Battling "Feature Creep" with the Roku Netflix Digital Video Player
When I was in high school, a friend of mine got a TV/VCR/stereo combo unit for her birthday. It had a very small footprint, required only one remote control (a very big deal in those pre-universal remote days) and was a pretty cool media center at the time.
Then the VCR got messed up, and instead of just losing her VCR for a few days, she lost her TV and her stereo, too. We all learned an important lesson then, about the wisdom of buying something that tried to pack too much into one unit.
Today, you won’t find as many all-in-one units as you once did, but it’s increasingly difficult to find things that do just one thing, and do it very well. I blame this on something I call “Feature Creep” which I suspect comes from too many meetings, too much input from marketing, and not enough product managers and engineers who are willing to stand up and say, “You know what? I don’t think this coffee maker really needs an MP3 player in it. It’s fine just making coffee.”
Feature Creep is everywhere, bloating our software, lengthening our startup times, cluttering up our menus, and draining our batteries, so when I come across something that has successfully resisted it and stayed focused on doing one simple thing very well, I have a little bit of a pants party.
One of the best examples I’ve come across in the last year is the Netflix player from Roku. It’s a tiny little box that streams anything from Netflix’s on-demand library straight into your television, and that’s all it does.
It’s a wonderfully elegant little device. The user interface is clean, and the menus are super easy to navigate. It has outputs that range from RCA to composite video and HDMI, as well as digital audio. The remote has nine buttons on it - that’s fewer than I have on my cell phone - and they mimic the controls we’re all used to on a DVR or DVD player. It’s so small and simple to set up, my wife and I frequently move it between the two TVs we have in our house, and I’ve tossed it into my backpack and taken it with me to friends’ houses for movie nights.
Set up was incredibly simple, and it took less than ten minutes from the time I opened it until I was watching my first movie. Speaking as a life-long technology geek, the highest praise I can give it is this: I still haven’t opened the manual, and don’t think I’ll ever need to.
So I love it, but is it worth $99 to you? It depends on your movie-watching habits and your network speed. If your ISP throttles your bandwidth, or your download speed is slower than 3Mbps, you won’t get the best quality picture. I didn’t realize how much that really mattered to me, until I was forced to watch a bunch of movies that looked like they were VHS quality on my HDTV. I upgraded my service to a faster bitrate so I could get maximum resolution, though, and the next movie my son and I watched, Vanishing Point, was indistinguishable from DVD.
While the box itself and the technology that power it are awfully close to perfect, the Netflix side of the service could use some improvement. The studios still haven’t figured out how to fully embrace emerging technology, so there are only 12,000 or so movies and television shows available as of this writing, I know that 12,000 sounds like a lot (and it is) but there are some huge gaps in there, especially in the new releases department, and more frequently than I’d like, the movie I really want to watch right now isn’t available. Programs are also taken out of the on-demand service fairly often as licenses expire, which can result in some unhappy moments when you realize that all those Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who you waited until after Christmas to watch are gone. However, Netflix is adding new movies every day, and in the very near future, the player will also stream about 40,000 movies and television shows from Amazon Video On Demand, costing between 99 cents and 3.99 per rental. I don’t know what the overlap with Netflix’s existing library will be, but I expect the studios would be happy to put more movies out there when they know that they’ll be playable for only 24 hours. (Not because it deters piracy, but because the studios like to pretend that it does.)
I love the Netflix Player not just because it’s simple and elegant in a world that’s filled with unnecessarily complicated devices, but for the future it represents.
In the future, we won’t have to go to the video store, or wait for DVDs to arrive in the mail when we want to rent movies. In the future, we won’t plan our evenings around television shows, because they’ll be on-demand to fit into our schedules. In the future, we won’t have to fill our houses with physical media unless we want to. Thanks to the Netflix Player from Roku, the future is almost here.
--Wil Wheaton
(Actor and professional geek Wil Wheaton is a new guest blogger for End User. His column will appear the last Thursday of each month, where he'll review his favorite gadgets and talk about all things tech. He can regularly be found blogging at wilwheaton.typepad.com.)
Jim on January 30, 2009 at 11:56 AM
But isn't the Roku suffering a bit of Feature Creep. Maybe Feature Nudge or Feature Baby Step. I mean, it started out just supporting Netflix streaming, but it now supports Amazon video on demand?
That's one extra feature if my math is correct, but honestly isn't it better for that inclusion.
It just needs one MORE feature in my book and then it would be perfect (isn't that always how the Creep sets in). If it only supported Hulu.com streaming.
Then. Then it would be perfect. Who would need cable? You'd have a ton of broadcast TV and a backlog of old TV and Netflix's streaming combined with Amazon's video on demand to fill in the gaps.
All for $99.
At least I am hoping.
warreno on January 30, 2009 at 12:47 PM
Look, if the coffee maker doesn't have MP3 capability, what would distinguish it from other coffee makers? Why would anyone choose to buy it then? (And don't say "quality"; that was given up on decades ago as being cost-ineffective.)
Julienne on January 30, 2009 at 12:51 PM
We got the Roku box about 4 months ago and have been thrilled. We don't have cable in our bedroom and this has completely taken its place. We're finally catching up on Heroes! We own the 1st season but still hadn't watched it until Roku made it available, now we watch a couple of episodes every night. While I'm working on homework in the living room, my husband retires to the bedroom with his laptop and enjoys some anime. The price is absolutely worth it! Thanks Wil.
Wil on January 30, 2009 at 02:20 PM
@ Bill Woods: Man, that is Feature Creep I can totally believe in. A friend of mine hacked his AppleTV to do exactly that, and he says it's the best device he's ever owned.
Aric Annear on January 30, 2009 at 02:29 PM
@Bill Woods: You can shell out for an AppleTV or a Mac mini and have exactly that:
http://www.enduserblog.com/2009/01/ces-2009-boxee.html
I have Boxee running on my Mac mini connected to my TV and it's awesome. But of course that's going to run you a lot more than the Roku's $99.
ObeliskToucher on January 30, 2009 at 02:56 PM
The Netflix On-Demand stuff is great, but it doesn't sound like the Roku will do much to avoid the "Your connection is too slow" issues I regularly see when I watch the movies. Now, if it had a miniature, short-term DVR-ish capability that provided the buffer while the movie was being watched, that would really be something...
Chuk on January 30, 2009 at 03:12 PM
"The remote has nine buttons on it - that’s fewer than I have on my cell phone"
If you only had nine buttons on your cell phone, you wouldn't be able to call everyone. Which one would you leave out?
I would pick 7, nobody cool has 7s in their phone number anymore.
MJ on January 30, 2009 at 08:38 PM
As a cable tech. to put the hyphen in Anal-Retentive, Components pass
1080i, not 1080p which is Blue Ray and not currently available elsewhere as far as I know...also on demand programming is coming as
bandwith is freed up with the digital conversion and cable companies
upgrade their systems.
Brandon on January 30, 2009 at 11:31 PM
To those of you not able to google roku and search for its tech specs, I'm here to let you know that it has both composite and component. even s-video too. took me 12 seconds to find.
CraigH on January 31, 2009 at 11:08 AM
I'll bet Hulu, etc. will be coming very soon. In the meantime check out PlayOn.
Dylan on February 01, 2009 at 05:08 PM
I love instantly watching Netflix on my Roku player! It was so easy to set up and works great on a 1.2Mbps wi-fi Internet connection at my home. Anyone who has Netflix and doesn't have a Roku player is missing out on a huge portion of their Netflix contract.
colinnwn on February 02, 2009 at 09:36 AM
@D. Palmer
"not understanding why one would require component video outs when the device has an HDMI port"
Because HDMI is a glitchy technology? I have a Samsung DVD player that will usually just play rainbow static over HDMI to my Maxent TV, but will occasionally sync and show a picture. The same TV HDMI works fine with my Roku, and the DVD player HDMI works fine to my other TV. But the Samsung player works fine over component to the Maxent TV. Analog wins again!
anthony greco on February 26, 2009 at 02:52 PM
thought about getting this, but instead went with a MAC mini that we hooked up to our TV-works just as good plus since its connected to my stereo i also use it for Slacker on line, Hulu, yahoo videos and to watch videos and photos on our shared drive through the tv.
Pop1967 on March 10, 2009 at 05:10 AM
Re Darkovitch, "I love mine, I was an early adopter, but I reluctantly gave it to a friend after Tivo now has the same service"
I've found TiVo's implementation of Amazon VOD to be very irritating to use. If you have season passes set for "watch until I delete", TiVo pre-allocates unused space on its disc for those shows, and then when you try to buy an Amazon VOD video, it tells you you don't have enough space on the disc. You have no control over this. What it SHOULD do is assume (or ask) that when you choose to buy/rent a movie, it takes top priority, like any other program that you'd choose to record manually via TiVo.
miyoko4869 on November 21, 2010 at 11:53 PM
Good post, I can’t say that I agree with everything that was said, but very good information overall:)
Osama Bid Laden Is Dead on May 02, 2011 at 02:01 AM
Thanks for sharing the information dude.
Cinthiafpm369 on May 04, 2011 at 12:38 AM
I know a lady, I'm sorry to say, who racks up cable bills. If there is a way to blow money this lady finds it. And no, it's not me- I'm cheap, wouldn't pay for anything that I can't find at a thrift store for $5, and I am perfectly happy watching what I want on youtube and torrents. Sound like the same person? Okay, so anyway, I want to convince this lady to get something like Roku, but I have a feeling if Amazon is involved there will be 200 .99$ selections racked up anyway. Am I right