Roku Netflix Setting Up the System

Setup was extremely simple for me since I was using the box with a wired network connection. The bandwidth here is around 6 Mbit/s (Mbps) and I wanted to get as much of that as possible to maximize my resolution. For those who can't do a hardwired Ethernet cable, the $99 Roku Netflix Player includes wireless network connectivity. Yes, way. The network can take into account WEP encryption and the unit provides a MAC address for configurations requiring this information. Regardless of which method I used (I tried both) setup was extremely easy and required little brain power. One thing to note is that the strength and proximity of your wireless network will determine your video quality. In my system, going wireless took me from a full 4 dots (the maximum) down to just 2. On-screen this resulted in some observable macroblocking effects from the reduced bandwidth stream which was getting to my 47-inch LCD display (I bounced the system around several displays in my home).

Roku Tech Note for Airport Express Users
There is an incompatibility with some Airport WiFi APs (Airport Express or AirPort Base Station) - usually if you connect wirelessly with security disabled. You can use the following steps to upgrade your software. The upgraded software has the issue fixed. If you connect wirelessly, with security disabled, during guided setup the connection will fail the first time. Try and connect a second time. The second time you try to connect, it should succeed. Setup will then upgrade the software. After the software update completes, you will get an error screen (The software update has actually completed successfully). You should now unplug, wait 5 seconds, and plug in your box. You will need to go through setup again, and then everything should work.

Before you can do much of anything, the Roku box will walk you through the process of registering the new Netflix Player with your online Netflix account. You must have some kind of unlimited account with Netflix in order to use the player. Currently these plans start at just under $9/month. Configuring the Player involves entering a Roku-supplied number into your online account using a URL the system provides for just that purpose. According to Roku and Netflix, you can have as many as four Netflix players in your home tied to a single account. I find that extremely lenient and adequate for any possible uses. You can always tack on another Netflix account if you happen to live in a giant mansion and want a Netflix player in every room.

Once network and account setup is out of the way you'll want to tell the Roku what type of screen you have (4:3 is the default). You can also tweak the audio effect and sound, though I found the default settings on these and other items to be just fine. Roku doesn't inundate users with lots of settings and configurations. Perhaps if the system is updated with HD content in the future there will be additional options. For now, though, it's about as simple as it gets. I would like to see Roku add more display options - perhaps an ultra stretch mode which would stretch any 4:3 aspect ratio films and possibly correct some of the films which were encoded incorrectly by Netflix (see below in our Viewing Tests).

Remote Control

The remote for the Netflix Player is perfectly simple. It's only got 9 buttons. Nothing else is needed in order to navigate the system. You've got a Home button, four directional keys and a Select button in the middle. Below you have Play/Pause (single button), Rewind, and Fast Forward. There is one difficult thing about the remote - inserting the batteries. To accomplish this you have to slide the entire case in a funky way to gain access to the battery compartment. I admit it took me a few minutes to figure it out - and ultimately it was the instruction manual that showed me the light. The remote could use a Standby/Power button - but of course Roku would need to presumably make a hardware change to facilitate its use.

Selecting and Watching Your Movies

According to Netflix you can add up to 500 titles to your instant Queue, but that   would be nearly impossible to navigate. Instead, we'd recommend adding around 50 (or less) titles so that can easily find what you want to watch. As you watch movies you can simply rate (optional) and delete them right then and there from your list. Your account on the Netflix website will be updated to reflect the deletion and you can add more movies at your leisure.

To watch any movies, you first need to dump/select/place those movies into your Watch Now Queue. This reflects an update from the old Watch Now system which didn't involve a queue. Netflix seems to have done an excellent job of integrating the new queue and it automatically grabbed any movies from my existing DVD queue which were available for instant viewing. I added a bunch more and soon I had 39 movies ready to go.

Browsing the Watch Now Queue on the Netflix Player is extremely intuitive, though Roku only gives you one interface for doing so. It's an Apple-like sideways flip style of the DVD covers - but without any fancy drop shadow or 3D effects. The title, duration and MPAA rating are given for each movie/show and it is certainly very easy to get around. Kind of a user interface nut, I found it glorious that someone thought enough to have the list circle around when you get to either end. If you are on disc 39 of 39, simply scroll right one more time and you come back to disc #1 in your list.

To select a show you simply hit the Select button on the remote control. At this point the system takes into account your network download speed and grabs the video at one of four quality levels. While it is loading the amount of cached video it requires for uninterrupted playback a black screen appears with the show title, quality level, and a progress bar. As I mentioned above, I never dropped below level four (the max) with a wired Ethernet connection to my broadband cable modem, and wireless (802.11g) netted me 2 out of four. I am guessing there are some wireless network setups which can be tweaked to get better results, but at the $99 price of this box - the presence of any wireless connectivity at all is, quite frankly, amazing.

Once the movie begins you can Fast Forward, Rewind and Pause the picture. Pausing simply freezes the image on the screen and shows you a progress bar of where you are at. Fast Forwarding or Rewinding actually brings up thumbnails of the movie/show, almost like sub-chapter marks which remind me of the new navigation style on some Blu-ray discs. While fast forwarding or rewinding you can actually see that the aspect ratio of the encoded material determines the width of the thumbnails (which are already stretched wide if you are using a 16:9 display).