Not to brag or anything…..but we have almost every “Backyardigans”, “Dora”, and “Go Diego Go” episode ever made. We also have a complete season of “Wonder Pets”, nearly every “Thomas the Tank Engine” video ever made, and probably hundreds of other kid videos ranging from “Caillou” to “The Wiggles”.
No, we don’t have piles of DVD’s strewn all over our house. In fact, not one of those episodes is even on a DVD! Yet we have unlimited access to all of them, and thousands more titles for Mom and Dad (all the seasons of “Weeds”, for example!) and we pay $9 a month for all of it.
Ok, you probably figured out we have all of this due to our Netflix account, but what you may not know is that we don’t watch a single episode online or receive any DVD’s in the mail.
Huh?
It’s simple, really….we have a Roku HD box! This tiny little box sits next to our TV and is connected wirelessly to our wireless home network. It accesses our Netflix account and pulls literally EVERYTHING from the Netflix Instant catalog and streams it on our HD TV!
We received our Roku HD for Christmas in 2009 and it is easily the best investment that we (er, my parents) ever made in our entertainment spending. We already had a Netflix account, and adding the Roku as a conduit to our “instant queue” was easy and free! Now we can access thousands of shows from Netflix instantly.
How “instant” is INSTANT? It takes about 6-7 seconds for the shows to appear on our TV after we choose it from the menu. If it’s offered in HD, we get it in HD just as quickly. That comes in handy when you have a kiddo who didn’t take a nap and needs some chill out time to something educational. In that case, we access one of about 20 episodes of the Wonder Pets or a series of Caillou epsisodes.
Anything available as an “Instant” selection on Netflix is available on the Roku. In fact, you can search and browse and play items directly from your screen so you don’t even need to login to your Netflix account online to manage them!
In fact, my husband and I will make it part of our in-home “date night” and while one of us finishes making dinner or a snack, the other will browse for a movie or a television series just as if we were standing in a video store on a Saturday night! We can watch entire seasons of lots of television shows (we went back and watched episodes of “Lost” before the last season started), access exercise videos for free (um, that’s for me), tons of kids’ stuff, documentaries and more. We also have a queue of, don’t laugh, 350 different shows on tap ready to access anytime including about 100 different movies and we add more every week.
Actually, one of the few complaints that Netflix or Redbox users have is that they say, “How do I know two days or two hours in advance what I’ll be in the mood to watch?” This solves that problem because it’s all there waiting for you….no DVD’s to return, no running out to the store to find one of the few remaining Redbox rentals on a weekend and no remembering to return free DVD’s to the library before they start to charge a late fee.
I can honestly say, and you can check my earlier tweets (@JenKnox) from December on, that the Roku has been one of the single best investments that we could have made (with help from my parents who bought it for us of course!). Even if we hadn’t received it for Christmas, we would have bought one anyway. The HD version of the Roku is only a one-time cost of $99.00! That’s it! Use it as much as you want!
In fact, I’ve mentioned the Netflix aspect of Roku but there are tons of other channels on it too and more being added every month! Amazon Video on Demand is also on it….don’t get me started on that one! I could go on and on about how you can get first-run videos cheaply and instantly. Like Pandora? All of your Pandora channels are available on the Roku too!
You can even hook up the Roku to your Facebook and Flickr accounts and see your photos on your TV!
Here are some stats:
Roku HD: $99.00
Roku SD: $79.00 (if you don’t need the HD model)
Netflix Account: $8.99 (this is the minimum account you need for unlimited instant streaming)
SPECIAL DISCOUNT: $10 off any Roku player for a limited time! Get the HD and SD players for only $89.00 and $79.00 respectively!
What? You’re still here? 
Click that link above and watch the “What is Roku” video demo!
Get Free Email Updates
Did you like this post? I'd love to email you about updates to the site and new features! Some freebie alerts too!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Just a note: Roku has slashed their prices on these boxes recently so check their site for details. Clicking on the prices above will get you to their new pricing structure!
Also, Netflix has recently offered a new “streaming only” option for only $7.99 that is PERFECT for the Roku. Adding a one-dvd-at-a-time option to Netflix will now be $9.99 total (including streaming) instead of $8.99 which is still an amazing deal!
{ 2 trackbacks }