the future is now

[topaz]

My Netflix Roku box arrived yesterday.  Today at lunch I took it out of the box, and within about ten minutes I was watching Letters From Iwo Jima in streaming video over wi-fi.  I'm really impressed.  The setup was painless.  The image and sound quality is far better than what I expected.  My impression is that it's not quite up to DVD quality but is considerably better than VHS.  I haven't watched a movie all the way through yet (it's a workday!) but watched bits of Letters From Iwo Jima, Shampoo, and Evil Dead, and so far have not seen any video or audio dropouts.  I'm using my VPN in to work and not experiencing having any significant latency.  (The device is connected to the net over an 802.11g base station, which is on a 6Mbps cable modem connection, which surely must help a lot.)

The down sides appear to be: the Netflix "instant watching" catalogue is still very limited.  I have 420 movies in my queue, about 50 of which are available for streaming.  The choices are kind of spotty, too: Letters From Iwo Jima is available but not Flags Of Our Fathers, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre but not Sunset Boulevard.  The Roku box does allow fast forwarding and rewinding, but it's going to take a little getting used to the controls.  And it remembers where you stopped watching the last several movies, so when you return to it you can resume from where you left off.

All things considered I'm very pleased.  We're living in the future, baby.

Edit: I forgot to check for this at first.  None of the titles I've tried have closed captions.  That's very disappointing.  I'm still impressed but that's a significant omission.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose it supports closed captioning? (For some reason, that seems to be a stumbling block for these services-- I could get Amazon Unbox videos on my TiVo, but without captions there's not much point.)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Thanks for asking about this, I wanted to check myself. Sorry not to have answered earlier, but I haven't had as much time to play with my new toy as I'd like. :-)

Unfortunately, the service does not appear to support closed captioning. I haven't found a definitive answer on Netflix's site, but captions have not worked on any of the titles I've tried. A real pity. We tend to turn on captions on a lot of dramas with fast subtitles, so that's a disappointment for me too.

[inahandbasket]

interesting, I was curious about these little things myself. Didn't expect such a positive review honestly.
Quite possibly worth picking one up after moving expenses are accounted for...

[d3l1r1um.livejournal.com]

A word of caution--I heard that if you watch a lot (or even not that much, from what I understand) of streamed stuff, you get dropped in priority for high-demand shipped DVDs. It's sort of like renting and returning DVDs very quickly on the unlimited disk plan.

Sounds nifty though!

[penk.livejournal.com]

*stick in the mud*

Still want the dvd in my hand.

-oldfart.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

No you don't. I know you better than that. :-)

[penk.livejournal.com]

No, really! I like -owning- the movies. I can play them when i want, where i want, as often as I want. In the car, in maine, loan them to friends, read the liner notes, browse them whenever I want.

Not sure why. Last gasp materialism? *shrug?*

[pancua.livejournal.com]

You could do both no?

Watch the movie and then if you like it, buy the DVD.

Best of both worlds?

[pancua.livejournal.com]

Oh how neat! I want one!