Roku: The set top box for the rest of them
As I’ve said before, the future of home entertainment is IPTV. If you’re an IPTV company, one of the big challenges you have is how to get your content to the TV sets of the masses.
This is where the set top box comes in. Cable and satellite companies have a built in solution (I consider FiOS another cable company). Customers are used to getting their content from them via set top box. However, if you’re some other company, say Netflix or YouTube, you need to solve this problem.
Netflix did it by working deals with Roku and Microsoft (via XBox). You can access YouTube via either Blu-Ray players or your iPhone/iPod (really).
Notice that in all of these cases, someone else built the set top box. In fact, it seems that the new model is that the service company doesn’t even provide the box; you go get it yourself.
Here’s where Roku comes in. They started as a set top box for Netflix, then added Amazon’s video entertainment, without any change to the hardware. Now, Engadget’s reporting a rumor that Hulu may be coming to Roku. As a Roku early adopter, I’m overjoyed about this. I have very little interest in watching TV shows on my computer. I have a perfectly nice living room for that type of activity. It seems that Roku is well placed to take advantage of IPTV now.
Update: I just read that Boxee is talking about producing a set top box to run their software. I have a ton of problems with Boxee, the first being that I found out virtually nothing about the product from their web site. Luckily, we have Wikipedia. Boxee’s going to have to get their act together if they want to really be successful in this space.
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