roku streaming video

[Walter Mitty]

There is one place where I think Verizon is behaving like an idiot. 

They should have a web site where you can enter a three digit area code plus a three digit exchange
(i.e. your line umber without the last four digits) and find out what the deal is from Verizon, whether Verizon is offering FIOS, soon to offer FIOS,  only offering DSL,  not offering HSI at all, or doesn't even serve that exchange. 

And they should do this without demanding that you establish a relationship with them first. 

It would boost their sales, and it would tell them what exchanges people are interested in.

Instead, Verizon makes you log into their "My Verizon" site,  then makes you jump through all sorts of hoops before finally telling you that you  can only find out about FIOS availability by talking to a marketing rep on the PHONE.  Who the hell do they think they are,  the phone company? 

[ilconsiglliere]

I have had FIOS for 3 years already. Generally its problem free except for the DVR. Its very sensitive to interference in the lines so its best if you have newer RG6 coax throughout the house.

The speed is very good on the internet and I push it a lot of the time downloading movies and software. Have never had a slowdown. Periodically it will slow down due to an outage but its rare.

The only thing I can say though is the programming blows for the TV. Basically you have a whole set of regular channels and than you have a whole set of the same channels in HD. On top of this you have a ton of channels you will never watch. Everything is in canned packages like 5 HBOs, 4 Showtimes, etc...

We have almost every package they have. I want to cut it way, way back as there is nothing ever on that we havent seen. The premium channels play the same stuff all the time (how many times can Independence Day be on).

Our bill is running like 160/month which I think is outrageous. They are charging us like 39/month just for the DVR because we have 3 boxes in the house.

After the New Year I am planning on cutting the channels back to nothing and hooking up Roku and Apple TV.

[The Gorn]

My wife gave me a Roku 2 XS for Christmas and I gave her a Nook Tablet which she asked for.

In both instances: basic setup of the device requests (in the case of the Roku, demands) a credit card or Paypal account to be registered with it. The concept of demanding a credit card in order to use a purchased product is just plain wrong, IMO.

The purpose of both of these devices is essentially to push paid content. Emphasis on "paid".

After a while of fishing around we determined that there appears to be absolutely no free content for the Nook except, perhaps, the contents of Project Gutenberg or something like that. I didn't really expect otherwise but I was surprised how effectively anything useful in terms of e-books is paywalled from the Nook.

The Roku, despite its absolute demand for a payment option in order to activate the device (evil in a box, IMO) - has a fairly rich library of channels containing free content. However, there is a clear food chain here.

The top of the food chain - such as major media news outlets such as Fox News, ABC/NBC/CBS, etc have "free" channels on Roku. However, when you browse their content, each channel is restricted to 3 minute or less clips of individual segments. You cannot watch an entire episode of "Red Eye" or ABC Evening News - you can only watch a short segment. I had hoped that each network would have a free live feed, but no dice.

The "bottom" of the food chain are a plethora of special interest channels, including Roku outlets for Chow.com and other niche stuff. (Get this - there is a channel for Drupal learning! Lol.) Basically these channels have full length programs but the sources are no-name.

The Roku would be OK if you already intended to subscribe to Netflix or Hulu. If you weren't intending this, it's quite frustrating.

DG9 - your comments about authoring content through the Roku network are really interesting. I didn't realize that developers were buying these things for non-passive use.

The Wii type remote control is quite innovative (I was amazed how well Angry Birds plays on it and that you point the controller to move the screen cursor.)

About the Nook, I'm telling my wife, hey! At least you now have that "laptop" type portable PC you always wanted, since the Nook works well as a web browser.

[DG9]

We are on the free one month trial of Netflix.  More recent content is available by mail only, at an additonal cost.   I'll probably drop Netflix and try hulu plus and Amazon next...  Big complaint folks have about Netflix in a shared household environment is that what you have watched is saved and displayed so they can "help" you find similar material.  You can not clear it, so what you watch the kids see.

[benali72]

Next up, the Roku streaming stick. Looks like a USB memory stick but plugs into the high definition port on many current TVs.

See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/roku-streaming-stick_n_1184097.html