Review: Roku SD

I bought my girlfriend, among other things, a Roku SD for Xmas. I had a chance to play with it for a few hours yesterday. I streamed a few Netflix titles and a few Revision3 shows. I have to say that I'm VERY impressed with this little box. It just works. The shows stream in great quality video and audio. The user interface is intuitive and attractive. The remote is simple, accurate and responsive. The content, while somewhat limited now, has room for expansion, which is inevitable. If Roku got Hulu on this thing, it would be unstoppable. XBMC might be nice too. The only downside is the rewind and fast forward functions. When performing these, you cannot see the video move accordingly, i.e. a blind rewind. This stinks, but is easily correctable with a firmware update. All in all, the Roku is a great buy. It should score very highly in S.A.F., or Spousal Acceptance Factor. Give it a try, you  won't regret it.

Boxee (Alpha) for Windows

Boxee (Alpha) for Windows is probably the best free streaming media application out there. Nowhere else will you find Digg, Revision3, Hulu, Netflix, NPR, Comedy Central, Apple Trailers, Pandora, Last.fm, etc. all in one place. If it's good streaming content, it's on Boxee. Originally for modded Apple TV units, this app is now available for all Windows, Mac and Linux. There are video channels, music channels, and picture channels as well. I tried it out for the first time last night. Wow. The interface is clean and easy to use. The video quality is great. The sheer amount of content available is enough to quench anyone's entertainment appetite. I liked it so much that I immediately installed it on my netbook as well. Boxee is perfect for travelers who either miss their favorite shows, or need PC based entertainment because that's all there is. Ah, if only it was available for modded Xboxes. One can only dream...

Followup: Google Video Chat

So I've been using Google Video Chat with my girlfriend for the better part of a year. We use it every couple weeks or so. Now that I've figured out how to use it exactly how I want, I can safely say that it's a great free video chat solution. I never have any issues with video quality or dropouts or audio. It just works. I strongly recommend it.

Streaming Videos to the Wii

After having successfully hacked a Wii a couple weeks ago, I managed to get wireless video streaming working as well last night. I was able to stream just about every movie file format (with the exception of a DVD .iso file) from a Vista PC to the Wii over wifi. The app I used was MPlayer CE, available via the Homebrew Channel. Not too shabby. Mplayer supports Windows shares, which makes life easy. Video quality was adequate. It would be improved significantly if we were using the Wii component cables. For those looking for a way to view downloaded movies and TV on your Wii from a PC, this is currently the best way that I've seen. There are other media streamers that work with the Wii, like Orb, but they require transcoding to Flash, which degrades video quality significantly and takes extra CPU cycles.

The future of digital content

At this point in time, the Internet is the Wild West of entertainment. Anything goes. There are no real rules to speak of. Anyone with a computer can download any book, magazine, newspaper, software, movie, song, album, TV show, etc. in any quality they want for free. While it's not completely obvious about how to do this, especially for the non-tech savvy laymen and laywomen, anyone willing to put a little time into it can figure out how to get whatever they want pretty quickly. This is a major problem for media creators, distributors, and, yes, consumers, even the ones downloading illegally.

Content owners have no way of policing the Internet for copyright infringement. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) don't either. So, how are the the content owners and creators going to get paid for their work so that they can continue creating/distibuting content if anyone can get everything for free right now? As I see it, there is really only one way: Everyone pays a little. All the digital content owners and creators, from the big guys to the individuals, are going to have to come together with ISPs, world leaders, and consumers in order to come up with a fair way of charging everyone with an Internet connection some small amount, which then gets distributed amongst the content owners and distributors, again, in some fair way. In exchange for this fee, the consumers get to download/keep/stream/redistribute anything and everything out there, sort of like an unlimited Netflix/iTunes/Kindle subscription. We would have powerful devices in our home hooked up to our TVs/stereos, and handheld devices for the road that are capable of accessing every digital anything ever. Storage shouldn't be an issue either, because eventually we'll all be streaming everything live. Imagine if you lost your iPod. Yeah, you'd have to buy another one, but you'd never lose any content. It's always all there. In the clouds.

Unless we all come together to discuss a solution like this, then we'll soon be forced to realize the hard truth that no one is going to get paid what they deserve for the content that they've created.

Google Video Chat: It Mostly Works

I've had a Gmail account since the day Google announced them. I use it mainly as my "other" email address, and for various Google services. My girlfriend has one as well, and uses hers daily. As I've mentioned here before, I have an Asus Eee PC 901, which has, among other things, a 1.3MP webcam. My girlfriend just got an Apple MacBook Pro, which also has a webcam. I thought it would be fun/useful to try out Google's Video Chat. Especially when communicating with loved ones, sometimes the phone just doesn't cut it.

After installing a few browser plugins, and then reloading our respective browsers, we were both able to see and speak to one another. Both of our machines also have internal microphones, so there was no need for a bulky external mic for either of us. Audio was surpisingly clear for both parties. Video was a bit pixelated. This is to be expected, as my webcam's 1.3MP is not exactly stellar. Ambient light in the room where the machine is located makes all the difference. If you're in a dark room, it's hard to make out the other person. Turn on a few lights, and all is well.

The only feature that did not work for me was full screen video. It was very pixelated/blurry and often froze up, causing me to have to return to windowed mode. However, I'd say that Google Video Chat is, for the most part, very usable. It's a great free option for video chatting. Give it a try.