A Hackable Media Player For HDTV

Posted by timothy on Monday December 1, 2003 @09:42PM from the lacks-tuner-and-hard-drive dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Embedded Linux and an open, hacker-friendly architecture power the world's first high definition media player, the $499 Roku HD1000. The brainchild of ReplayTV inventor Anthony Wood, the device could touch off a cottage industry of third-party applications and media packs that work with its Linux-based OS and user-friendly media APIs. Out of the box, the HD1000 can stream MPEG and MPEG2, play music, loop JPEGs, and more to an HDTV -- all at the same time. Roku is selling "Art Packs" of everything from museum-quality art to hot-rod cars as memory cards that work with the device. And, the company will release a C/C++ SDK for the HD1000 before 2004. Finally, there's something to actually show on your $5,000 54-inch plasma TV or 37-inch LCD TV." (Roku is also one of the companies mentioned in an earlier posting about using hi-def displays as digital art galleries).

1 of 216 comments (clear)

Lack of Optical support? by erik+umenhofer · 2003-12-01 22:29 · Score: 1, Troll

I didn't see any optical audio ins/outs. I paid top dollar for the ability to use optical audio on my home system, why doesn't this device have it? You are paying a premium for super quality video, why skimp on the audio??? Any ideas?