exists. So, if you interested, let me know.