So in my OCD quest for awesome home video streaming I picked up a roku to replace my WDTV.
Why? Well for the plex client?
So is it better? Well yes and no.
Pro:
- smaller
- faster ui
- dedicated Netflix button on remote is fast
- ui is surprisingly consistent between channels and content providers due to a common API
- lots of unofficial streaming content available due to free open developer access
- plex makes browsing your local content look as fancy as Netflix.
Con:
- no DLNA support
- on it's own it can't mount shares / work standalone as well as the WDTV (can mount ad card)
- the ui is consistent and fast but for plex that also means it is dumbed down a little vs other plex clients
- heavy online dependancy for initial setup requiring an online account to manage channels.
So in short, if you don't use plex I would not recommend it
due to the lack of share mounting or DLNA however if you run plex these things are as tiny as the apple tv and have a fast ui with lots of online streaming options.
Yes, you have OCD on this subject :) Thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations, though, as I know it'll help me set something like this up a couple years from now.
Quote from: Thorin on July 09, 2012, 09:52:23 AM
Yes, you have OCD on this subject :) Thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations, though, as I know it'll help me set something like this up a couple years from now.
By then there should be a huge number of Android based thumb stick size front ends we can run the Plex client on... or some other awesome media server will be out, or Android / Apple based TVs will just have an App we can load... Well technically this is already true with Samsung and LG TVs as their are already plex clients for those.