I've heard the roku3 is different, but the roku2 I found really irritating.
First you pay extra for the roku with USB so that you can plug in a hard drive and play local content, but the roku doesn't even support .avi files - in fact it basically supports nothing locally.
The interface is also terrible, but I can forgive that since the box itself is a little under powered. What I found really obnoxious was that they put a banner ad on the bottom of the screen. I don't want to pay for a set top box just to have a giant ad on the front of it.
The only redeeming quality the roku had was the third part channel you can install on it, Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/). Roku should just replace their software team with the guys writing plex. Plex had a much nicer looking interface (with no ads) that connected to the plex server running on my desktop. All meta data was pulled down and all of my directories were immediately recognized and organized.
The Roku 3 with the USB either is the same price or cheaper compared to an Apple TV, Google TV, and other variants. Before the Roku 3, Roku's were almost half the price of competing products.
> First you pay extra for the roku with USB so that you can plug in a hard drive and play local content, but the roku doesn't even support .avi files - in fact it basically supports nothing locally.
Plex is free on Roku. I can't say video playback was perfect on competing devices as well.
> The interface is also terrible, but I can forgive that since the box itself is a little under powered.
Yes, but it's also the easiest to use. It's even intuitive for non-techies.
> The only redeeming quality the roku had was the third part channel you can install on it, Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/).
IMO that's the only redeeming quality of Google TV devices.
I live in the Apple universe. The problem with Apple TV is that they lack content. If they ever add the long overdue app store for it, I would gladly move over from Roku's platform. btw Roku 3's UI is much better than Roku2's.
First you pay extra for the roku with USB so that you can plug in a hard drive and play local content, but the roku doesn't even support .avi files - in fact it basically supports nothing locally.
The interface is also terrible, but I can forgive that since the box itself is a little under powered. What I found really obnoxious was that they put a banner ad on the bottom of the screen. I don't want to pay for a set top box just to have a giant ad on the front of it.
The only redeeming quality the roku had was the third part channel you can install on it, Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/). Roku should just replace their software team with the guys writing plex. Plex had a much nicer looking interface (with no ads) that connected to the plex server running on my desktop. All meta data was pulled down and all of my directories were immediately recognized and organized.