November 25, 2009, 8:17 AM — On Monday I reported that Roku players, those nifty little boxes that got their start as devices dedicated to bringing Netflix Streaming to your TV, were going to get a new batch of channels via the Roku Channel Store "within the next two weeks." Well two days later, the update is available for all Roku owners and last night I spent some time putting the new system through its paces.
That two week figure may still hold true if you just let the Roku update itself, but forcing an update will get you the new firmware now. From the Home menu on the Roku, go to the Settings Tab, then Player Info, and you'll find a choice to check for updates. Do that, and if the box reports that there are no updates available, immediately try again. For some reason needing to check twice is expected behavior.
While the player updates and then restarts, go grab your laptop if you have one. You're going to be doing a lot of jumping back and forth between Roku and Web for the next few minutes and having both in one place will save on a lot of running back and forth. The first thing you have to do is register for an account on the Roku website. Once your Roku player is back online you'll find a new main option, Channel Store. The first time you access that you'll be given a code which you have to enter on the Roku website. You'll find a form to enter this code in under the Link Player section of the Roku Account Page. You only have to do this once (that applies to all the codes to come as well).
The Channel Store doesn't do you any good until you add channels. So pick a channel and choose Add Channel to add it to your main menu. The first time you access the channel one of several things will happen. In some cases you'll just go right to the content and start watching. In other cases you'll get another code and have to enter it into the channel's website to add it. For instance to add the Pandora channel you'll go to http://www.pandora.com/roku and enter the code, and then either enter your existing Pandora account info or create a new Pandora account. In at least once case (Facebook) you'll do things the other way round. You'll be asked to go to www.roku.com/facebook which will redirect you to a typical Facebook app request for access to your Facebook account. Once you allow that you'll generate a code there on the web, and enter it on the Roku using an on-screen keyboard. Whenever you do one of these codes it'll take a couple minutes to 'sync,' after which the Roku will let you know that channel is ready for viewing.
Pandora worked just as nicely on the Roku as it does on the web. The display is no frills: you can pick a Pandora Station, skip a song, give a thumbs up/down, and so on. There's no visualizer or anything along those lines. You'll get album art for the song thats playing and the few simple controls and the rest of the screen is empty. Assuming your Roku connects to a receiver (either via HDMI or audio-only) you can just turn the TV off and let Pandora stream all day.
The Facebook channel is actually called "Facebook Pictures" and that's all it does: lets you look at the pictures that you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook (this is similar to Facebook on the Xbox 360). Again the interface is fairly sparse. Friends are listed alphabetically and you scroll through them until you find the person whose pictures you want to look at. Then you drill down into their various albums and start watching. You can flip through 'thumbnails' or go full screen. The latter triggers a slideshow, or you can flip through them manually using the Roku remote. It isn't fancy but it gets the job done. Of course, a lot of Facebook shots that look fine on a computer aren't going to look as good on a 50" TV screen.
I didn't check out all ten channels, but in addition to Pandora and Facebook I added Revision3, blip.tv, TWiT.tv and Mediafly. Results were mixed. blip.tv kept rebuffering so I gave up on it for the night (to be fair, it could have been a one time problem). Revision3 looked good and played well, but didn't remember where I'd left off if I stopped playing a show and came back to it. Mediafly and TWiT.tv (which is actually powered by Mediafly, from the look of things) worked great. Some of Leo Laporte's TWiT shows are in HD and they streamed beautifully, and Roku would remember my place if I left a video and came back to it.
Once you add a channel it appears on your main menu, next to Netflix, Amazon Video-on-Demand and MLB. You only have to drill into the Channel Store if you want to add new channels, or remove channels you no longer want on your main menu.
Overall, this is a very nice addition to the Roku, and for the price you certainly can't complain. The update is free and all the channels are free. Your first evening of adding channels and dealing with codes is going to be less than ideal, and it'd be great if you could do all this from Roku's web interface, but that's a one time annoyance. At some point the Roku interface will need to be updated to help you sort through all this content, but I guess that's the kind of problem you want to have: too much content. And of course everyone wants a Hulu channel. I'm not sure that's going to happen; Hulu seems to do all it can to avoid letting you get its content onto a TV.
The Roku just keeps getting better and better and is arguably now worth a purchase even if you're not a Netflix subscriber. A tiny $100 box that can easily stream Pandora and some of the better IPTV 'stations' (and we're promised even more channels soon) to your TV? Not a bad deal. And if you're a Netflix subscriber, the Roku is a no-brainer. Get one.
Follow Peter on Google+
