Netflix announces $100 set top player
After years of speculation from industry observers (not to mention waaaay early announcements from the company itself), Netflix's set-top video streaming device is finally here. Basics: $100, streams movies available via Netflix's Play Now function (about 10% of their titles) free of charge as long as you're paying the minimum Netflix sub fee ($8.95), looks like ... a LEFO w/ inverted nipples? Here's the review from CNET, in which they note the lack of HD support and the paltry number of available titles.
Wired's Danny Dumas: Plug it in, hook it up to the HDTV with an HDMI cable, plug in an Ethernet cord, and then use a confirmation code to link it to your account. I was running within five minutes.
NYTimes' Saul Hansell: The $229 Apple TV, the leading rival for Roku’s box, mainly offers movies and TV shows for purchase or pay-per-view rental, although it also offers free podcasts and YouTube videos. Apple gets access to movies when they are released as DVDs and typically offers movies for purchase at $14.99 and as rentals for $3.99 a day. Apple TV also offers other features that the Roku box does not have, including access to music and photos.
For my part, I would sooner buy this set-top box than Apple TV. And while I own an Xbox and subscribe to Xbox Live, I don't download movies from it (mostly because I find the whole points-to-dollars thing stupidly over complex). I still get the most use from movies on demand via my Time Warner cable box, though that selection leaves much to be desired as well.
This is great. But this sort of innovation could be squashed by the bandwidth caps that major isp's are starting to enforce on their high speed packages.
A family that rents a few movies each week, gets their music online, downloads demos for their playstation etc. will hit the 40-60GB ceilings very quickly and would sadly be forced to get their movies and digital media from their isp's competing digital cable services instead.
Posted by: ok | May 20, 2008 at 11:00 AM