Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Roku Box

My deepest desire is to go Over the Air (OTA) and Over The Top (OTT) for watching television.  In other words, I want to cut the Comcast cord.  The problem is that I live pretty far from all of the network towers, except for ABC.  I wish that wasn't the case, because the ABC HD channel looks so good OTA because it is not being compressed before being sent to me.

About a week and half ago, received my Roku XDS box from Amazon.  I was pumped when it finally arrived because I've been wanting one for some time.  And my initial impression was positive.  I loved the small size.  It's just so cute.

Getting it hooked to the TV was easy.  Getting all the channels chosen was time consuming.  (Click here to see a list of available channels.)  That took most of the evening.  But we did have time to watch a little television once we were done.

One thing I really liked on that first evening was the fact that once a show gets buffered, it doesn't have to keep re-buffering.  That was a nice change of pace.  And the wifi is strong.  We have the Roku box in our bedroom and it can be hard to pickup the wifi signal in that room.  The Roku box hasn't had any problems.

We've installed more channels than we have had a chance to use.  But so far I have been very impressed.  The video looks good and it is easy to use.

I only have two complaints.  One, I wish there were more channels.  But I know that Roku is adding channels at a pretty good clip so I can be patient.  My other problem is that I wish there was some sort of guide telling me what was available to watch on the different channels rather than having to go to each channel to see what is available.

I am very glad we finally got the Roku Box.  We have used it every day since we received it and it has been well worth the money.