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Review of the Roku HD1000 Media Player
Animaether writes "Digital Producer magazine are running a review of the Roku HD1000 HD media player hardware. Between 'The unit crashed so much while I was testing it, I practically beat a path through the carpet to the unit's location on the shelf...' and 'Roku HD1000 misses by such a wide margin, it isn't worth buying', the review paints a pretty grim picture of this unit, and appears to put part of the blame on its Linux-based OS and software. The Roku HD1000 was previously covered here in December 2003."
He does complain about the OS itself:
"Yes, it can do these things, but because of its awkward Linux-based operating system and sluggish response, the thing acts like it doesn't want to."
One problem with his review, though, is that he looks for "features" from other products like an OSX transition - "why not have that with the Roku?" has asks.
Yes, I'll agree it isn't perfect but it is interesting. It will pick up smb shares without a hitch from browsing your network. There is info available for doing NFS as well. I've got the weather plugin working perfectly. It's also nice viewing all my photos on a 42" HD Plasma. Most "media PC" type machines don't offer component out especially with support for 1080i which is what I run. If you buy one be sure to grab the latest firmware and also install the copy/delete programs so you can easily delete some of the built in stuff. You can also do all that through telnet too. I would like to know if it's possible to overclock the CPU. I'd willingly put a larger heatsink on mine if it'd help performance. Video support still needs more work too. All in all, I do like it.