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."

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[Anonymous Coward]

Roku: Convergence in the Making
HD media player not there yet
By Charlie White
Roku HD1000 ($280) is a device that's billed as a high-definition media player for consumers. It can play digital media, including stills, music files and graphics, and even video if it's a certain type the unit can read. It's designed to bring the world of computer graphics, music and video into your living room, where your HDTV resides. 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. By the time you're done with Roku, neither will you. Here's a review.
For my testing I connected the Roku into our Midwest Test Facility theater, where we have a wired 100 base-T network connection at the ready and an NEC HT1000 HDTV projector. I also hooked up the Roku to our 5.1 surround audio system, and plugged in a CompactFlash card containing the optional Roku Gallery Collection Art Pack. With everything connected, I hit the On button and the unit began booting up, just like a computer, and after about a minute, it was ready to go -- not exactly instant-on. Based on the Linux operating system, Roku runs its own user interface that looks slightly like that of TiVo, another Linux-based set-top box that's seen significant success as a personal video recorder (PVR). A key difference between these two is that Roku has no hard drive -- it gets its media either from a variety of flash memory cards such as CompactFlash, Memory Stick or SD, or can access media files over a computer network.
It all sounds good. But it's not, at least not yet. 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, the only way to unfreeze it being a complete unplugging of power from the back of the unit. I would attempt to play an mp3 while showing a slide show of pictures from a digital camera. Crash. The thing would completely lock up.
Another tantalizing feature was its ability to use third party software to do even more tricks, such as play back various types of video files. The unit can play back HDTV files, but only if they're in the ATSC-compatible HDTV transport stream format, the same format used to broadcast HDTV in the US. Roku provided us with its HD1000 Gallery Collection (a $200 option), a CompactFlash card with all of its available Art Packs -- The Classics, Nature, Aquarium, Space, Holiday and Clocks. Some of these packs include MPEG transport stream files in full-rez HD which looked splendid. And it indeed does a creditable job of playing back HDTV media files, as long as they are MPEG transport stream files and have a .ts extension, and as long as it keeps from crashing. You could get these files onto your computer by recording them onto a hard disk with an HD tuner card, all of which are hardly beyond the experimental stage at this point. If your network can handle the 19mbit/sec. bandwidth required by these files, it can even play them back over a network. But if you have any other type of video files (how about Windows Media 9? DivX?), they won't play back unless you have a third-party player. I downloaded such a software application, this one called MpegPSPlay, and it locked up the unit so tight it had to be unplugged again. I tried a mp3 jukebox application written for Roku, and the same thing happened. Crash. The system, along with its half-baked third-party attempts at software, has a distinct beta-testing feel to it. That's frustrating because what this unit is capable of and what it actually executes are far apart at this point, but if it could just be refined a bit it could be a useful tool for playing back anything on your network.
Roku can play back stills as advertised. Many digital still camera users may not be aware that 3-megapixel digital photos are well within high definition resolution. That's why still pictures look so beautiful when displayed by the Roku. Alas, it's not a convenient experience to play back pictures on the Roku, nor i

Adhoc hip-hop rhyming Roku Haiku

[McSnickered]

Got Roku? True 'dat!
It don't work - it's total crap
Sucks? Just blame Linux.