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I recently got a Roku XDS as a birthday present.
The reason I asked for it was because Plex recently added a Plex channel to Roku. This lets me browse and play my Plex video collection on my TV rather than needing to use pyTivo. While pyTivo works the TiVo shows nothing more than a file system type list of my movies and tv shows.
On the roku the Plex channel shows the videos, descriptions. It also lets me browse unwatched shows, which is nice since my newly downloaded shows can easily be found. The Plex UI on the roku is a bit sparse at this point and it stops during play back every now and then. But it is still beta and a work in progress. I expect it will improve fairly quickly.
The roku also lets me access Netflix streaming service. I signed up for a free month, but I'm not sure if I will keep this. There are no new movies, the newest seem to be 5+ years old. Not that there aren't some good movies on there I have yet to see. Its $8 a month and the jury is still out.
The other alternative is Amazon Prime which includes free on-demand movie streaming. They seem to have a much smaller library than Netflix... but of course Prime gives you that free two day shipping on stuff. I can't see paying for both this and Netflix.
Roku also supports Hulu Plus... which is $8 a month. This may have some shows that I currently d/l... but it dosn't have all of them. Most of the shows we watch from SyFy don't seem to be on it.
You can also Rent/Buy movies from Amazon and Vudu. The rental prices seem the same but Vudu looks (on paper) to have better quality, Dolby D sound and all. However, I think if I am going to build up a digital library of purchased movies with DRM I would got with Amazon since I trust they likely will be stick around more than Vudu.
Amazon does have nice deal on many DVD/Blu-Ray purchases you get a free rental of that movie. So, you can buy it and watch it right away. And then when you get the DVD you can rip it and add it to your library for future views.
So... that's my progress on the no-cable TV front however I have been wavering lately. While the antenna works fine for the most part... d/l-ing can be hit or miss at times. It's funny, now that I am don't get the TV service I can sign up for a two year package that is only a few bucks more than just the phone/internet package... a price that I was not offered as an existing customer.
BOb
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