[TriLUG] OT: Anyone Have A Roku?

[Dewey Hylton]

> From: "Scott Thomas" <chemikalguy at yahoo.com>
> To: "Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion" <trilug at trilug.org>
> Sent: Friday, October 4, 2013 4:09:43 PM
> Subject: [TriLUG] OT: Anyone Have A Roku?
> 
> Debating on getting a Roku, and wanted to get people's opinions on
> it. You can email me off list.
> 
> Scott

i have 3 rokus; two gen2 and one gen3. i absolutely love them. 

roku provides a "channel" which allows playing media from usb - works well for me, just take the roku with me on trips and plug into the hotel tv - movies are on my usb thumb drive. 

though i use netflix and amazon prime, my biggest usage by far is plex. the plex media server runs on linux; you feed it all your media, and it indexes everything and populates its database. i connect to pms with the plex client on the roku (also available ios/android/whatever) and enjoy my movies on my big screen. high definition, 5.1 (dolby digital and dts both work), you name it. the new remote has a feature that's great for me - a headphone jack. if headphones are connected to the remote prior to playing a movie, the roku only sends sound to the headphones. i don't have to bother muting anything else, and i can watch a nice loud action movie while everyone else is doing their own thing (or asleep) without bothering them.

i've been "streaming" my own movies from an nfs or samba share on my network for years now using various methods, starting with xbmc on the original xbox. i've tried other software and hardware over the years, but have mostly stuck with xbmc because it simply rocks. my last xbmc hardware was a rooted atv2. i bought a couple of atv3s and patiently waited for a way to root it so i could finally have the higher resolution and faster xbmc. it never came. then i found plex, which had clients for just about everything, and didn't require a device to be rooted. that was a big thing for me, but plex offers a ton of other options as well (such as streaming right to your browser).

while plex runs on linux, it's not exactly open. but given its feature set and my current track record using it, i can't see using anything else. and back to the topic: the gen3 roku is fantastic, and particularly for me when used in conjunction with plex. 

gen2 rokus worked well too, but choked on (my) high definition media after a bit and had to be cold booted. not a single complaint about the gen3 model.

if it's on the table, i say go for it.