Roku updates line of video players

Roku, most noted for its original "Netflix player," has announced a new lineup of boxes for connecting TVs to Netflix, Amazon Unbox and MLB.com video. Among them, the high end $129 Roku HD-XR, which features HDMI connectivity, along with optical audio out, 802.11n WiFi, Ethernet, and an unused USB port which the company coyly mentions will be used in the future. The mid-range $99 Roku HD player is the company's previously named "Netflix Player," which has all the same connections as the XR, but comes sans USB port and only has 802.11b/g WiFi.

Lastly, the Roku SD player is a $79 player which rocks composite video out, B/G WiFi and Ethernet.

The company says its planning to unveil an application store which will allow more content to be added to the device in the coming weeks, which makes the units more appealing , though we don't know all the partners Roku has signed nor how easy it'll be to add channels to the unit.

We were lucky enough to have Roku send us an HD-XR unit which we've been testing for about a week. Read on for our experiences.

The experience is extremely basic at this point, though setup and use couldn't be easier and more user friendly. It only took about 10 minutes from the time we opened the box till we were watching movies on our TV.

To set it up, simply plug in the power cord, enter the networking info for connecting to your WiFi network, head to Netflix.com/activate to receive a code to connect a Netflix account to the TV, and that's about it. Extremely simple, intuitive and easy.

Right now, Roku is in a really interesting place. The company has created one of the least expensive, yet fully featured video streaming solutions to date. We're big fans of the box, which nicely compliments our living room Xbox 360 as the alternate TV video streamer of choice. In fact, coupled with Boxee, we've been able to live fairly free of a Cable connection for a while now.

That being said, the Roku interface isn't exactly rife with over-the-top polish and pizazz, but the box isn't not exactly utilitarian either. The Roku interface feels like it has all the potential in the world, but with such meager channel choices, it feels like the box is missing a few elements from being simply good and interesting, to a must-have device. Whether the "channel store" can round out the box and fill in the missing pieces, we're not sure, but we're willing to wait and see with the Roku device.

We're not exactly clear on why anyone would spend an extra $30 on the XR version when the added features are purely speculative at this point by comparison. The $99 Roku HD seems like a the best deal of the bunch, though if the company adds features allow for hard-drive based storage, or other useful features, the XR version might become more appealing. For now, we're content to wait-and-see, but would recommend most people just buy the HD version and save the $30.

All-in-all, Roku has nailed a solid experience at a relatively inexpensive price point. We've seen other players that are similarly priced, the Western Digital TV HD Media Player is about $90, for instance, but no sub-$100 unit does Netflix streaming as well as Roku.

We'd recommend this system to anyone who's looking to connect up Netflix content to any TV as inexpensively as possible. There's no learning curve, nor any sort of instruction manual required. Simply plug-in the HDMI cable, and you're good to go. That being said, the system is still feels like a work-in-progress, but its progressing nicely and we can't wait to see where the system ends up.