A weekend with Roku

So I streamed a few movies on the Roku XR over the weekend. I watched Audition and Oldboy (my mini reviews of the movies below). I'm pleased to say that the XR works just as well as the previous Roku box (now called the Roku HD Player). Movies buffered up in under a minute on my 802.11n network, there was no hiccuping or dropped scenes, and picture quality was solid.

Now the bad news. The Roku XR costs $29 more than the Roku HD, and yet they both perform the same. Seriously. Ok, so you get 802.11n and a USB port on the XR. But otherwise, it's all the same. For what it's worth, I tried plugging in a USB drive to see if the XR would read my media files, but I got nada. This makes me wonder, what exactly is Roku planning here? What's the point of the XR?

We already know Revision3 is coming to Roku. Leo Laporte's TWiT network is also supposedly coming. But, what else?

The folks at Roku told me they'd have some "new announcements" in the next coming weeks. (They told me this two weeks ago.) But all has been quiet on the Roku front. So for now I'd hold off on buying a Roku XR. There's no need for it. But let's see what Roku has up their sleeves. Something tells me I might be changing my mind very soon. At least I hope.

As for the movies — Audition: Creepy as hell. Loved the first half of the movie. The scenes of Asami sitting by the phone with the large, mysterious bag on the floor freaked the crap outta me and are still burned in my mind (more so than any other scene). I was disappointed in the ending though. It kinda fell apart for me. Oldboy: Why does this movie have such high ratings?? A waste of 2 hours. The plot is all over the place, it tries too hard to be "artsy/shocking," and the soundtrack annoyed me.