Roku v1.5 firmware update brings HD Netflix streaming
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 20th 2008 10:06PM
posted Dec 20th 2008 10:06PM
[Thanks, TheManTheyCallJayne]
posted Dec 20th 2008 10:06PM
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update isn't showing on mine just yet, im at 1.01 and still sais up to date, perhaps i will give it time
As someone else said below, the update is being rolled out over a matter of "weeks" (Roku's word). Hang in there!
My mate has the update. It looks good, but I still much prefer to use my PS3 for everthing like this, as I like the single box solution. (For netflix on PS3, you have to use PlayOn server), With the PS3 you get NetFlix, Hulu and more, along with fantastic DVD upscaling, Stunning BD playback, and the best games.
You can't really beat a PS3. Rarely do you find a device that's jack of all trades, master of all trades. PS3 is exactly that thou.
Why is Mike's comment rated low? There's nothing wrong with it? No swearing. It's respectful and only points out how he feels about the PS3. Or are anti-fanboys allowed to rate him lower just because they don't like him making points about the PS3?
Engadget, you've complained lately about the types of posts people make, yet you have this voting system that lets people rank replies and basically make a popularity contest out of it. By doing this, you are encouraging the bad behavior that you say you want to stop. There's nothing wrong with Mike's comments. They are his opinions and he shouldn't be lower ranked for stating them appropriately.
I like my PS3, too, but that post smacks of fanboyism.
We all do it, but in this case it's someone who doesn't actually OWN the product this article talks about, but he saw fit to come in here and tell all of us who DO have it that our choice isn't as good as his choice.
It was probably not meant to come off that way, but that's how it reads to people here, and that's why they downvoted him.
For the record, I didn't vote at all.
The PS3 is great, but frankly his comments are stupid. The PS3 is in no way a decent replacement for the Netflix Player by Roku.
* PS3 uses 199 watts when used for streaming movies, while the Roku uses a mere 5 watts for the same function.
* PS3 requires an additional 198.02 watts of electricity being used by the PC it's streaming FROM when using this method.
* PS3 is louder when streaming movies, as it has fans that must run to cool the chipset. The Roku has no fans, and doesn't overheat.
* The PS3 solution ties up your PC and your PS3, so if you want to watch a movie, that means nobody else can use the PC or the PS3 to play games or do anything else. You've tied up several devices for one function. Roku leaves your PC and gaming console available for others to use while you watch your movie.
* PS3 doesn't come with a remote control, and the remote they do sell is 1/4 the cost of a Roku Netflix Player, which DOES come with a remote!
* PS3 costs at least $399 to replace it when you wear it out using it for this function. The Roku Netflix Player is $99.
* No software setup required for the Roku device, while the PS3/PC streaming solution requires the whole thing to be set up prior to even attempting to watch your movie.
* Roku is small and lightweight, and can be taken with you anywhere you have high speed Internet access so you can view movies (Hotel, friend's house, away to visit the relatives). The PS3 solution requires your PC to be present for it to function at all, and the PS3 isn't exactly a lightweight device.
And on and on.
Look, the PS3 is a nice choice if you don't have a Roku lying around, but you could probably afford a $99 Roku Netflix Player with the money you spend on your electric bill in a few months running the PS3/PC way. 397 watts versus 5 watts is just no contest.
And for those crowing about the 360's Netflix abilities, it costs them an additional $40 a year plus 198 watts of electricity versus NO additional subscription price per year ($99 one-time-purchase price of the Roku, though), and 5 watts of electricity.
No comparison whatsoever. Roku is the best, most efficient, least expensive way to get Netflix at home.
and as anyone who has tried to use Hulu on a PS3 will tell you. It's fucking terrible.
2 years for a Flash update and the PS3 version is still abysmal.
does the BD300 support HD streaming?
Roger.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/12/18/lgs-bd300-blu-ray-gets-hd-netflix-enabling-firmware-update/
cool, but is that the cheapest Netflix/Blu-Ray player
Yes it does. I have the LG BD300 and use the NetFlix streaming. I noticed last night that some of the movies show HD in the information and my testing shows they steam in HD.
I don't own a roku, but i have netflix and can stream to my PC or HTPC. I do not see any HD content
good job roku
No update available for ours yet either - according to the forum they're rolling out the update based on serial number over the next few weeks.
that seems right, they probably only have so many update servers. got a keep most of them up for content delivery, like heroes season 3 in HD on my 360!
my box was delivered this afernoon... two updates later I have 1.5...
Does anyone know if you have to do an update for Boxee to stream in HD?
What about the teaser announcement they made a month or two ago that included the mysterious "major new feature that you’ll have to wait a bit longer to learn about ;)". Now that it's hitting people's boxes, is this new feature still a mystery?
The beta testers weren't told, we only know that "everyone" will find out soon.
Unforgiven is awesome.
When are they going to enable HD on the web. I have my HDTV hooked up to my PC. I can't wait until I can stream HD in my browser.
Yeah, they're screwing us HTPC people. I don't have a Roku or a 360 and I'm not getting one. GIVE ME MY HD.
I have the update now, and the menus look great! The video does look better, but its not really HD from what i can tell. It just looks like really good upscaled SD content. so maybe the streams are SD, but the upscaling is done in the box which would have a improvement. It really looks nice though.
To get HD, you have to play a stream with an available HD encode. Netflix says that they're licensed for HD on about 400 streams and that they have over 300 up now. To get a (apparently partial) list of HD streams, see http://www.netflix.com/WiHD?ftr=false . I say "apparently partial" because, at this writing, this list is only 167 titles (if you count all episodes of televisions series, it's over 500).
Any news on an updated Roku player? Is one even needed?
No player hardware update - none is needed. The additional fun is via a software update only, and we know there's more past this.
Netflix is getting better and better. The consumer has some great options now!
Better? I just had a free months trial and canceled because other than t.v. shows and a few good movies the selection for streaming pretty much sucks. Most of the movies are independent low budget flicks and don't even make it to broadcast t.v.
You apparently either have poor taste in films, or the attention span of a tsetse fly. Netflix changes the Watch Now selection weekly, and there's always something to watch if you aren't the kind of person who expects to see The Dark Knight on Watch Now in the first week of its release... But you can catch several other newer releases if you look for them.
And if you don't appreciate classics, well, that's your loss.
For anyone that has the new firmware, does debug mode still work? This is Home Key(x5), Rewind(x3),Fast Forward(x2).
I find this very useful on my own connection since I can set the speed as 1.0M since the "speedboost" that my ISP
provides tends to make auto-detected speed metrics inconsistent and lowering the speed prevents buffering.
While my connection may not let me get HD, I'd be willing to upgrade for new menus if I were still able to configure
my downloading speed.
Yeup, it's there. Many folks used it through the beta to force a stream because of Netflix encoding issues.
The update wave hasn't been pushed on me yet.
Too bad I'm stuck on 3mbps.
I wish they would let you set the maximum quality on the xbox because when I get dvd 2.2mbps quality that usually means somewhere in the film the quality will be reduced. I've found the work around for this is pause when the movie starts and let it buffer 20 minutes.
Mike the PS3 costs 4 times more. And for the those of us who do not play games and we own a harmony remote, that means the PS3 costs 4 times more to get things we mostly won't use. For $300 extra one gets:
Upscaling DVD player
Blu Ray
Streaming music ability
Movie streaming
HDD
Wifi
Internet
Bluetooth devices to control it
PlayOn (extra exspense) giving one Hulu and CBS.com and SD Watchinstantly (Netflix)
Games (extra expense)
Sounds like a nice batch until I pause and figure out what I want:
Upscaling DVD player - no thanks, got it, and it's like the cheeseball dolby surround processing that manipulates sound but in this case images with little discernible impact
Blu Ray - no thanks. I had a DVD collection, never watched it and the differences between BR and DVD aren't enough for me to bother with BR. Extra cost on Netflix, zero impact on my enjoyment of a movie - I simply don't care if the image is 480p or 1080p with movies. I watch movies for stories, characters and plot developments, not for visuals.
Movie streaming - no thanks, I have nothing to stream from my computers. This won't change.
Music streaming - we already have several iPods we ignore as we never have a need to listen to music.
*Wifi - Roku has it too, so toss up as this just helps avoid more wires.
HDD - nothing to store in the living room
BT devices = harmony remote won't work, so I must either buy an adapter or live with the PS3's clunky remote and move away from being a one-remote to rule the home theater
Internet - I will not be cruising the web on our 55 inch HDTV (that's why I have laptops and an office in my house)
Playon - extra cost with no benefit
*SDTV Watch Instantly - nope, got HDTV through Roku, but overall already get this with Roku
Hulu = junk feeds even on our 18 MBPS line
CBS.com = worthless as there's nothing on CBS
Youtube/Flickr = junk
CNN = junk, read the news, don't watch it
Games = extra cost, no payoff as I haven't played a video game since about 2003. Don't miss them.
I had a PS3 for 3 weeks before returning it to Sony. The device was well-built but didn't really do much for me at that giant pricepoint (or even for $150 less). It represented something that needs extra devices (remote dongle, playon, games) but lacked any real payoff beyond the slim improvement one gets with blu ray movies.
I'm not real sold on the roku either (we got ours before Thanksgiving) but a quarter the cost, it's easy to see that we'll get far more value from a Roku than a PS3. This will vary with some people. For our simple movie-watching desires, the device is fine.
What is with people saying that there's not that big a difference between DVD and Blu-Ray? These people either needs glasses or are deluding themselves. Anyone with a good TV will tell you that's not true, but you have to have a tv over 40 inches, 1080p, and an LCD or Plasma. I have a 46 inch Sony and Blu-Ray looks so much better it's not even funny. If it doesn't look better to you than your sitting way too far back from the TV. For a true theater experience you should only sit about 5 five feet away from a 40 inch screen. Of course, from 10 feet it's harder to tell the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray but that's not where you should be sitting.
In fact I can even tell a big difference between Blu-Ray and the compressed 1080i and 720p HD streams on my cable. Also, it only costs one dollar extra a month for Blu-Ray so let's not pretend that one dollar is really a big enough difference to stick with DVD.
The only real legitimate complaint I have with Blu-Ray is that if you want to buy movies they are very expensive.
But I have a 32" 720p Samsung LCD set, not a 100" 1080p Plasma, and on my set, with an upscaling DVD player, DVDs look really great. I doubt that my TV is out of the ordinary. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a quite common size and resolution, and those bigger sets are the ones in the minority. I'm sure a BluRay would look a bit better, but my upscaling DVD player makes DVDs look great on this size and rez set. In fact, much better then I was expecting. I'm sure BluRay would be better still, but I just can't get excited about that difference and I don't see a substantially bigger set in my even remotely near future. By the time I have a bigger set, Blu-Ray will no doubt be obsolete.
Just out of interest, why did you buy a PS3 in the first place if you already have an upscaling DVD player, don't want to buy Blu-ray disks and don't play games?
Has anyone checked the downloadable HD movies from Netflix? Craptastic movies all... Hyping HD seems kind of silly when their HD selection sucks.
Agreed. The HD offerings are lackluster, but I remember when Watch Now was started, and it had nothing but B movies on it. That has changed. It will take a little time, but studios will warm up to the idea of allowing HD streaming from Netflix once they see that the Blockbuster version (which charged a Per Movie fee) won't make them craploads of money, and that Netflix is waving a big wad of cash under their noses.
The menu, however, is a nice upgrade and welcomed. I can be a little more patient for decent HD content, but that menu system needed an upgrade NOW, and I'm glad they did it.
Incidentally, the forced update on the debug menu (beta update) works just fine.
why is nobody asking how come it's taking the Roku box so long to get this update? My Samsung BD player got the HD update a month ago and the 360 has had it longer.
The Roku box is supposed to be the official player, so shouldn't it have priority support?
Dylan,
I don't buy movies. It's a waste of money. We had a collection of hundreds of DVDs. We never rewatched them. EVER. we'd loan them to people but otherwise they were just taking up space and reminding us of money blown on something worthless. As big movie fans - we see maybe 75 a year at the theaters and burn through about 16 a month via Netflix - we realized we're spending our cash on something that we'll never get an ROI on.
As for viewing and DVD v. BR. Yes, BR looks better. Is it mind-blowing? No. It's better. So what. I don't watch movies for picture quality. Ack, sacrilege! We've watched thousands of films - everything from random belgium art house to the biggest blockbusters. The things that matter to me - good direction, solid stories, great dialog, good acting. You know what I could not care less about? FX. FX and cinematography. I simply don't care. Yeah, yeah Deakins is great, Fujimoto's camerawork and lighting made Silence of the Lambs even spookier...keep it. Just give me a story that I care about. i can overlook bad FX and a poorly lit scene...I can't overlook bad writing or acting.
So our 55 inch 1080p HDTV (on the living room, HDTVs in the bedrooms too) has the HDMI connections and the optical out to the receiver and all the good stuff. Our couch is 7-8 feet from the TV. It's not for movies. I have it for football on Sundays. I don't care how it looks when movies are played on it.
My Roku got the update. You can see screen shots of it up and working here:
http://newteevee.com/2008/12/21/roku-adds-hd-updates-for-expansion/
Initial impressions is that the HD content looks pretty good, and the color isn't as washed out as earlier Netflix Roku content looked.
I love HD and ps3 hands down is the best bluray player period. Anybody who says that they don't watch movies for quality visuals they're just secretly lying to themselves! I'm a happy owner of both devices but I have to say that roku wins just because of the simple fact that the device was made for streaming movies so it gets to the point.
I got my Roku box this afernoon... did two updates and went from 1.0 > 1.01 and then from 1.01 to 1.5, It's nice!
Got the update last night.
As others have said, the movies are absolutely terrible, but I chose one and forced the box into HD mode from the debug menu (yes debug menus is the same). It requires 3.5 Mbps to stream HD.
Quality is mixed - it's definitely closer to DVD than Blu-ray; I would say a little below what you get through HD channels on cable. I think the problem isn't resolution but refresh rate. Slow moving video of people talking looks super crisp - you can see every strand of hair, no pixelation, and overall great quality. However, faster moving video doesn't look great. Best example was looking at a scene of ocean waves. These had clear pixelation and came across as choppier than you'd get even with DVD.
In the end though, it's a very cool feature, and I'm sure that they'll constantly work to improve their quality. Just waiting for more good movies to come out...
As for the PS3 vs. Roku box argument - I have both, and tried using PlayOn on my PS3 before I got the Roku. It was just too buggy though. I've got a fast laptop and fast internet connection, but it wouldn't play about 1/4 of the time that I wanted to watch a movie. Plus, as someone said, the PlayOn software just takes over your laptop when it's decoding. The Roku box was a cheap, quick solution, and I love it (although I still use my PS3 for upscaling DVD, Blu-Ray, etc. and think it's one of the best purchases I made last year). If budget isn't a major issue for you, I highly recommend getting both the PS3 and Roku box.
I came here with some questions, looking for answers. I've read all the posts, and still have some unanswered questions. I bought a ROKU a few months ago. Then set up a HTPC. Never did hook up the ROKU. In addition to the HTPC, I have a 67" Samsung DLP, Xbox 360, upscaling DVD player (that does an outstanding job), and a 3meg DSL connection (usually speedtest's between 2800-2900 kbps). I have a bit of a problem with Netflix picture quality in SD over the HTPC and/or XBox. Would I see any improvement in PQ if I were to hook up and use the ROKU? Would there be any other reason to throw it into the mix? With my internet speed, I don't think I'd be able to get HD on the ROKU, but would I get any improvement in PQ vs. the XBox or HTPC? Netflix states for DVD quality playback, you need at least a 2.4 mbps. I have at least 2.4, and I definitely do not get DVD quality when I watch streaming Netflix via HTPC or XBox. Any advice welcome.
I have to agree with those who say that Blu Ray isn't that impressive, or at least not so much more impressive to justify buying the equipment and movies. A friend of mine had me over to watch a movie on his new 60+ inch 1080p TV. We watched Superman Returns in Blu Ray on a PS3, connected via HDMI. He was all blown away and I was just not seeing it. I really honestly think that this huge improvement Blu Ray owners see is psychological and comes from a need to justify spending so much money. Don't get me wrong, it looked great, but nothing mind blowing or anything. It wasn't like watching the SD version of a football game and switching channels to the HD version where there's a really noticeable difference. I guess these things are subjective though.
My family recently bought a 52" 1080p and DVDs look great with an upconverting DVD player. Seems like Blu Ray and HD DVD were both products that were introduced without any need. I'm sticking with DVDs for the foreseeable future.
Roku is extremely tempting but it sounds like it still has some issues.
How do I tell what Firmware I have on my Rodu Netflix player???
Thanks
Ok, I figure out that i have 1.01.. So how do I get the 1.51 update... do I do anything or just wait for them to send to my player?
I have a Roku player and was not successful at updating the player from 1.1 to 1.5 through the standard menu (selecting check for update). However, after accessing the secret menu (homex5, fastforwardx3, fastbackwardx2) I was able to update my player to 1.5 by selecting "update firmware (test)". Hopefully, others will have success using this method as well. The "beta" option doesn't have the same effect.
Hope this helps,
John
Just figured out how to upgrade the Roku to 1.5 (HD):
Do the 'Check for upgrade' in the Roku setup THREE TIMES