It took literally two minutes to set up the Roku and begin going through the instructions. You just hook the basic red, yellow, and white outputs to the television and turn it on the correct channel or output, if it’s necessary based on your television. Once you do that you will see the Roku screen and the set up will begin. It’s pretty simple. All you do is put in your Netflix email and password to allow the Roku to retrieve your movie queue. From there, it’s a matter of choosing a few settings and then the movies are ready to play.

You have a small remote control that works with the Roku. It’s extremely basic. It offers an up, down, and side to side option. There is also a home button which lets you pick from a variety of services including Netflix. I cannot comment on the other services and how they work with the Roku, merely because I have never tried them myself.

If you’ve ever used the Xbox for Netflix, it’s pretty similar. You move through your queue until you find what you are looking for. You can read info about the movie before you play it, rate it after it’s done, and resume the movie if you haven’t finished watching one. Once you have it hooked up there should be no reason that you would have any problem using this. The Roku is virtually fool proof.

The only complaint that I can muster in comparison to the XBox 360 is that you cannot see and add new movies to your queue. On Xbox you are able to see new movies and television shows, view recently watched and/or deleted movies, and see movies from different genres that you might want to add to your queue. You can even watch movies that are available in the other categories without adding them to your queue.

With Roku you can only watch the things that are already on your queue and you cannot add anything straight from the Roku. You would need to add it and then play it. However, I will say that the additions made via a laptop show up within seconds, so if you have your computer handy it’s not too much of a complaint.

If you’re using the Roku for Netflix, you can get the $8.99 Netflix deal that gives you one mailed DVD at a time and unlimited instant DVDs. I could care less about the mailed DVD, as we mainly stick to the instant options. That being said $9 for as many movies as we go through is not a bad deal at all.

When I hooked up my Roku to my Vizio television I was sad to note an annoying feedback sound that drove me nuts. It didn’t always play during the movies, but it was so bad when choosing a movie that I had to mute the television. I had a feeling that the Roku wasn’t to blame and I learned as much when I hooked it up to another television that was not a Vizio and did not produce the same annoying noise. This was just one of many problems I have had with my Vizio, leading me to begin looking for another television despite the fact that the one I have is only about a year old.

The Roku is one of the best things that we reviewed for the holidays this year. I love it and would highly recommend it to anyone that uses Netflix. For under one hundred dollars you aren’t going to find a better, more useful gift like this. Movie lovers will definitely want one of these boxes and they will certainly get good use out of it, especially as Netflix adds a more diverse movie lineup.

You can learn more about the Roku by visiting the Roku website. The Roku also made our Electronics Gift Guide!

Technorati Tags: Roku, Electronics Review, Netflix, Vizio, Television, Movies, Instant Queue, Gift Guide, Holiday Reviews

The biggest worry was that the screen quality would not be as superior as one of the smaller screens. In the older versions of bigger screen televisions there tended to be issues with light and dark contrast and overall quality. Obviously if you are going to pay a significant amount of money for something you want to make sure it’s going to be worth every penny. Based on the available models we opted for a Hitachi Advanced CRT Projection Television. With 51”of screen and build-in surround sound speakers; this is the closest thing to a movie theater you will get in your home for a reasonable price.

The Hitachi offers several key features that provide what we were looking for in a television like this. The beautiful picture quality and superb sound would have been enough to make this purchase worthwhile though the Hitachi 51F59 actually has many other worthwhile features that make the choice we made even better. After using this product for a few months prior to reviewing I can honestly say that this Hitachi was one of the best televisions to ever come into our home. The picture is as crisp as the day we received it and the sound is just as fantastic. We couldn’t have asked for a better television.

There are numerous features that help the audio and video quality to maintain their beauty over the years. The 1080i Digital Processor offers perfect picture clarity, contrast, and brightness. Movies that you might have seen will gain new meaning watching them on one of these screens. Additionally, this model of Hitachi has something called Magic Focus Auto Digital Convergence. This handy little feature will adjust the images on the screen to ensure you are viewing the perfect alignment at all times. You can also change the lighting on the television to fit the lighting conditions in the room. Day and night picture memory allows you to use a timer to switch the picture quality based on time of day.

This model also has HDMI digital capabilities which give it access to the hottest digital products on the market. The digital interface gives your television access to everything from HD-DVD players and Blu-Ray to the newer HDMI digital cameras that are on the market. There are also a large number of input sources for people (like me) who have cable, satellite receivers, a DVD player, video game consoles, and other electronics that need hooking up to your television.

The entire lower portion of the television works as a home theater system with large speakers on the base that offers amazing sound even at low levels. The speakers are 24-Watt, 2-Way speakers. This ensures that you have a rich sound based on lower frequency bass drivers and a higher frequency tweeter.

The remote is a snap to use. In truth, I don’t even recall programming it at all. It works for my television and can also work for cable/satellite and DVD players. On the remote there is a button for Input codes. You can set each certain item to a certain input and change to that input when you want to use something new. For example, my DVD is set to input number one. Whenever I go to watch a DVD, I put it on input one and I’m good to go.

The Hitachi 51F59 projection television is well worth the money spent on it and this one purchase would prompt me to look into other products by Hitachi thanks to the good experience that I have had with this one.

Good Points:

HD Compatible
Excellent Sound
Beautiful Picture
Huge, Wide Screen
Programmable Inputs
Home Theater Quality
Plenty of Input Sources

Bad Points:

Nothing worth Complaining About

Rating:

Highly Recommended

Technorati Tags: hitachi, 51F59, CRT Projection, television, TV Review, Product