Roku 2 $48 shipped

[boomhower]

Roku is selling the base 720P for 20% off. Comes out to $47.99. The shipping is slow but hey, its free.


Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk

 

[hans007]

I just bought the lt for $50

Keep in mind the hd has an sd slot and bt but you can only use those to store games and use the optional controller not watch media.

Also the hd had 128mb ram while the "lower end" lt has 256mb.

So this might not be that hot

 

[boomhower]

Sounds like it's not that hot then. I don't know much of anything about them as I'm partial to WD boxes. My father in law just wanted something to watch netflix with and these are cheaper than WD's. I didn't know that you couldn't watch video off the SD slot, it doesn't as all he will use it for is Netflix and maybe youtube. Cheap was the main factor.

 

[hans007]

Sounds like it's not that hot then. I don't know much of anything about them as I'm partial to WD boxes. My father in law just wanted something to watch netflix with and these are cheaper than WD's. I didn't know that you couldn't watch video off the SD slot, it doesn't as all he will use it for is Netflix and maybe youtube. Cheap was the main factor.

same here. i have a WD hd live plus personally.

but i bought the LT for a friend who wouldn't take advantage of all the other features. but yeah , i think either is a great player for $50 but the LT is $50 all the time. the one thing that the roku has over the WD honestly is that it has a slightly better UI and it feels faster in the UI parts, plus built in wifi (though no wired). roku for normal people, wd for geeks.

 

[shortylickens]

Meant to post several days ago. Forgot.

Already bought my mommy a LT for 50 bones. Works great. She will love it. If I ever get one for myself I would need a 1080p television first, then I'd get the good Roku.

 

[hansmuff]

How good is the Roku XDS? I like that it has composite, I don't need bluetooth... I mostly want to stream downloaded movies. Any problems with codecs of commonly found movie files?

 

[Spelvin]

They just announced MKV playback locally and some other updates:
http://blog.roku.com/blog/2011/12/13/roku-software-update-rolling-out-on-roku-2-and-roku-lt/

DOH! sorry, its just the XS that can do MKV still...

 

[hansmuff]

They just announced MKV playback locally and some other updates:
http://blog.roku.com/blog/2011/12/13/roku-software-update-rolling-out-on-roku-2-and-roku-lt/

DOH! sorry, its just the XS that can do MKV still...

Thanks! So if I summarize this improperly, please let me know:
Local media files have to be played back from USB, and even then some major formats/containers like MKV are NOT supported on older models like the "Roku XDS".

I need something that goes via ethernet straight to my LAN and lets me play my mkv files without failure. Kind of a VLC. What box would do that?

 

[JeffMD]

From what I researched, you will have a real hard time playing any movies you download from the net on it. Most of the time you will have to re encode it into a more basic MP4 profile (like the h264 profiles ipods and androids use). I have read about a few user created streaming solutions where you add a channel to the roku manually, and a host pc does an on the fly re-encode of the movie into a basic h264 stream just like youtube, but they are not supported nore guaranteed to work.

 

[hansmuff]

Thanks, JeffMD, helped me avoid buying the completely wrong thing. I'll look into the WD boxes, I guess.

 

[shortylickens]

The Roku really isnt for playing your computers local mpg's.
Its designed to stream from services you probably already use, like Hulu, Netflix, Prime and Pandora.
If you need something more you'll probably want a more powerful/comprehensive unit.

 

[incandenza]

There is a Plex client for the Roku, which works fairly well for local media. (You need to run the Plex server on one of your computers, of course.)