Race to Zero

I told you about that first HTPC that I built at the start of the millenium, and at the time I bought an expensive Toshiba TV that had a rudimentary HDMI port, so that we could enjoy the benefits of this "TV attached PC" for what it was worth and yes, we enjoyed some benefits, we played some digital movies, we watched some shows that had been burned to CD or DVD, disks that our normal DVD player just ignored. It was a step forward, but it had cost a lot of money in the process. If I could estimate the cost of just the PC hardware, along with a frustrating Gyration "air mouse" control system, I would have spent around $2500 and change.

It is amazing to marvel at the difference in online capability that has occured in just 14 years, not only from the bandwidth available, but also the cost of access to streaming media.

This was bought at Walmart a few weeks ago for just $33.50 including taxes :

It's a third generation Roku 1 and production ceased in October, to make way for a bunch of new units. Regardless, it is a powerful third generation Roku, with HDMI output and composite cable included if needed, a reasonably fast processor and buffer memory, 802.11 b/g/n, a remote and even a couple of Duracell batteries.

This old tech geezer has been using Rokus for four or more years now, and in humble opion mode (HOM) I believe the Roku is perhaps the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to watching Netflix, in addition, there are a lot of official streaming channels here in Canada, plus a few very good private channels which can make a good case for cutting the cord.

I am sure we will talk more about cord cutting...

There are a couple of downsides to this model, it has no high speed wired ethernet port, no audio to remote, but, it has composite output and analog audio, jeepers, those two features in a third generation unit outweigh any negatives. You can buy this unit and make any twenty-five year old TV with composite input a smart TV.

Thirty-five bucks.