Roku is a new startup in the USA who has been making a lot of waves with their HD streaming media players. Roku lets Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand users stream HD videos on the cheap, with millions of titles.
Roku has now released two new models, the $130 Roku HD-XR that adds faster 802.11n Wi-Fi, and the cheap Roku SD, playing standard definition video at a rock-bottom price of $80.
That lower-end Roku SD is an excellent value, especially because most of Netflix’s and Amazon’s current offerings only stream in standard definition. You’ll also sacrifice an HDMI connector and optical audio in that Roku SD player, which might not make much difference, given that there’s no HD playback involved.
On the higher end, the Roku HD-XR offers another tantalizing feature in addition to its faster wireless-N Wi-Fi capability: there’s a USB port on the back, but currently it does nothing. Roku says as soon as the unit’s firmware is updated, that port will allow you to play video files from an external hard disk. This we gotta see. Let’s hope Roku includes support for lots of video types.
Previously here on Crenk we have discussed the topic of watching movies online without downloading anything, but we have just come across a new startup that has tried to solve this issues but in an illegal way. The site in question is MovieWatchList. MoveWatchList allows anyone from anywhere in the world to stream, watch and download pretty much any movie.
The site itself has a very simple layout in which allows users to quickly view some of the most popular movies and even search by category. It seems as though all the movies on the site are copyright infringing. The movies themselves aren’t the best quality, mainly because they are filmed by someone with a handy cam instead of being an official release. However, watching these movies is of course fine for the users.
The movies seem to have been uploaded to Megavideo as they are all using their video player. I’m quite surprised the movie companies don’t go after sites like Megavideo who allow anyone to distribute freely copyrighted content.
Overall if you are looking for a place to watch pretty much any movie for free without downloading any software, and your not too worried about the sound quality, then MovieWatchList is for you. Plus also remember that you can download anything from the site for free!
