Dear Dr. Theopolis....

I have been a Netflix customer for a couple years now. I have fluctuated back and forth from the single disc unlimited and the 2 disc unlimited plans since I first subscribed. As many folks know, Netflix introduced the abilityt o watch some movies and tv shows on your computer. The movies and shows are streamed to your PC, not downloaded. This means you must have an internet connection to watch them. I watched a couple movies on my laptop when the service first came out, and thought the quality was pretty good. But, watching a movie on the laptop isn't exactly ideal. This is where the Roku player comes in.

I've heard others talk favorably about the Roku player - Leo Laporte, The Linux Action show, Engadget, and CNET. I had been putting it off until I get a high def tv. But, the Roku isn't exactly high def, so I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and use it with my old style tv.

Overall, the picture quality is very good. Most shows and movies are DVD quality or pretty close. Audio can be a little hit or miss. A couple movies we've watched had either low sound levels, needing the volume to be cranked up. One movie we watched had audio levels all over the place, sometimes very quiet, sometimes loud and sometimes sounded like the sound was locked in the bathroom. But, a minority of what we've watched have suffered from these audio problems.

The content is not the newest release movies. But, I have found enough kid and family freindly stuff to have about 130 movies and tv series on my Netflix watch instantly queue. This little box has let my kids discover some fun old shows, like the Munsters, Leave it to Beaver and the A Team. We've found lot's of fun movies from the past 25 years, many a lot more recent than you might think - less than a year old.

If you are getting tired of the same old stuff on TV, I highly recommend the Roku Player for Netflix. When we do finally get a new tv in a few weeks, we will probably hook up a computer of some kind to it for watching Hulu. Combine Hulu with Netflix streaming, Netflix DVD's and BluRay, buying some shows on iTunes and finally over the air digital tv - we may soon be canceling our satellite tv subscription (I hope).