2013-08-07, 20:07
I'm glad the Roku works great for your needs. But, it's definitely not more functional than XBMC for me, though. Here's why:
-- The whole purpose that I'm using XBMC is that I don't want cable. But what I do want, just as much as streaming, is live local TV (from an antenna) and especially PVR functions (recording, timeshifting, and EPG). We get 52+ broadcast channels where I live, so it's a pretty good selection. Roku can't handle this as far as I can tell, but XBMC can do this quite well.
-- My family uses the computer as a video game console. And I know Roku can do some simple games, but I can jump straight from XBMC into Steam and have any kind of game installable on the computer ready to play.
-- My kids use the "TV computer" for schoolwork as well, and I have all the necessary programs linked to XBMC. It gives us a perfect way for them to work on school projects while allowing us to easily monitor what they are doing online. Can't do this with Roku.
-- We still have a lot of movies on DVD, because if this Amazon bungle has taught me anything, it's that you cannot rely on streaming from the cloud because it's at the mercy of the whims and outages of another entity. If a movie is good enough to purchase, I will only purchase it in physical media. Streaming is only good for rentals and content included with the services, in my opinion. XBMC runs DVD's straight from the computer's drive, which Roku doesn't have, and saves me from having to have yet another device on another TV input.
Yeah, I can have all this in multiple devices, but I really don't want to have to mess with a bunch of hardware hanging off my TV, a bunch of different interfaces, and bunch of different remotes, and switching inputs all the time to do something else. I just want one interface that runs the whole thing.
As for managing addons, maybe I'm not using the right ones or something. I rarely have to mess with broken addons, and I never mess with updating addons (XBMC does that automatically).
Right now, XBMC does everything I want a device to do. I just wish it had a better Amazon plugin than the one that launches a web browser.
-- The whole purpose that I'm using XBMC is that I don't want cable. But what I do want, just as much as streaming, is live local TV (from an antenna) and especially PVR functions (recording, timeshifting, and EPG). We get 52+ broadcast channels where I live, so it's a pretty good selection. Roku can't handle this as far as I can tell, but XBMC can do this quite well.
-- My family uses the computer as a video game console. And I know Roku can do some simple games, but I can jump straight from XBMC into Steam and have any kind of game installable on the computer ready to play.
-- My kids use the "TV computer" for schoolwork as well, and I have all the necessary programs linked to XBMC. It gives us a perfect way for them to work on school projects while allowing us to easily monitor what they are doing online. Can't do this with Roku.
-- We still have a lot of movies on DVD, because if this Amazon bungle has taught me anything, it's that you cannot rely on streaming from the cloud because it's at the mercy of the whims and outages of another entity. If a movie is good enough to purchase, I will only purchase it in physical media. Streaming is only good for rentals and content included with the services, in my opinion. XBMC runs DVD's straight from the computer's drive, which Roku doesn't have, and saves me from having to have yet another device on another TV input.
Yeah, I can have all this in multiple devices, but I really don't want to have to mess with a bunch of hardware hanging off my TV, a bunch of different interfaces, and bunch of different remotes, and switching inputs all the time to do something else. I just want one interface that runs the whole thing.
As for managing addons, maybe I'm not using the right ones or something. I rarely have to mess with broken addons, and I never mess with updating addons (XBMC does that automatically).
Right now, XBMC does everything I want a device to do. I just wish it had a better Amazon plugin than the one that launches a web browser.
