Inside the Tech of the Roku Netflix Player

MojoKid writes "A little over a week ago Netflix unveiled the Netflix Player, developed by the team at Roku, a set-top box for watching on-demand movies and TV. This interview with Tim Twerdahl, the VP of Consumer Products for Roku, goes into some detail about the guts of the box and the future of the set-top box. Of course the system runs an embedded Linux OS, but interestingly also runs on a Nexperia (Philips) media processor."

Comments

Re:incredibly insightful!

[Technician]

Wow, that was one of the most in-depth interviews I've ever read. They go really into the details of what makes it run and how the system works. Well worth the read!

The only part missing is the part about the service is at the mercy of the delivery ISP. If you think bandwidth shaping is bad for torrents, see what the Cable TV providers do when this competes with the cable company's own offering. I have enough Buffering..... playing. buffering...........playing...buffering....... to know this service will be at the mercy of the bandwidth providers. When it takes 6 hours to deliver a 2 hour movie, it won't be popular for many. Some will be lucky and actualy get enough bandwidth, but the number 1 complaint will be related to low resolution as a solution to interuptions to buffer content.

Too much of the contry has better bandwidth provided by Fedex, UPS, and Blockbuster. This will only get worse with high def content.