Monthly Archives: May 2008

Roku Netflix Player

Last month I tried out Netflix’s streaming video service. I thought the price was right (free with most Netflix subscription plans), but the video quality was poor, like an old VHS tape recorded from TV. The selection was so so as well, but the all-you-can-eat price is right, especially compared to the $3-5/pop it costs to rent something on iTunes.

They.’ve recently addressed another issue. Roku has just released a $99 set top box that plays Netflix on demand. Netflix doesn’t have HD content (and I doubt that most people have internet connections that would be up to streamed HD), but the device is HD ready. I’ve been thinking of replacing the computer hooked to our TV with a smaller, more efficient device, but I’d been leaning back to using a computer so we could use netflix’s streaming. The Roku device solves that problem, but, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to play anything else. Too bad. I’d happily pay another $25-50 for something that would play content from a media server.

WordPress Updates: Ugh

I have to update our WordPress installs. I’m not looking forward to it.

Upgrading wordpress itself isn’t too bad (though doing it 4-5 times gets a little old), but then I have to gather updated plugins (something I may not have to do much longer, since the latest version of WordPress seems to have an integrated updater.

The real PITA though is updating my theme. A few years ago I decided to use K2, which was under active development. It’s still under active development, and it seems like each time I update WordPress, I have to update K2 too. I’ve done some customization (inserting some AdSense code, and integrating code required by a specific plugin, and so I have to propagate my changes to the themes for each blog.

Wish me luck. I think the last time I did this, I only updated a subset of our blogs.