Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The Netflix player from Roku seems like it could be in store for some potentially great changes in the future, some of which would force us to remove the “Netflix” from the name. We have already discussed the possibility of other services such as Hulu and YouTube becoming available on the player, however Roku has just posted the source code for the set top box, which makes this possibility a little more of a reality.

In the past VP of Consumer Products for Roku, Tim Twerdahl had already stated that even though they had a deal with Netflix, it was not exclusive and they were still able “to seek out other content providers to put their content on the Roku box.”

That statement lead to the speculation of Roku adding other services to the player, but nothing had been confirmed, and as of now we are still awaiting (and hoping) form something official. While some of the web based video services seem like an obvious choice, there is also some recent speculation that an announcement may be coming from Microsoft or Sony as well.

Currently the set top box plays the Netflix movies in a VC-1 codec, but it also has support for H.264, which offers up a lot of possible options.

Assuming other content does find its way onto the Roku box, then the $99 could prove to be well worth the money. I have said it before, but the way it stands the content coming from Netflix as of now is just not enough, and my Roku player still collects more dust from being unused.

Read [CNET]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →