Well, my Roku HD1000 Media Streaming thingy arrived last Thursday. I was all ready for it, with a space on the shelf, a CompactFlash reader (necessary for system updates), and an ethernet connection to my network.
Then I set the thing up.
Ugh.
First off, when they say “Mac Compatible,” what they really mean is “Windows Compatible — and since a Mac has Windows networking, it’ll kind of work with Mac.” You must enable Windows filesharing on your Mac to use the Roku.
Having done that, I muddled through a very confusing user interface to navigate to the folder where my photos are stored. The byzantine way they’ve implemented the navigation system is enough reason to dump this box, but what makes it even worse is that it’s not compatible with two key Mac technologies: iPhoto and iTunes.
There’s no way to look at photos in albums. You’re limited to what’s in folders. You can’t even use the Roku to make albums directly, it’s basically just a file browser for your computer. The only plus here is the ability to view photos in high definition, zooming in and out of the photo to view more detail. Of course, even a high definition television can’t compare to a crisp, flicker-free computer monitor for viewing photos, so it’s a wash.
iPhoto stores pictures in multiple, numbered folders, so it’s impossible to find any photos using the Roku — more a problem with iPhoto’s fiing system than anything else.
Roku’s file browser is annoying. Imagine navigating thousands of files, hundred of folders, using nothing but the up or down arrow key on your computer. You can’t page up, so if you’re a thousand files down in the list, you have to just make your way back up to get to the enclosing folder. Up, up, up, up, up, up… It has no facility to add a favorite folder and keep it in the menu. In short, it takes forever to get anywhere. It’s far, far easier to get out a CD and play it, or flip through a printed photo album.
Now, to the music side of things: many of my MP3 files wouldn’t play at all, and there’s nothing in the manual or on the screen to explain why. I couldn’t find any mention of a certain required bitrate or sample size, so this was incredibly annoying. Again, there’s no support for iTunes playlists; with about 10,000 files, I’m not about to handwrite the M3U files that it prefers. Without playlists, you can only listen to what’s in folders — all my tunes are in folders by artist, then album. That means I’d be limited to hearing one album by one artist at a time. In addition, there seems to be no shuffle function. And as a high definition visual device, I kind of wish there was a visual component like iTunes has while music is playing.
I simply couldn’t stream video over the network decently — it says that you can only stream HD video over a wired network, and I was using Airport Extreme, so I only tried a tiny little 320×240 MPG-1 file. It stuttered and lost sync. Disappointing, considering that I was hoping to use it as a media server. That idea was shot down immediately.
My TiVo has built in support for iTunes and iPhoto. Why doesn’t Roku?
The ability to view photos and listen to music electronically is a wonderful thing, but only if it is easier and more efficient than other means. iPhoto and iTunes have landed on the good side of that equation, but the Roku is decidedly more difficult. They could take a lesson from Apple (and TiVo) in implementing a user interface that makes their product actually useful.
I’ll be sending the HD1000 back to Roku tomorrow — luckily they have a 30-day money back guarantee.
