back to article Roku rocks media streamers into UK

Roku has released its compact media streaming set-top boxes in the UK. With it comes BBC iPlayer support. The Roku LT and Roku 2 XS players - priced at £50 and £100, respectively - also come with Netflix support and all the usual free picture and video content sites, from Flikr to YouTube. Both boxes can connect across a 2. …

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  1. JDX Gold badge

    My God that's ugly

    1. Neill Mitchell

      Down with the kids

      Marketing man - "No, it's funky"

    2. ElNumbre
      Meh

      2tone

      I don't mind the purple and black, but I don't get the turquoise and green remote buttons.

      And is that a clothes type label on one side. Random.

  2. dotdavid
    Meh

    Ugly but cheap

    I would be quite interested in this if it supports streaming from SMB shares. The specs don't advertise this though, does anyone know if Roku support it?

    1. deive

      also small, so it can be hidden

      +1 for the local streaming, if this also supported OnLive then it would be an instant winner...

  3. Alex Walsh

    As far as I can see this supports no local streaming at all? If that's the case it's massively overpriced for what it is surely?

    1. dansus

      You can stream with Plex and supports local mkv playback. (mkv on XS only)

  4. Preacher
    Unhappy

    Ripoff

    I see this is $99.99 in US, so UK is getting the usual 1:1 exchange rate

    1. Malcolm 1

      US prices exclude sales tax, so it's only a £25 price hike rather than the £37 it may initially appear to be.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm, Pie...

    You guys know this is basically a Raspberry Pie in a case don't you?

    1. dotdavid
      Stop

      Pie no longer being baked

      ...with the added benefit of being available now ;-)

      Although weighing up the pros and cons I still think waiting for the Pi might be a better deal. With XBMC there's very little Roku will do that it won't.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge
        FAIL

        Tom's Hardware ****ed up.

        That particular 'story' was extrapolated from a garbled rumour they scraped from someone else and totally misunderstood*. They have since posted an update.

        But please, carry on believing it. More chance of me getting one from the first batch in 10 days time.

        The educational package is Q3 2012. This should not surprise anyone, on account of that being when schools start in the UK.

        *I'm stretching to give T's H the benefit of the doubt here. I'm not exactly convinced they deserve it.

    2. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
      Alien

      Having your pi and eating it

      Sure the Raspberry Pi could do what the Roku does, and probably more too. But this is a complete package, everything included, plug and play, firmware preinstalled and configured, power supply, case (like it or loathe it) plus a remote. It likely even comes with a user manual and warranty.

      In short it's the difference between a commercial media player and tinkerer's delight. Each has their own place; horses for courses.

      One advantage for the Roku is all the connectors are at the back unlike the Pi which will likely be a rats nest of wiring you might not like sitting under your TV. And how much would a Pi and the rest cost to turn it into an ersatz Roku? More importantly, the Roku is 'here and now' while the man in the street has no idea when they will be able to get their hands on a Pi given slipping delivery dates and unknown production batch sizes.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Man on the street information...for those with no idea...

        First production batch of Pi is 10k, to be completed Feb 20th 2012. Sales soon after.

        One caveat. You only have H.264 and MPEG4part2 licenced decoder on the Pi, plus some others that don't need licencing.

  6. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Proving if nothing else that you can have too much of the colour blue.

  7. Will
    Thumb Down

    No DLNA..

    Bit pointless

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      That rather surprised me as well

      It does appear that you can't stream from your local storage, which is weird.

      - Netflix/Lovefilm is nice, but I've already got both iPlayer and ITV Player on my PVR.

      I would like to stream back the recordings I've backed up, it's tedious to copy back and forth to the PVR.

      1. dansus

        WDTV Live.

    2. ElNumbre
      Unhappy

      One feature Im NOT looking for.

      In my experience, DLNA is a bit pointless. I've tried a variety of DLNA clients/renderers and servers and non of the combo's has worked reliably, consistently or properly. I'd much prefer to know that a device can mount CIFS or NFS and get a list of supported media types, rather than hoping and praying that DLNA client will be able to find, receive, decode and playback something indexed on the DLNA server.

      Too many times has the missus said "why don't you just use a DVD" after 10mins of faffing, trying to get a movie to play.

  8. TonyHoyle

    £50 version not available in the UK

    The Apple TV or the WDTV Live seem better deals than this (and both are cheaper - it's saying something when you're charging more than apple!).

    And since I can't really justify £100 for a Pi in a box (£75 buys you a case and a remote), I'll Pass.

    Re release with sane pricing and I'll reconsider.

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