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."

Comments

Amazing

[erick99]

When you read this article you wonder how all of these problems can be possible with this product. It seemed to me that the reviewer was competent and very patient. It makes me wonder if there was any user testing and quality control in this process or was it someone's "good idea" and rushed to market? There are just too many electronic gadgets on the market that are poorly designed and frustrating to use.

Take care!

Erick

Quality Assurance

[millahtime]

There are just too many electronic gadgets on the market that are poorly designed and frustrating to use.

Engineers have a lot of great ideas and can even make them happen but there are a lot of angles they don't see or even think of. Many of the engineers aren't even the target users and don't really understand how something gets used.

This is one place I will give props to the military. They require Quality Assurance and testing by the user before they will sign off on something.

Is it really Linux' fault that it sucks?

[YankeeInExile]

It seems clear from the review that the application stack in the Roku is not ready for prime time, but that is not really the fault of Linux.

Other embedded-Linux applications have successfully made boot-time a non-issue.

Unfortunately, in an embedded application, the presentation is monolithic -- it either works or it doesn't. So, this is going to seriously adversely affect the image of Linux in Set-top-box applications.

But, But...

[christopher240240]

Linux doesn't crash! Seriously, if this company has that much of a problem with designing their interface to be stable, perhaps they shouldn't be in the consumer electronics game.

Linux based OS

[monkeySauce]

He does harp on the fact that it runs Linux pretty often, even when it's insignificant-- like the OS has something to do with a poor user interface.

Roku good, Roku bad? Don't ask Charlie.

[gordguide]

The review is by Charlie White.

Now, it may well be that the thing is not ready for prime time, although some other reviewers seem to think it is.

It's just that, I've read Good Old Charlie's stuff before, reviewing things I'm intimately familiar with.

His experiences, conclusions, and pretty much everything else conflicted with mine so much that I now simply trash anything with his byline without reading it at all (I didn't notice his byline on this article until the bottom of page 2; in other words, the end. I wish I'd noticed it earlier, coulda saved some time).

Customizable?

[n17ikh]

I wonder how hackable this thing is. If it's possible to install a *different* version of Linux on it (or even Win98SE for the mostly non-Linux literate folks like me)and how fast its processor is and what amount of RAM it has. and I wonder if the extra cost would be worth all the component outputs, or if an Xbox would be better for that sort of thing... It would probably cost more and be harder to hack, but might you get better performance? Or would you be better off building your own sub-$300 PC with decent specs or even getting an Xbox for the performance/cost tradeoff?