Standalone set-top boxes like the Boxee Box and the Roku Player are good because they add Internet content to heretofore unconnected TVs. That’s a good thing. However, analysts at the Diffusion Group believe that the devices will eventually peter out to be replaced by Blu-Ray devices.
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Stop! Turn that car around! Roku is selling the HD-XR for half-off. There’s no reason to go to the store!

The Roku is one of my favorite living room devices and it just got better. Now it’s $64.99 plus shipping and lets you watch Netflix, Amazon, and MLB content along with Facebook and Blip.tv videos. Good, good stuff.

Click through to figure out how to get the deal.

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Your Roku box just got a whole lot more interesting. Roku, if you remember, makes the Roku player, a small device that sits next to your TV and plays Netflix, Amazon Video, and MLB selections. Roku has just added ten new channels to that line-up and built a fascinating platform for adding more down the line.

The current channels will include: blip.tv, Facebook Photos, Flickr, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Pandora, Revision3 and TWiT. More channels will be available here shortly.
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Good news for those of you with the well-liked Roku player. As we heard was going to happen, and then we heard was in testing, the little thing can now access the many videos on Amazon’s VOD service.

Not too much else to say — I don’t have one, so I can’t test it out. Anybody care to let us know how it works? It should be live as of this posting.
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Now that a Samsung Blu-ray player, Xbox 360, and TiVo can stream Netflix, the original device by Roku is trying to make people remember that it’s still around by stating that it will be able to stream HD content by this year’s end. Some have questioned the $99 hardware’s ability to stream Netflix content but according to the companies VP of Consumer Products, it will be “delivering Netlfix in HD by the end of the year.” Plus, the UI will be upgraded as well to better work with the extra resolution. If Roku can indeed stream quality HD content and developers pick-up on the now-open system, Roku might gain some household penetration.

[Rokulabs via Hacking Netflix]

In an interesting move by Netflix and Starz, about 2,500 featured movies and concerts are now available for instant streaming over the Internet and using the Roku Netflix box. Because Starz offers first run “premium” content, this move expands the overall streaming offerings from Netflix considerably.

My only complaint about Netflix streaming has thus far been movie selection – man cannot live on National Lampoon’s European Vacation alone, no matter how many times Rusty gets some – and this assuages that grief by adding first-run movies to the mix. The unlimited subscription with access to streaming content is $8.99 a month and the on-line library is up to 15,000 titles now, considerably more than when we tested the service a few months ago.
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The Roku Netflix Player is an amazing little set-top box that streams Netflix movies, but Roku is hoping for so much more. The company has gone on record, stating that its going to open the platform for other content providers within the coming months. Does this mean we will finally see a quality Hulu or YouTube living room solution? I sure hope so, because with the Roku Netflix box $99 MSRP and if developers get behind it, we might see some killer applications with a low admission cost.

So Comcast is implementing a 250GB monthly bandwidth cap starting next month. While some consumers are up in arms about the true meaning of “unlimited” internet access, others have focused on how these caps will affect the innovation of web-based services, particularly video streaming and downloading.

Roku, maker of the Netflix-streaming box (reviewed here), isn’t too concerned, according to NewTeeVee. Tim Twerdhal, VP of consumer products, says:

“It really doesn’t give me a lot of concern. It’s unfortunate that the limitless possibilities are being capped by an ISP, but it has no direct business impact on us.”

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Oh hey there, this should be interesting. Remember the Roku Netflix set-top box that came out a little while ago? Well Roku has just released the code under the GPL, which got the MythTV community buzzing about getting its popular open source media center software onto the Roku box.

If you think about it, the $99 box would be a nice little option for running MythTV, as there’s HDMI output, Wi-Fi, and it can decode MPEG2/4, DivX, and H.264 videos. It’d be sort of like a much less expensive, open source Apple TV – similar to the Hauppauge MediaMVP box, except with some high definition goodness.

What can’t Netflix do? First, they destroyed weekend trips to Blockbuster with their ubiquitous red envelopes and now they promise to destroy the postal service by totally cutting out the middle man.

The Netflix Player by Roku is the first in what portends to be a long line of devices designed to download and stream movies from Netflix. While in its current incarnation the device is fairly limited, I can firmly recommend it with the expectation that the movie selection will improve.

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Here are some actual screenshots of the Netflix Player by Roku. As you see, the set-up is quite simple and icon oriented and the whole box is elegant and suffers no extraneous eye-candy.