A couple months back, Joel poked around with the Roku Netflix Player. He thought it was okay, with a great interface that passes the “I’d let Brownlee use this” test. Since I didn’t see that comment until now, I hope your eyeballs rot, Joel. Idiot-proof or not, though, Joel was ultimately ambivalent about the Roku:” If and when the Roku box serves up other streaming services it’ll be a nice little node to stick on your TV to slurp up some free(ish) web media. Until then, it’s probably for Netflix.com die-hards only.”
If you pulled the trigger on that enthusiastic recommendation, doubleplus good news! Forbes is reporting that Roku will soon be rolling out an update to allow their player to stream from other select online video services. And even better? They’ve just released the GPL code for the plucky Netflix player. Hopefully, that means that even if Roku doesn’t support your preferred brand of digital Slurpee, plucky hackers will figure it out for you.
Roku GPL Code [Official Site]
Netflix’s Online Movie Dreams [Forbes via Hack-A-Day]
My Roku arrived this morning, took 90 seconds to get working, connected via HDMI the picture quality is superb. Within a further 40 seconds I was watching content. This is how shit should work out here in consumerland!
From the looks of it, only some of the source is available, not the player code itself.
Does it implement HDCP (DRM) though? Or can I use it with a DVI display?
Ive been addicted to my Roku since day one. It works easily, theres a-lot of content from Netflix. Though its easily 70% B-list content theres still a lot of stuff I wouldnt have ordered a dvd of like a 22 min broadcast of Miles Davis from late 50s. but its great to see it. I would love to see other content sites serve up to it. Yay open good!
Too bad for my 5 years of not watching TV ending.
I love my Roku! I can’t wait for more content.
If the entire source is available, this opens up the possibility of a Netflix player for any platform, not just this box and Internet Exploder. Somehow, I don’t see Netflix being friendly enough to allow Myth-TV boxes to play their video.