Category: Television

Roku Review

Roku
This is a mini review of the Roku Player a VERY cool gadget I installed last week.

If you’re armed with a Netflix account and use it to watch movies over the net on your computer, you’ll probably be interested in a Roku. The Roku connects to your TV and to the Internet via a wireless (or wired) connection. Plug it in and it’ll guide you through the network settings. Mine did a firmware upgrade after it established the network connection.

After that, you’ll get the home screen which shows off various Roku “Channels”, including Netflix and Major League Baseball. There’s also a Roku Store which you get use to get more channels, such as streams of Revision 3 and TWiT network podcasts.

If you use the Netflix channel, it’ll ask you to log into Netflix on a computer and gives you a special code to type in. Once that’s done, you’ll get a listing of all “Instant Play” movies retrieved from those you already have in your queue.

The downside is not ALL movies are have the ability to be streamed, and some movies aren’t high quality digital translations.

The upside is there are a LOT of movies to watch, and quite a few TV shows too. We’ve been re-watching all the seasons of LOST. Before the Roku arrived, we’d been watching on DVD. Since then, we’ve been using the Roku. It’s been great.

And the real kicker for LOST fans: LOST Season 5 is out today… and already available for viewing via Netflix.

There are Blu-Ray Players out there that can stream Netflix movies too, but if you’re looking for a slightly cheaper solution, the Roku is great.

Fringe – August

Observer1

Thursday’s “Fringe” was one of the best of the season. I think it makes one thing pretty clear: The Observers are third party to this whole “war” between our dimension and the dimension that Olivia traveled to, to see William Bell. They’ve been observing our world for quite some time, and apparently have a non-interference rule, which seems to be as strictly adhered to as Kirk ever did with the Prime Directive (yes, that was sarcasm).

A couple of points:

1) They messed up something that caused them to have to correct it by helping Walter get Peter back. What they did, we have no idea. However, this could very well be what the original catalyst was that caused the people in the “other” earth to realize we existed.

2) Apparently being “important” plays some role in the decisions of what The Observers…well… observe. Interesting twist to who the kidnapped girl became “important”, but a bit unsatisfying at the same time. Maybe it was the whole “I love her” thing that didn’t ring true.

3) I LOVED the way August snagged those bullets out of the air. That was great!

What did you think of this episode?

William Atherton Signed For Guest Spot On LOST

Twitter was flooded with guesses to the identity of the newly signed guest star on LOST for this season. Many people, including myself guessed Anthony Peck.

Turns out that it’s really William Atherton. How did the hints get us there?

The clues: Die Hard, Peck and Barr

William Atherton played the obnoxious reporter in Die Hard.

He played Walter Peck in Ghostbusters.

He also played Dr. Barr in Desperate Housewives.

I really look forward to this. He was great in Die Hard, Ghost Busters, and in Real Genius.