Sloganeer Owners of the older

Sloganeer

Owners of the older Roku HD-XR models will also be sloganeer to get support for 1080p and the playback of local content via USB in a software update that will come later this year. Apple TV supports playback 4, files but only via sharing within iTunes, not via any connected drives. When it comes to the remotes, Roku again has the edge in a few areas. One of the things I dont like about the Apple TV remote is that it doesnt take standard sized batteries. Its not a huge deal breaker, but I have a lot more triple AAA batteries lying around for the Roku remote, than the watch sized battery that the Apple TV remote takes. All three Roku models ship with a new remote and the two XD models support what Roku calls instant replay. The technology allows you to skip back in 10 second increments while a video is playing without having to re-buffer the stream and works very well. Owners of older Roku models can buy the new remote which enables the instant replay feature. Not surprisingly, the interface on the Apple TV is a lot smoo the r, cleaner and more polished than navigating on the Roku. But while it looks nicer, navigating the Apple TV interface is not as easy as it should be and requires far too many clicks to enter text or passwords. Apple uses a long list of letters that you have to scroll through and have to travel end-to-end as opposed to being able to skip around. Having to enter a lot of text is a real pain. Apple TV is a bit easier to setup than the Roku, but not by much. I could give ei the r device to my Mom and shed be able to setup both devices on her own without having to call me for tech support. As for the content available on both devices, this is really where Apple TV falls short. Today, Apple TV supports content from Netflix, YouTube and 99 rentals from ABC, Disney, Fox, and the BBC. The y also support some free Internet content from folks like Revision3 and o the rs, but all of that content is lumped in under the Podcast heading in Apple TV, so most folks probably dont see it. Apple gives you 24 hours to watch movie rentals and 48 hours to watch TV shows once you begin viewing. When Steve Jobs announced the Apple TV he made a big point to reinforce the fact that Apple would have HD movies available to rent on the same day the y are released to DVD. This was one of his major selling points, yet so far, thats simply not the case. In fact, some of the content Steve Jobs showcased in the launch is no longer even available for rental. Clearly the studios still have all the control regarding what content the y will make available for licensing to the Apple TV. While Rokus interface make not be as polished as the Apple TV, the Roku makes up for it with all the great content thats available. Roku has channels for Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, , UFC, Pandora, Flickr, Facebook Photos and Roku has just announced support for Hulu Plus coming later this year. Roku has more than 75 content channels and expects to have nearly 100 by the end of the year. Roku has an open SDK and as a result, has a lot of content partners working to bring more channels to Roku devices. Compare that to the Apple TV which today, has no SDK and doesnt run any apps on the box. Some are speculating that the Apple TV will run apps in the future since internally it has 8GB of Flash storage, but none of that is happening today. One of the big features of the Apple TV that many think could be a game-changer is Airplay. The technology allows a user to start watching a video on an iPhone, iPod or iPad and the n move that content over to the Apple TV in realtime. While Airplay looks promising, it wont be released until November and the re are still a lot of unanswered questions about how well it will work. For instance, you can move content from iOS devices to Apple TV, but you cant move content from Apple TV back to iOS devices. Also, one has to wonder how well video streaming will work when you start watching a video encoded for a mobile device, but the n want to transfer it back to a large screen. The re is also the question of how DRM is going to work with Airplay and my guess is that only content in the H. 264 4 format is going to work, which likely means only FairPlay will be supported. Airplay looks like interesting technology, especially for streaming music, but for video, the re sloganeer a lot of unanswered questions. So before all the Apple fanboys take over the comments section saying just how groundbreaking Airplay is, well have to wait and see how well it really works once its available in the market. While Ive sloganeer a couple of reviews saying that the quality of Netflix streaming looked better on the Apple TV when compared with o the r devices, personally, I dont see it. Testing both the Apple TV and the Roku XDS on a 50 Vizio plasma TV and a 42 Samsung LCD TV, it was hard to notice any difference in quality. I felt like Netflix streaming started up just a but faster on the Roku, but really could not tell. The video quality on both devices seemed to be identical to me. Whats not identical on the devices is the Netflix application.