Brian's Brain

Jul 16 2008 1:00AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (1) |
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I was admittedly baffled when, two weeks ago, Roku proffered to Forbes (without providing any hard specifics) that additional capabilities were en route for the Netflix Player. That same week, the company released (at least some of) the device's software under an open source license. I honestly doubt that everything's included; Netflix, for example, would probably object to a leak of the protocols by which the unit accesses a Netflix customer's account and streams video from the company's Watch Instantly (aka Watch Now) servers. Microsoft similarly wouldn't be thrilled to have its DRM and video codec details in the public domain. And the 'additional capabilities' (which supposedly include direct Hulu access...which would be frakking awesome) aren't any big surprise; from the very beginning of the product's public life, both Netflix and Roku made it clear that theirs was a non-exclusive relationship.

But why did Roku get so promotionally bullish now, especially when it's clear that the requisite firmware upgrade isn't yet ready for prime time? The light bulb went off in my head on Monday, the first day of this year's E3 conference, and in retrospect I should have realized the answer from the very beginning. Almost five months ago, after all, I alluded to rumours of a brewing partnership between Netflix and Microsoft which, if consummated, would bring Watch Instantly capability to the Xbox 360 gaming console. And during Microsoft's keynote Monday morning, the company (among other things) made its Netflix embrace official. Xbox LIVE Gold members ($59.99 MSRP per year, or $29.99 MSRP for 3 months) who happen to also be Netflix subscribers (except for the lowest priced plan, which doesn't include Watch Instantly) will get free access to Netflix's ~10,000 title online library sometime this fall.

That's pretty awesome. And it makes me wonder what Roku's got up its sleeve in order to keep demand for its lower-priced but defeatured product from evaporating. Hulu access, as I said before, is a likely addition. Joost capability would also be interesting, especially if April's Live Test turns into an official service feature, though I'm not sure if Roku's hardware has enough processing muscle to tackle the requisite P2P requirements. Direct access to content residing on the websites of the networks who don't participate in Hulu would be cool. General-purpose web browsing such as those (but hopefully more robust than those) included in the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 would be killer...though Roku would need to supply a wireless keyboard to supplement the existing few-button remote control (which could do double duty as a mouse). And let's not forget about Media Center Extender- and/or UPnP protocol-based audio, still image and video playback capabilities. What feature set ideas do you have that I can pass along to Roku?

p.s...this all begs the question of what Roku will call its plucky box now...the Not-Just-Netflix Player, perhaps? ;-)