Roku Box

I'm coming out of hibernation to give you... **drum roll**

THE ROKU BOX!

And here I thought my love for Netflix couldn't get any stronger... I was so wrong!

Aside from the iPod and cell phone, no piece of tiny technology has impacted my life more than the Roku Box. What does this Roku Box do, you ask? Well, I'll tell you: It streams videos from your Netflix queue right to your TV!

"Big whoop," you're sneering. "I bet it costs a fortune and the videos look like total crap."

Wrong, and wrong.

My box cost $115 (includes shipping), and I honestly can't tell the difference between images streamed from Netflix and plain old cable. I've had my box for about three weeks now, and I'm ashamed to say that I have logged a ridiculous amount of time in front of my TV thanks to my new, tiny friend.

If you're impatient (like me!) and like to get the absolute most amount of a product possible for a set price (also like me! [I call it all-you-can-eat Netflix videos]), then the Roku Box is for you. Unless you have an XBox, in which case you can sream your Netflix videos through that.

Seriously, Roku is ridiculously simple to set up and even easier to use. It's amazingly user-friendly with a simple interface that a two-year-old could use. You really can't get lost or confused with this thing. Case in point: the remote only has nine buttons. And of those nine buttons, I really only use, like, four. Easy peasy.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should tell you that the box is, in some ways, almost too simple. While you can delete titles from your queue via the Roku interface, there's no way to sort the titles, which would be a nice feature since they start stacking up quickly. (You can sort titles in your online Netflix queue.) It might also be nice to be able to view titles only and not just "album view," if I may borrow a term from iTunes. But the lack of those features isn't a hindrance, just a missed opportunity.

I should also mention that the Roku Box only works wtih Netflix's unlimited plans (the cheapest plan is $8.99/month), and not all titles available through Netflix are available to stream. But there is a ton of good stuff available, and they're adding more all the time. My Roku Box also took ELEVEN days to get here, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, especially since you have no option but to pay $15 for two-day shipping. But I'm still glad I bought the box--I'm not going to dog the product because the manufacturer can't its operations ironed out. Hate the playa, not the game, you know.

Long story short, I heartily recommend the Roku Box. High-quality video streaming, day or night. Thanks to Roku, I'm no longer limited to the amount of videos I can watch because of time wasted in the back and forth through the US postal service. Roku is one giant step in my quest to become a total shut-in.