Earlier this year, I had to change my role slightly and became “TechSon Central” for a fascinating weekend. My Mom, at age 70, decided she wanted a media center in her home in Florida. We talked about it over the phone a few times on what to purchase and where to buy the components at the best prices. Once the system was selected and ordered, I offered to fly down to Florida and hook everything up … which of course also meant that I had to teach my Mom how to operate the entire system.
Earlier in the year, I had given her a gift subscription to Netflix to see if she liked it. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, my Mom was a big movie fan whose tastes ranged from the classics to foreign films and even documentaries. I had installed a DVD player for her a few years earlier but she rarely used it so I wanted to see if having DVDs delivered to her door would make a difference. This was actually my experiment to see if she could set up and manage the Netflix queue properly online.
Much to my surprise, she was online and setting up her list of movies within an hour of receiving the introductory email. I checked in a week later and she had already received, watched and returned a few DVDs. She was ready to make the leap into streaming online video!
One side story: a year earlier, she had been complaining about the slowness and the need to tie up her phone line whenever she wanted to go online. She was a dial-up AOL user (like many seniors) and her Internet world was shaded by having to use a dial-up line. She already had Comcast cable TV service in her home so I called them to install a cable modem. I dropped in for a weekend and added a wireless router and a wireless USB card to her laptop and … magically … she was in the 21st century.
Now, with her home wireless network in place, I wanted to see if she would enjoy watching movies via the new Netflix streaming video service. This would be the ultimate test of TechDad Central’s ability to make technology easy to use. So I ordered her a Roku Netflix player and had it shipped to her home.
The Roku is one of the easiest devices to add to your media center. For network connectivity, it has both wired and wireless capability. For video, it offers a choice of HDMI, component, S-Video and composite video output. For audio, you can use either HDMI, optical or traditional stereo audio cables. In effect, it can connect to everything. It also comes with a very small remote that is as simple to use as an iPod.
Once you connect the Roku to your TV, you use its remote to connect to your home network and then the fun starts. The first thing you see is an “activation code”. You write down this code and then go to your online Netflix account. You enter the activation code which “links” your online account with your Roku device at home. Magically, the list of online movies in your "Play Instantly" queue shows up on your TV. Click on one and select PLAY … in 10-15 seconds your movie will begin streaming to your TV. Note that I said “streaming” … the Roku does not have a hard drive. It contains enough memory to hold only about 30 seconds worth of video so the entire movies “streams” over the network to your TV in real time.
The quality of both video and audio is excellent. Many films and TV shows/series are available in HD quality and I’ve yet to see any network issues interrupt a movie while viewing.
The Roku is one of my favorite devices and you can’t beat the price. It’s a $99 one-time purchase for the Roku player and access to the Netflix movie library is included at no cost with your regular Netflix subscription.
A few caveats before you go out and buy one:
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The available library of online movies is a subset of the entire Netflix library. You may be disappointed with the lack of the latest titles being excluded from online viewing.
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There is no “browsing” capability with the Roku. You are limited to browsing only the titles you have already added to your online queue. That means that you have to do your browsing on your computer, just like the regular Netflix service.
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HD quality is limited to 480i. This is less resolution than the top end 1080p available with BluRay DVDs, but it’s still quite good.
So after a few weeks, I checked back in with Mom to see how she was doing. She had set-up and was managing both her regular DVD and her Roku movie queues at Netflix. So I asked the question:
TDC: “Mom, how many movies have you watched on the Roku?”
Mom: “Oh … about 20”
TDC: “In two weeks?”
Mom: “Yes, and what’s great about it is that if I start to watch something that's not interesting, I just stop it and move on to something else. I’ve watched all kinds of stuff; even some documentaries.”
TDC: “Anything you don’t like about it?”
Mom: "Well ... I mistakenly showed it off to a few of my friends. So the whole community knows that I have this thing and they all want to come over and watch movies on the big plasma TV at my house. I’m now screening all of my phone calls and pretending that I’m not home.”
That old saying about "not being able to learn new tricks" sure doesn't apply to my Mom … you go, girl!
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