You know, on a whim — the way these things usually work with me — I was thinking of buying a Roku PhotoBridge HD1000. This is yet another set-top box that streams media to a television. The cool element to this one is that it supports high definition — rather than seeing your pictures at a low 480 line resolution, you can see a full 1080 lines of definition from your high-megapixel digital snapshots.
The killer new feature is the ability to stream video from your computer, via MPEG-2 program and transport streams — including high def. In theory, I could store my video on my computer, and stream it when I wanted to the TV (or both TVs in the house).
So, what’s stopping me?
I have nowhere to plug it in.
First off, I am out of power outlets – there are 10 things plugged in to the power outlet behind my living room TV now; 4 upstairs in the bedroom. Ready Kilowatt is having a coniption right about now.
But that can be solved with more power strips, however dangerous it might be.
The real problem is the lack of television inputs.
Both of my HD monitors have two sets of component inputs. Both sets of inputs are in use on both sets, for HD tuners and progressive DVD. In fact, in the living room I’ve had to daisy chain and jury rig, because I have an HD tuner and an HD VCR; so I have to watch the VCR through the tuner due to the lack of an input for it on the TV.
What I really need — besides the money to get it — is a really great HD monitor with about 8 component inputs, 4 DVI, and a dozen S-Video.
Or maybe some A/V sound system that has component video switching built in. Kirk?
