Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Roku”
The Initial Failure and Eventual Triumph of Social Media in my Attempts to Get Tech Support to Help
A little past the end of February I started having problems with my internet connected devices. In the basement we have a Roku box that the wife uses to watch Netflix. She reported that it was no longer connecting to Netflix. We’d had issues before with it needing to be re-registered with Netflix, but that did not seem to be the case. I’d click on the Netflix channel and it would say “retrieving movies” for a while and then pop back to the main menu. At first I thought something was wrong with the Roku box, so I tried the Amazon channel, but that worked and I was able to watch my content. I figured it’d resolve itself. So she just popped in the latest DVD from Netflix into our DVD player. Later that night she was in the bedroom and learned that our Samsung BluRay player was no longer connecting to Netflix. I thought that was weird, but figured maybe it was a Netflix problem. I checked on my computer and I couldn’t log into the Netflix site. Neither could Danielle on her computer. These were Linux boxes (Fedora and Ubuntu respectively) so I tried on my Windows computer. Strangely, that one could log in. That’s weird. I tried on both Firefox and Chrome with no difference. So then I tried the guest computer - that computer hadn’t been used since December and I knew it was working for Netflix back then. That would help me eliminate the possibility that I’d installed a distro update that had killed it for me. (I knew that didn’t totally make sense because of the BluRay Player and Roku) That one could reach it either. What was going on here? Was Netflix blocking Linux? Well, I figured it might go away so I waited until the next day.
Using Boxee for the First Time
My wife enjoys watching TV a lot more than I do. I prefer interactive or creative pursuits like programming, photography, or video games. If, tomorrow, all the TV studios said we could no longer use the Internet to freely watch their programs (with ads, of course), I wouldn’t buy cable. Once I’d broken that shackle, it was gone forever. Even when I had Comcast and my MythTV, the hard drive was filling up with the shows I liked (Myth Busters, Dirty Jobs, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report) faster than I could watch them. But Danielle enjoys TV and I enjoy making my wife happy. So, when I read about the Boxee Box, I thought it might be something she’d enjoy.
Review: Roku Box
I’ve had the Roku Box for a few months now. It costs $99 and I bought it for one simple reason: my wife and I object to having to use Windows and Internet Explorer to watch Netflix’s Instant Programs. As a secondary reason, we’re not in college anymore and we object to having to watch on our computers. We want to be able to watch these on the TV just as if we had rented little silver discs. The Roku box is tiny. Here’s a shot of the front: