Unboxing the Roku Netflix Box – And Using It, Too
Written by Russ on June 5, 2008 – 11:29 pmThe Roku Netflix box arrived at my doorstep today, and FedEx’s handy email updates of the tracking status made it very difficult to make it through the rest of my meetings before commuting home. When I did finally arrive home, the tiny little box was sitting next to the substantially larger box of a Wii Fit, that somehow managed not to help me begin a new workout regime tonight.
The Roku Netflix box is simple. It’s easy to set-up if you know how to, well, set things up. I’ve got a receiver that supports 2 additional zones in my house, and I run everything through it–the HD DVD, the SqueezeBox, the XM Stereo, the Cable TV and any random kids toy that we connect to the front of the receiver.
Picture-taking aside, it took me less than 2 minutes to get everything connected and ready to use. Your mileage may vary; I have 2 Cat6 connections behind my TV which made it easy to borrow from existing appliances to get this up and running.
To start, the Roku Netflix box has a small footprint. I have a SqueezeBox 3 and it is slightly larger than half the width of that, but shares similar dimensions of height and depth. The remote is incredibly simple–and the packaging came with the batteries needed to operate it. Call me crazy, but that’s one of my favorite “little” things companies can do and let’s me quickly get to the task of setting up the new toy
The Roku Netflix box offers you many different options for connecting to your television. There are Composite, HDMI, S-Video and even Optical Audio in addition to the Component connections–which is what I used since the cables were handy I just wanted to see this thing in action.
When I connected the Roku Netflix box to my receiver, the power supply and the Cat6 connection, I noticed something:
On the box, component connections were: yellow, red, white.
On the receiver, component connections: yellow, white, red.
Who’s right, who’s wrong? Why aren’t they the same? Just curious.
Keep in mind that this box does not currently support High Definition, but it has been mentioned that the ability to do so could be given via a software update.
The next thing I noticed was that there is NO POWER BUTTON.
Got that? The only way to turn this device off, as far as I can tell–and I did go through the user guide–is to unplug. That makes me a little nervous from a bandwidth perspective, but I assume that when the screensaver kicks in the device sort of sleeps and there are no worries. But still, I worry a little.
Now that everything was connected and powered up, I went through a pretty quick-and-easy couple of set-up screens. What was most odd was that, after I chose my connection type, the box went for a software update, updated itself, restarted and then re-asked me what my connection type was again.
I’m not sure I understand why settings were apparently reset/not retained, but the steps were simple enough that it’s probably a non-issue.
All of the rest of the connection verification steps were taken care of again and the box recognized that it was not registered as of yet and provided me with a code that was good for 30 minutes on the Netflix website. I assume that after 30 minutes I’d need to restart/refresh or it would do so for me.
Naturally, I went to the appropriate URL and registered the box.
The Roku Netflix box informed me it was all registered-up and ready to go and after a few moments of lading, it started displaying a carousel view of my Watch Instantly queue. Initially, the covers of the selections were blank, but in about a half minute the imagery started displaying.
Once I made my selection, the detail view was displayed:
This screen allows you to Play the selection, review the selection or remove the selection from your queue. Later, I found that if you have a series in your queue, you can browse through the individual episodes from this view, each showing a synopsis and also a progress bar if you started watching a particular episode.
Pretty sweet, really. I suspect it will be graphically enhanced in a future release as it is currently sort of plain, but works very well.
Kind of like me.
Once you play your selection, the Roku Netflix box displays the name of your selection and begins to “receiving” the video. The entire process of buffering takes about 30 seconds (YMMV) and also shows you your quality level, based upon your connection rate.
The next step is simple: your selection plays. Say hello to The Bacon Brothers: The No Food Jokes Tour Live 2003:
As I’ve continued spending an evening tinkering around with the Roku Netflix box (including giving “live” demos to @mtnfvr and @scubachris from twitter–track me down and I’ll do the same for you via iSight), there are nice things like the ability to fast forward and rewind at 3 variable speeds. The slowest speeds show you before and after “panels” of the live action to help give you context, whereas the faster versions only show you a rapid display of frames that are currently whizzing by. It’s still better than what happens on my Comcast OnDemand selections and it lets me easily continue where I left of watching (which Comcast does, but I’m just saying).
Overall, the quality is pretty good. It’s like watching a high quality, non-high definition signal (perhaps SD?). I notice some artifacts from time to time, but it also depends upon what you are watching. I noticed the artifacts more in a documentary than I do right now as I watch Sliders. There may be some slight quality shifts, but I’m also watching this on a 55″ television and streaming it over the internet. From my couch–not my desk–and getting fairly horizontal as I do it.
I’m okay with the sacrifice.
This was $100 well spent, for me. I have a pretty expansive library of movies and television series that I’m excited to catch up with. The biggest issue I have seen is that I went through my library on Netflix and maxxed out at 412 items–and I thought that they were all Watch Instantly items. At the moment, there are around 105 items in my Watch Instantly queue and going through the library again doesn’t feel to exciting.
This is easy. The controls are easy. It works as I expect it to, with a few added surprises that are pleasant.
I still have to manage my queue online, which is a slight pain, but I can endure that for this pleasure that I am getting.
If you’re a television and movie buff and you like to have background noise that you select when you’re doing some work or just feeling like you could spend a day on the couch watching Columbo, well, this is for you. It’s definitely for me.
Go buy it now.
There are more pictures and descriptions of the complete process available on my Flickr account.
====Update====
Dan Brown asked me this morning via Twitter (I’m @russu and so long as you’re not peddling SPAM, I’d surely welcome the follow) if I had tried to connect the Roku Netflix box via wireless.
I had not.
I am a bad, bad UX guy writing an Unbox Review, because I wrote it only from my perspective and given my own set-up and situation (which, to be frank, is why I built my darn house and wired it the way I did, but that’s not much of an excuse). Updated photos will be provided later today (Friday, June 6, 2008).
This morning, I switched from Wired to Wireless via the settings “tab”.
The Roku Netflix box scanned my local vicinity and found all of the available networks (which, by the way, whenever I find a “linksys” or “netgear” network out there, I laugh and almost have to connect to it and bittorrent my butt off, but, alas, I do not and my mp3 collection stays rather finite).
I selected the UserGlue network, well, since it was mine. An on-screen keyboard appeared so I could type in my password.
The strange thing here, to me, was that the keyboard was not QWERTY–it was 3 rows, alphabetical, A-Z. I did not think people still did this and had to wonder if there was any sort of user testing on this. Sure, it was pretty easy, but it wasn’t the keyboard I’m used to or that I look at several hours a day. My guess is that a lot of fellow geeks bought this device and not your relative neophyte, so again, more confusion.
I kind of did that Labrador Retriever head-cock thing, and if I could have, one of my ears would have flopped over in the middle to further emphasize the point.
But, this is a very limited sort of experience. In theory, I should not have to do this very often, so it’s not a major issue and it caused me no pain–just surprise.
The Roku Netflix box connected to my network and things were pretty much back to normal.
I went through the normal process of sifting through my queue and chose a movie. It seemed to me that the scenario was about 10 seconds longer than the normal retrieving/buffering activity, but that could have been a shift in perception from the night before. In fact, I’d wager that is what happened and that the timing wasn’t really (that) different.
The quality was the same.
Yes.
The same quality.
There’s not much more to say about that, except that the Roku Netflix box may now perhaps be even more awesome.
Awesomer?
Buy it, fellow geeks and nerds. Buy it.
Tags: Netflix, Roku
Posted in Rave, Review, User Experience | 6 Comments »
Very Thorough! Glad you like the player. I’m still torn on buying it. I own a PS3 and there are rumors of bringing the same functionality in a downloadable form.
Sorry my pictures are kind of crappy. Next time I’ll hold the camera with two hands and/or use Photoshop to actually level them out.
Don’t worry about the pictures. Or Photoshop. I think everyone got the point!
I too was shocked that the box had no power button. I’ll be getting one of those strip outlets that shuts everything down when the TV is off to manage it. I spoke with Roku support, and they said the box only uses about 3W when not in use. Hopefully a power button or some sort of sleep mode will be put into future versions to save power.
Russ,
Sorry I didn’t write before. I did read it the day you wrote this. Thank you much for sharing. Love all the photos
I just got the box and I gotta say I’m having a very very very different experience. Photos and such sometime this weekend.
Oh no!
Well, that’s… Maybe you like your OnDemand stuff much better?
Maybe you wanna sell that Roku Netflix box of yours?