My Review of Roku 2 XD Streaming Player

Originally submitted at Roku

Features the highest-quality HD streaming available.

Roku 2 XD Streaming Player

Much Faster Than My Blu-ray Player

By FrozenFoxy from Westminster, CO on 12/26/2011

 

4out of 5

Pros: Built in Wi-Fi, Easy to use, Compact, Reliability, Great value, High quality picture, Easy to set up

Cons: Sometimes can'tplay video, Sometimes boxart is gone

Best Uses: Primary TV, Living room

Describe Yourself: Technophile, Netflix fan

The product is pretty good overall from what I bought it for - Netflix. It runs much faster than my Blu-Ray player was able to with Netflix and doesn't have anywhere near the level of issues I experienced when trying that player. However, every so often boxart for movies will go missing for awhile, and I can't play a movie I'm interested in. I imagine this has to do with downloading it from the Internet, but with a 20Mb download speed and not doing anything in the rest of the house... you'd think it would be almost instantaneous. Sometimes I end up waiting a good 15 minutes for more than 30-50 titles to be playable. Perhaps I have too many titles queued at once, but it doesn't seem like it should take 15 minutes to load the rest.

Overall, though, I don't regret my purchase of the Roku at all. It works quite well, it's amazingly compact, and I get to enjoy all the Netflix I could want from anywhere without running a wire all the way to my modem in another room.

(legalese)

Stream and Halloween Special 2

Stream seems to have gone pretty well. Managed to stay there the entire 24 hours, and thanks to everyone we also managed to raise $742 this year with Extra Life for the Children's Miracle Network! Great work everyone! We played quite a few games and even some multiplayer games during the stream as well as beating Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter and Mass Effect.

In other news, special 2 for Halloween has started and is American McGee's Alice. This special will wrap up the Halloween month and bring us into November where we will start to see Dead Island, Dead Space 2, and other games brought back into action. Hope you'll all enjoy that.

Halloween and Extra Life

I update this thing a whole lot, don't I? Hah. Never been that avid of a blogger I guess.

In any case, we've got a Halloween special going on right now if you're interested to check it out - Penumbra: Black Plague. I honestly like it a lot more than the first one. I believe we're nearing about the halfway point of the game right now, and later this Halloween month we will be seeing a secondary Halloween special to fill all 31 days of Halloween.

We're also going to be doing an Extra Life stream on October 15th at 8AM PST/PDT to support the Children's Miracle Network. We've already reached our $500 goal, but further contributions to help out the kids are always awesome. Feel free to check out the donation page at http://www.tiny.cc/frozenfoxy2011 or come to the stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/frozenfoxy-s-gamez

Hope to see you all at the stream and that you continue to enjoy what's coming out.

In other news, I finally got through Mass Effect for the first time. The game is, as expected, quite amazing in its entirety. Anyone who hasn't managed to complete it yet like I hadn't will definitely want to sit down and soak in the experience. I think it was fantastic. The other game I recently finished was Driver San Francisco. Story is crappy, driving is flaky, and it's overall kind of boring. I think the best part was going out of your own body to crash into people you're racing against. Even that gets tedious after awhile though. Oh well. Not a game I'd recommend all that highly unless you're really into driving games or not into them at all. I've heard that people who don't like driving games enjoyed this one, interestingly enough. Hm.

Anyway, signing out till next time.

3000 Subscriber Special Coming Soon

So I hit 3000 subscribers awhile back. I plan to do something for it, even though it's been awhile. I've started a pre-3000 subscriber thing... which should be up today at some point. At least, the beginning of it anyway. Once I get that done, I'll start working on the actual 3000 subscriber special for everyone to enjoy. Look out for it coming to a Channel near you!

Update 2-23-2011

You know, I realized why I never started one of these... I never constantly keep up with them. Not particularly sure what to write in them either. Is it a journal or is it an observation of what is happening in the world? It's a log of something, anyway... a bio log? Life log? Hm. Not particularly sure.

In any case, the computer I normally record games on remains dead at the moment. I have been able to install X-COM UFO Defense on my laptop and record that. Everything else seems like a lost cause on the laptop. People have been donating to help out with the computer that needs to be fixed, which is very much appreciated! It shouldn't be that much longer till it gets fixed if things keep going the way they are. Once it is fixed I'll go back to making LPs on that system and finish off the X-COM LP as well. I've been using the names of those who have donated as soldiers in X-COM. Got a few new ones I'll be using very soon. Hopefully the old computer will be up and running again in no time.

If you'd like to donate, feel free to do so at frozenfoxy@gmail.com

Signing off for the moment.

Raffle and Dead Rising 2

A raffle is currently going on for people to win a prize of requesting a game or requesting more of a game I have already started. Feel free to go check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp6FhtmhXdE
One place is still available! Good luck.

For Dead Rising 2, I'll have to replay through the game since I bought the game for cheaper to sell my hard copy online. It'll continue as soon as I can get to it.

The requests are on the horizon, so we'll see what those bring.

Signing out. See ya.