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Old 24-May-2013, 1:55 PM   #4
elmo
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 232
I've got a 2nd gen Roku, XD I think. Got it new some time ago for about $60. We've used it for Amazon Prime and Netflix as well as the other various channels that are offered. There's a lot of private channels if you search the web for them. Some are junk while others do a nice job of providing a clean interface and aggregating a lot of content. The device has gained a lot of acceptance and continues to have channels and content made available. I know some new PBS channels were just added. There's now more support for DVR and local video playback as well. I haven't looked into that, but will be at some point. Local content (stuff on your server, NAS, etc) playback hasn't been a strong point of the Roku as it was intended to be a streamer. But with an API that is available, people are now creating channels that can transcode & playback your movie collections (non-DRM). I think PlayOn supports it, MediaBrowser is adding it. NextDVR already supports OTA content that you've recorded, for Roku playback. For just $60 for a device that's growing more capable as time passes - it's hard to go wrong there. I doubt that any Smart TV interface can match that. There are other boxes out there that stream content from the big player, but none that I know of that is as open to the little guys as the Roku is.
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