A late Feb. firmware upgrade released by Apple for the Apple TV has broken the Boxee install on Apple TV devices.  Talk in the nerd-o-sphere is that Apple is being hush hush on reasons.  Not much that I have seen will even speculate.  Others, like the lovely and talented Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV have flat out begged Apple to re-enable the functionality of the very cool Boxee open source software.

With a late Q1, early Q2 rumor about Apple releasing new hardware updates to a variety of their products, many of which are obviously overdue, I am willing to speculate that the reason Apple bricked Boxee is because of a potential relationship with Netflix.  Boxee ties directly to your Netflix account, a process I just completed within 1 minute.  Within the last 6 months, Apple and Netflix began to play nice, wen the Netflix streaming video functionality for their subscribers was brought to Safari.

So let's have a look.  Apple and Netflix are now smooching sisters.  "Sure, use our browser to stream your content."  "Hey thanks, this is working out well for us to deliver our stuff to your very loyal fan base."  Alright, so now lets toss Boxee into the mix.  "Hey, we're open source, we can put Boxee on anything."  Netflix says "Sure thing, butter cup.  This is a great idea because we, as Netflix, want our customers to be able to see our movies on any device.  We're even streaming to Microsoft XBox and some Blue Ray players, heck even some new LCD TVs!".

Apple takes a second look and low and behold, they are sort of taken out of the picture streaming Netflix to people's TV because Netflix is pushing the Roku player (oustanding device, video evidence).  If they are going to make a push to offer more Apple features on the upcoming release of Apple TV, wouldn't "Hey, stream Netflix too?" be a huge selling point?  YES.  But if you can stream Netflix without having to upgrade your current Apple TV hardware, why would anyone switch over?

I am convinced that Apple killed Boxee with the latest firmware because they have an Apple sanctioned Apple TV Netflix feature on the table and in an effort to sell the new, shiny hardware later this year, they had to disable Boxee on Apple TV in order to make their relationship with Netflix continue to grow positively, despite how such action might affect the Netflix / Boxee relationship.

Any thoughts are welcome.  I am not an Apple Insider, I'm a chubby guy on my recliner in Omaha....but this totally makes sense, correct?

Two weeks ago, I posted a video podcast episode discussing the Roku player, how it worked, the ease of setup, and so on.  After having two weeks with the device, I thought I'd write a quick review regarding having the entity as a living piece of technology in the house.

First off, I still love the form factor of the player.  It's very small, smaller than most external USB hard drives I've got scattered around the house.  The built-in wi-fi is genius, the connection options are great, and the remote is so simple, a 4-year-old child could (and has, in my house) run it.

Disappointing, though, is the Netflix selection.  On Christmas day, I had a handful of family members over, movie buffs all of us.  With their curiosity fueling the fire, they tossed out movie after movie to me as I searched each one on Netflix to see if it was possible to stream.  Much to everyone's disappointment, 85% of the films they named were NOT available to stream.  Netflix would happily mail them to me, but not deliver them to my Roku on demand.  Now please note, these were not all brand spanking right from the box office movies like Iron Man or The Dark Night (neither are streamable at the moment).  We hit some oldies but goodies like One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest, Annie Hall, Dances With Wolves, Top Gun, and even Porky's for God's sake!  None were available to stream.  These movies are 20+ years old and any viable financial benefit to keeping them in the "for mail only" category is just flat out crazy!

Not being a business man, I really don't know much about how Netflix determines what they turn into streamable items and what they don't.  I'd sure like to know so if any of you have inside info or links to details, please post in the comments.  

So after two weeks with the Roku, I still give it a 10 for 10 when not taking the lacking Netflix content into consideration.  I'd have to give it a 4 of 10 when you do take into consideration the poor movie selection.  If Netflix would please be so kind as to focus on getting a LOT more movies in their stream queue and focus less on getting old episodes of Family Ties (yes, I'm serious...you can now get season 1 of Family Ties streamed to you....but no ALF?!?!  WTF?), they'll have a LOT more success selling Roku players.

On a good note, I can and have been streaming the first season of Dr. Who...and had I paid $4.25 per DVD (I think there are 4 episodes on a DVD) it would have already cost me about $15....so in terms of financial savings buying the Roku vs. renting from the local Hollywood Video, the Roku has almost paid nearly 1/6 for itself so far just in Dr. Who episodes alone.  Though it must be said I can't stream any Battlestar Galactica nor Stargate.  *sigh*.  Netflix, get your stuff together and start digitizing your ENTIRE library.  You will, only then, slay Blockbuster... 

I unbox, display, discuss and connect my new Roku Netflix video streaming player!

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Since I got my new Macbook in mid October of 2008, I have been wanting to connect it to my 50" Sony Wega LCD TV.  At first, my interest was only out of curiosity but after recently discovering the Mac version of the Netflix streaming player my curiosity switched to that of necessity.  If I am able to connect the Macbook to my TV and stream Netflix movies, talk about a pig in mud!

After some research done over at my other blog, www.helpmeswitch.com, I figured the only way to do it was to connect via the mini display port out to a second connector.  Well I just got back from the Apple Store and here's the scoop.

Due to the fact that I already owned a DVI to HDMI conversion cable, I opted to drop $30 on a mini display port to DVI cable from Apple.  Once connected to the Macbook and the TV, I fired up input #7 on the TV.  POW, Leopard appeared on the television in all of it's glory.  Step two was to try to stream some video, as using an s-video cable and 1/8" to RCA (red/white) cable going from an XP laptop to the TV worked the same way....until I attempted to stream Netflix or, for that matter, run anything in Windows Media Player or VLC.  Both players left a black box in the center of the XP output on the TV.

Needless to say, Netflix fired up and I started streaming episode 1 of season 1 of Dr. Who.  But wha, wha, whaaat?  Where's the audio?  I have always been under the impression that HDMI handled both audio AND video but I appear to either A) be mistaken or B) have an issue with the mini display port to DVI to HDMI setup.  Perhaps the DVI downgrades the signal and only allows the video output.

So I reverted back to my old 1/8" to RCA (red/white) cable and went from the Macbook's Line Out to the TV's audio in....no luck.  No audio.  Video yes, but what good is it sitting across the room staring at the 50" big screen if I can barely here the Macbook's speakers cranked all the way up without hooking up some sort of external computer speaker arrangement?

So unless I can find a different audio cable to connect the Macbook to the TV, I may have to return the $30 mini display port cable to the Apple Store and find another solution.

That solution, from all of my research, is a device called The Roku.  The Roku is a small set-top device that connects to your home network (yes, it has wi-fi!) and your "watch instantly" enabled Netflix account (I believe this the $8.99/month, one rental at a time minimum to turn on the "watch instantly" capabilities).  So for 3 X the expense of the mini display port adapter, this device handles it all and is in all honesty MEANT to connect Netflix to your TV.

The $100 price point isn't too bad, considering renting a movie from the video store is over $4 a pop now...in a matter of a few months, the device would pay for itself even taking into account the $9/month Netflix fee.  Over a year or two, it would easily more than pay for itself in convenience alone!

As an alternative to the Roku, Blockbuster has just released their MediaPoint player.  What's the difference?  Well for the $99 you actually get 25 movie downloads....and each download is a la carte, which means that unlike Netflix, you actually fork out $1.99 for each video you download to the MediaPoint player.  So I guess the toss-up between the two devices would be the number of movies you watch.  If you watch a bunch, Netflix is the way to go.  If you watch very few, MediaPoint from Blockbuster might be you cup of tea.  

The remaining issue between these two players is the content library behind them.  Netflix claims 12,000 movies (less that they actually stream live) and Blockbuster claims 2,000...a rather large difference, if you ask me.

For my money, the Roku will probably be the way to go.  Once I take back this mini display DVI adapter to Apple and convince my lovely bride to allow yet another box to sit next to the TV, I'll write a report on the Roku.

If only my Tivo, which I have been a diehard fan of for years, would cooperate with Netflix....I know there was talk about this years ago, but nothing ever came of it...what a huge, huge, huge disappointment from both Tivo and Netflix.