how many people have a TV hooked up to their PC???? storage issues??? come on, it will be years before this happens....
The Netflix Player by Roku is becoming a must-have device for many subscribers of Netflix's DVDs-by-mail service.
The television set-top box is cheap ($99), easy to set up and use, and offers a good library of content that's bound to improve over time.
To use the device, you need two things: a Netflix (NasdaqGS:NFLX - News) subscription and a broadband Internet connection.
I plugged the small device into the composite video and audio jacks on the back of a seven-year-old Sony (NYSE:SNE - News) analog tube TV. The device located my Netgear wireless router linked to an upstairs PC with Comcast (NasdaqGS:CMCSA - News) cable Internet service. Setup was simple; I just followed the on-screen instructions.
Many reviewers have found the content available for streaming to be lacking. While it offers only 10% of the titles Netflix has available for watching on DVD, I found more than enough content to justify the purchase.
In early May, Netflix gave subscribers a separate rental queue of movies and TV shows available for instant viewing. It automatically created the list using titles in subscribers' DVD rental queues.
This is the list that populates the on-screen viewing guide from the Roku box. So you're only presented with the content you have preselected for viewing from the Netflix Web site on your PC. This makes for a clean interface and minimal navigation using the included remote .
With the remote, you can scroll through movies and TV shows illustrated by DVD cover art. Press a button and movies start playing after several seconds.
While some reviewers and industry analysts have criticized Netflix's instant-streaming library as second rate, I think it works well as a complement to the core Netflix DVD service.
I filled my instant-viewing queue with more than 80 titles. They include television shows ("Dexter," "Heroes" and "The Rockford Files"), documentaries ("The King of Kong," "Crazy Love" and "Little Dieter Needs to Fly"), classics ("Leave Her to Heaven" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"), and foreign films ("Them," "The Orphanage" and "A Very Long Engagement"). Plus I've added a bunch of independent films, horror movies and comedies.
Popular videos on the service now include TV shows like "The Office," "Weeds" and "30 Rock" and movies like "Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show," "Mean Girls" and "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead."
The Netflix instant-viewing service also offers some videos that aren't even out on DVD yet, such as the short-lived comedy "The Dana Carvey Show" and cult thriller "Rolling Thunder."