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Review of the Roku HD1000 Media Player

Posted by michael on from the too-bad dept.

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."

6 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. More about design problems than system ones by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The story-text is misleading - the author is complaining about the poor design choices in the GUI, not the OS itself, witness:

    That leads us to the OS and its foibles. As we've seen with TiVo, it's possible to create a snappy user interface using Linux, a modest processor and a remote-controlled series of screens. But I have to tell you, even though this Roku interface (see graphic above) reminds you of TiVo in the vaguest of ways, it's doesn't even distantly resemble the near-perfect user experience of TiVo.
    ... at which point he compares it unfavourably with the TiVO experience. All seems fair enough to me.

    Simon.
    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:More about design problems than system ones by BigBir3d · · Score: 5, Insightful

      not just bad GUI choices. everything is slow (1 minute to boot!!!) from start-up to navigating thru a big directory.

      just because it uses linux (cost saving measure it sounds like) does not mean it will be a good, or usefull, product.

  2. Amazing by erick99 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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

    --
    http://www.busyweather.com/
  3. Ouchhhh... bye bye Roku by KevetS · · Score: 5, Funny

    A negative review and front-page linkage on /.? Good luck recovering from this one, Roku!

    --
    This is my United States of whatever.
  4. Quality Assurance by millahtime · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Evolution or ID?
  5. Guys, guys... by ticeton · · Score: 5, Funny

    The real question here is: How are we going to blame this on Microsoft?