I'm not krisdol, but I presume the "empty plastic boxes" is a reference to the fact that the amount of hardware necessary to stream video is now miniscule. My Roku is the size it is not because it needs to be that big to hold components, but so that it looks substantial to consumers and doesn't get lost in a ball of cables.
And interop for me would mean that instead of N proprietary platforms that must be targeted separately by software/content makers, there would be one universal platform with different manufacturers. The Amazon app on Roku, for example, is pretty weak; I presume it's much better with an actual Amazon device. And YouTube wasn't available on Roku for a number of years, even though you could get it on other devices, I presume because Google was trying to make their own device play with Google TV.
I agree with your take, but I don't see that happening; I prefer to take care of media acquisition on my own because I don't trust these companies to do any differently than the media companies they seek to, ultimately, replace.
Roku has the private channel feature that I think makes it more interesting than the other players, and I wish more effort was exerted to explore the possibilities with private channels. Have you used this feature?
It seems to me that if the streaming providers had better APIs, the device makers could make use of them; I imagine Amazon's devices have access to private APIs that Roku does not.
I picked up a new Sky Now TV box for 8 GBP (with cashback). It's basically a re-branded Roku but you can't get all the channels. Still, quite the bargain considering it even comes with an HDMI cable. It has all the standard catchup apps such as BBC iPlayer but no Netflix (Sky are competitors).
It also has a developer mode which may be what you are referring to. I managed to side-load Plex onto it. If the Netflix app code was available then I guess that could be side-loaded too. Only one development app can be loaded at a time though.
I also looked at doing some development but the VBScript brings back too many bad memories. :)
I haven't. I use the Roku to put things like Netflix and Amazon on the big screen. I remember trying a few different things to put content from my server on the Roku, but I could never get it to work smoothly; there were hitches both with the on-Roku software and with encoding issues. Instead I just bought an Intel NUC for that.
In a few years I hope I can replace them both with some sort of Android device, but for now I don't mind two devices.
>My Roku is the size it is not because it needs to be that big to hold components, but so that it looks substantial to consumers and doesn't get lost in a ball of cables.
Are you sure its not because multiple-generations-removed miniaturization technology is cheaper, and the latest Roku devices are under $100? Or that perhaps it's a different economic driver, rather than so the consumer sees its physical size?
Regarding the second app, I think the issue is again non-technical -- content is not available across devices because it's a differentiator. It may seem an artificial barrier -- your Roku can decode any video stream -- but the structure of a system that created the content suggests otherwise.
Sounds like things are ready for interoperation except for the human/economic/structural element.
And interop for me would mean that instead of N proprietary platforms that must be targeted separately by software/content makers, there would be one universal platform with different manufacturers. The Amazon app on Roku, for example, is pretty weak; I presume it's much better with an actual Amazon device. And YouTube wasn't available on Roku for a number of years, even though you could get it on other devices, I presume because Google was trying to make their own device play with Google TV.