- K. Ryall (Boston, MA USA)
For the most part, the initial reviews here are pretty much accurate, so
I'm going to add just a few observations that may be useful to others.
Basically, I like the little guy quite a lot and it delivers a lot of
value for not a heck of a lot of money. Otherwise:
Click To See The Price => Price
Click To See Where To Buy => Where to Buy ?
The remote:
Unlike some assertions that it uses RF communication (no line of sight
necessary), the remote that came with the unit I just set up is ordinary
IR. This is a good thing if you plan to use it with most types of
universal remotes.
Wireless: It's Wireless "N" at 2.4GHz. In
my opinion, this is a pretty poor design decision due to the
overwhelming crowding of the 2.4G band in many places. 5GHz "N" has
been around long enough that the hardware to implement it is marginally,
if at all, more costly than the lower frequency band. I suppose their
excuse could be that "most people still use 2.4GHz" or "2.4GHz yields
stronger signals in typical houses", but if you can't get ANY signal at
all due to crowding, these end up sounding pretty lame.
The
physical box: It's very small and light. It's SO light that most
(stiff) HDMI cables will push it around to where THEY want to put it,
which is not necessarily where YOU want to put it. So you may end up
having to put a book or brick on it to hold it down. Or, search around
for thin/limp HDMI cables. Such things do exist, but you have to look
for them. Since this supports only 720p resolution, the fancy expensive
HDMI cables are a waste of money. Well, actually, that's true even for
1080p resolution, but that's another story. Basically, cheap cables
will work perfectly fine.
Account setup I: Here's one that was
nearly a show-stopper for me. They REQUIRE you to provide a credit card
number to activate the box!!! Man, I FREAKIN' HATE CRAP LIKE THAT!
Sure, they claim that "we won't charge it unless... blah blah blah..."
but I'm just waiting for the news item that goes something like "Roku
site hacked and two million customer credit card numbers have been
stolen....." followed by the usual "We're sorry" (Yeah, right. Thanks a
lot, you idiots.) email, followed by the usual ritual of having to
close the stolen CC account and giving the new acct number to all the
payees that use it for monthly charges. At least you can block
"accidental" charges by requiring that a 4-digit PIN be entered to
authorize a CC charge. The bottom line here is that once having bought
the device, there's NO defensible reason to require anyone to provide a
live CC. This is sneaky, slimy, and abusive in my opinion and should be
disclosed in Big Red Letters in the "features" section of the product
description.
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