Cord Cutter's Diary
Posts tagged roku
Roku unveils its first answer to Apple’s AirPlay:
Now you can stream your carefully curated music playlists and flattering family photos straight from your iPhone or Android device to your living room big screen with our brand new Play on Roku feature. Yes, it’s true. You can even set your photos to music.
Since it only works with audio — not video — it can’t yet be considered a viable competitor to AirPlay. But you have to imagine that Roku, which recently accepted a round of venture capital from large media companies, is heading in that direction.
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Roku’s as-yet-unreleased Streaming Stick, which is essentially a smaller version of the Roku XD that I own, will help second-tier television manufacturers compete in the “smart TV” market. Essentially, why do a lot of work turning the TV into a pseudo-computer when a peripheral device can do the work for you? And as Roku puts it, “In a few years, you can replace that Streaming Stick instead of the entire TV.” You could even replace it with a non-Roku device — like, say, the Pocket TV I bought on Kickstarter. That upholds what, to me, is a first principle of cord cutting: modularity.
The Streaming Stick plugs into a mobile high-definition link (MHL) port, which is more common on phones and tablets than TVs right now. So that’s the upshot of today’s announcement: a bunch of TV manufacturers will be making their devices “Roku ready” by supporting MHL.
What I’d really like to see: combine the slimmed-down form factor of the Roku Streaming Stick with the similarly diminutive Boxee Live TV stick, which would add free network television to the mix.
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Why I bought a Roku XD
First you cut the cord, then you put it back together.
I dropped my cable TV subscription at the end of April, saving about $100 a month, but didn’t know exactly how I would supplant my media consumption. In a thread on Google+ last month, I proposed buying a Boxee box (for Netflix, MLB.tv, and other paid services) and the Boxee tuner (for free network television) but was steered, instead, toward Roku.
After giving it some more thought, I agreed that Roku — specifically, a Roku XD for $69.99 from Amazon — should be the first piece of hardware I purchased for my cord-cutting setup. Here’s why:
- It’s cheaper than the Boxee Box, which would run me $179.99 at Amazon. Boxee has much to speak for it, including an apparently superior UI, but that’s a steep price to pay before I really know what I’m looking for. I’m piecing together my setup, so cheaper and more extensible options will almost always be preferable.
- Relatedly, I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about network TV, which I can get for free over the air, but Boxee’s tuner was a tempting option. It’s small and competitively priced at $49, and I love the elegance of plugging it into the back of your Boxee Box. But, alas, it requires committing to a Boxee Box, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Instead, I’m likely to opt for a standalone tuner at a similar price or another option I’ll discuss soon.
- I don’t think I need a set-top box to watch random videos I find on the Web, which is a core feature of Boxee (and Google TV). I can do that on my laptop or iPad, and if I need to watch those videos on my TV, I can plug in a computer.
- Roku has Amazon, and Boxee doesn’t. I don’t know how much I’ll rely on Amazon for my streaming media — I’m starting with a Netflix subscription at $7.99 a month — but it’s a good potential alternative to iTunes.
- Speaking of which, since pretty much all my other devices are made by Apple, I may still get a $99 Apple TV for a really nice experience with iTunes content. Together with the $70 Roku XD, that would still be cheaper than the $180 Boxee box alone.
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