My Birthday Present

My birthday is the same day as the Super Bowl this year, so all week long I've been telling myself that all of these parties people are planning Sunday are for me! In fact, while I was shopping at Kroger yesterday I passed an acquaintance and overheard her saying to her husband, "...have to figure out if we'll need four or five cases of soda for the party Sunday."

I interrupted and said, "So you've heard it's my birthday Sunday, too, have you? And you guys are throwing me a surprise party, too? I tell you, it seems like everyone is having a party for me this Sunday!" After they got over the surprise of this interruption, I then went on to tell them that--as much as I'd like to come to their party--I was going to have to pass as I had other plans.

But I'm not here today to write about me being goofy in a grocery store. I'm here to talk about my birthday present. Okay, I guess it's not REALLY a birthday present since the present wasn't purchased because it was my birthday...and it wasn't gift wrapped when given to me...and it wasn't opened on my birthday...and I bought it myself with my own money. Uh, on second though, I guess it's not a present at all. I guess it's just this thing I bought that I happened to buy just before my birthday. But none of that matters. To me, it's my birthday present!

And what it is is a piece of electronics called a Roku player. It's a tiny box, about the size of a portable DVD player, and it connects to our TV downstairs. It also wirelessly connects to our Internet connection, and it streams movies from Netflix and Amazon Unbox. The movies from Amazon Unbox are $4.99 to rent, and you have 24 hours to watch them. The movies and TV shows from Netflix are free and included as part of the subscription to Netflix. As I mentioned in posts a few weeks ago, we recently renewed our Netlix account after about 18 months away from it, and I was blown away by how much their offering of movies has grown. 18 months ago pretty much all that was available to stream for free was indie movies and movies from the 1960's. Maybe you could throw in a few recent flops or direct to DVD entries, but that was about it. Today, while the newest movies are still not on Netflix streaming, there's a LOT of good content. Sitting in my Netlix queue right now is Walt Disney's Bolt and The Ant Bully for the kids, and Doubt, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and Sunshine Cleaning for Lisa and me to watch. We also have TV shows like Meercat Manor and South Park in our list, and classics like Caddyshack and Nightmare on Elm Street. It's an unbelievable difference in selection compared to a year ago.

And I have to say this about my new "toy": It's pretty awesome. It says in its sales material that it takes three minutes to setup. That's a stretch, but not much. I would say I had ours up and running in less than ten minutes. Keep in mind that I'm a tech savvy person, but still, I think most people could have theirs up and running in 30 minutes or less. The only part that might throw some people is setting the machine up with their wireless network. It's the same process, though, as connecting any other device with a wireless network, so if you can connect your laptop, you can connect a Roku player. And if you're not going to connect it wirelessly, the setup is even easier--just plug a cable from your router into the LAN port on the back of the Roku and you're ready to go.

Speaking of wireless, I worried that maybe I wouldn't get a very good picture with the player because our TV is so far away from our wireless router (It's one floor down from the router and at the other end of one side of our house). But the picture is unbelievable! Much better than what I was getting watching the movies from my computer monitor.

I'm very satisfied with my new toy, and I'll be playing with it for a long time. I told Lisa yesterday, "I'm going to spend the next hour watching the first 30 seconds of everything in my queue...because I can!"