Roku is awesome. Got mine last Sunday after we decided to get rid of cable. I had to get rid of my fta stuff for now because we ended up moving in to a small apartment that doesn't have a 'commons' area attached to it directly where I could put up the dish. I could theoretically put it on a pole outside with the landlord's permission, but not sure I want to since Roku does so much and the wii now actually has enough of an upgraded flash that it does youtube at long last. I've started a 'channel list' for roku in my blog, but would love to actually see a new 'what's on there' area added here for roku users so that the good roku stuff does not go 'off air' like so many fta channels do once they are made to be too public.
I do have playon, but it sucks cpu cycles on the computer too much for me to use regularly. Also, playon's really limited since there's only a few developers for it's plugins. I recently downloaded the plugins for it again since I lost many of them last year when I had to reformat and found that many of the plugins are not even on the plugin site any more since they didn't make a backup when they had a server crash.... based on what I've read playon on wii works better than on roku since roku uses more power or something, but I'm not really sure if that's true or a myth that the people at roku forums that hate playon are just spreading.
If I get an alienware area 51 ALX in a few years instead of this little laptop that overheats way too much, I might use playon more often.
What's really cool is that the entire itunes ipod library is right there on the roku along with a lot of other stuff. What I'm curious about is if some of those weird internet tv channels that do restream fta content and stuff like blackbelt tv, etc. can be made to become channels on the roku somehow. I'm guessing they can since the streams come from somewhere. If that's possible, there's a ton of potential to do a LOT with roku. Imagine someone hooking up some dvb type equipment somewhere for 'unofficial' restreams of every fta channel out there! Slingbox sharing is illegal, but really that's where this type of stuff could head. At least one roku channel can do p2p tv but it's really just restreaming from the computer server, so it burns cpu cycles just like playon. Stuff that doesn't require use of a middle man server on a computer is better since the roku is talking directly to whatever the 'source' is.... anything that retransmits and needs a computer to do so is going to be slower and more bulky and really drain resources if you use that computer for anything else.
I do have playon, but it sucks cpu cycles on the computer too much for me to use regularly. Also, playon's really limited since there's only a few developers for it's plugins. I recently downloaded the plugins for it again since I lost many of them last year when I had to reformat and found that many of the plugins are not even on the plugin site any more since they didn't make a backup when they had a server crash.... based on what I've read playon on wii works better than on roku since roku uses more power or something, but I'm not really sure if that's true or a myth that the people at roku forums that hate playon are just spreading.
If I get an alienware area 51 ALX in a few years instead of this little laptop that overheats way too much, I might use playon more often.
What's really cool is that the entire itunes ipod library is right there on the roku along with a lot of other stuff. What I'm curious about is if some of those weird internet tv channels that do restream fta content and stuff like blackbelt tv, etc. can be made to become channels on the roku somehow. I'm guessing they can since the streams come from somewhere. If that's possible, there's a ton of potential to do a LOT with roku. Imagine someone hooking up some dvb type equipment somewhere for 'unofficial' restreams of every fta channel out there!
Slingbox sharing is illegal, but really that's where this type of stuff could head. At least one roku channel can do p2p tv but it's really just restreaming from the computer server, so it burns cpu cycles just like playon. Stuff that doesn't require use of a middle man server on a computer is better since the roku is talking directly to whatever the 'source' is.... anything that retransmits and needs a computer to do so is going to be slower and more bulky and really drain resources if you use that computer for anything else.
