Roku Box?
 

I'd like for my boys to be able to get the free Amazon movies and tv shows but their TVs don't support the Amazon feed. The Roku 2XD is listed as a compatible device. Anyone here have any experience with a Roku box? If so, what do you use it for? I'm trying to figure out if there is $80 worth of functionality in these things.

I had a Roku box for a while. But I ended up returning it and getting an AppleTV instead. The Roku box was disappointing. It was pretty limited in what it could do. Mainly Netflix, and Amazon Prime. It does Hulu, but you have to have a Hulu Plus account though. You have to have a full Amazon Prime account to be able to access that as well.

The AppleTV, jailbroken and running XBMC, just blew it out of the water in terms of what it could do. Not even close. But if jailbreaking isn't your thing, the Roku isn't a terrible alternative.

If you have any interest in a AppleTV setup, I'd be happy to tell you how to do absolutely anything on it.

I'm a fan of the WD TV Live. It does all the Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, FB, and probably 20 other services I can't remember right now.

The main thing that I liked about this box is that it can access Windows 7 Homegroup media shares. As long as my home box is on (which it most always is), I can stream any of the 700+ gig of music to my receiver in the family room. This could absolutely make physical media obsolete at my house in the long run.

What are you using to Jailbreak and load XMBC? I've seen this Seasonpass stuff, but it seems odd to pay for something that voids the warranty.

Right now I'm streaming non-mp4 content by way of the AirVideo app and Airplay but that leaves a lot to be desired.

Unless you need full 1080 HD, the standard Roku LT for $49 may work. I've never used one personally.

Thanks for the feedback Fish. AppleTV sounds like it is really working for you. I have no problem jailbreaking anything, all my phones are rooted. In fact, I love that kind of thing to the point where I would get the Apple just to do it. How complex is the jailbreaking process? What is the return?

I have one. I love it.

If I may ask, what are the main uses you get out of it?

I used Seasonpass to jailbreak. But I got a discount on it...

And as far as voiding the warranty, that's really not an issue. Like any other jailbreak/root process, if anything actually happens to the device that would require warranty work, they'd never be able to tell it had ever been jailbroken unless you're a complete idiot.

XBMC allows you to do pretty much anything. I can stream any kind of movie/show/music in any possible format from my computer or NAS. I've got the Icefilms plugin, which has every movie, tv show, and more available for streaming. Hulu works fine without needing Plus, and you can even turn off all ads if you want so you never see an ad in Hulu. I can stream Justin.TV sources, along with many other online streams. I can do NHL, NBA, and MLB live for sports. And there's always live sports streams available for any game. There's even streams for normal cable TV channels. I can run Pandora over my home theater, along with Grooveshark. As well as have my entire MP3 collection available from my computer. It's really rich in metadata, so all your movies, tv, music will look similar to this, which is all customizable:

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3392/40136828.png
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/3...xbmcnologo.png

That is super sexy. I may look into this eventually.

The jailbreaking process is easy, and there's lots of step by step guides available. Once XBMC is installed, all the plugins it uses will update themselves automatically. So once it's setup, there's really little maintenance. And XBMC has a giant user supported community, so it's always easy to get answers to questions, and there's constant development and improvements made.

I'm not sure what you mean about the return. Do you mean the difference between jailbroken and non? Cause that's huge. 98% of what I do on the AppleTV is through XBMC. That's where the best stuff is. There's lots of stuff available without jailbreak, like Netflix, Hulu Plus, MLB, NBA, NHL, iTunes rental, Airplay content, etc. But XBMC makes it all work much much better.

I just got my old man an AppleTV for Christmas, and jailbroke it and configured it. He's happy as a pig in shit. And if he can figure it out, anybody can.

Interesting. I'm sure I can google a hundred different buides but would you be able to point me to a reliable jailbreak guide? I'd like to learn more.

Sure... here's the easiest method. This requires you to either purchase the two software apps mentioned(Seasonpass and aTV Flash (black)), or download them from a torrent site for free..http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/9947/piratev.gif

Jailbreaking with Seasonpass..

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2012/01/...ered-tutorial/

That will jailbreak the device. Once that's done, install aTV Flash (black), which will give you the options to install XBMC, along with a bunch of other useful stuff.

Installing aTV Flash (black)....

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2011/11/...on-apple-tv-2/

There are other options available that do not require you to purchase anything or resort to questionable means of acquiring software, but they're much more complicated.

Mostly Netflix.

Also... I have some additional tips and tricks that are not present in the guides on how to do this. If you decide to do it, let me know and I'll write up a more in depth tutorial..