Brightest Young Things

A lot of us over here at BYT are Netflix junkies.  To get you up to speed:

Oldest news: Netflix offers limited content to stream for free over the web with an existing subscription

Older news: Netflix partners with Roku to sell a wireless set top box to easily stream that same content on your TV

Old news: Roku goes HD + a number of other devices add Netflix streaming capability

As an early adopter of the Roku box, I've been a strong proponent of it.  Some geeks out there argued with me that they can just output from their laptop to their TV for free, but I still think the Roku box is a better choice.  First of all it's only $100 people.  Also, it's only about the size of a stack of 4 CD's, it's wireless, it has digital and HDMI out, and setup takes about 30 seconds.  You don't have to mess around with video modes or hooking up cables or not being able to use your laptop while watching.  Plus there is a remote.  Oh, and if you have a room with no cable hookup or DVD player or whatever, this is a cool little box to throw anywhere.

But you may not even have to buy anything as a bunch of existing devices are now adding support for Netflix streaming, including Tivo HD, Xbox 360, and some Blu-Ray DVD players.  Basically you might already be able to easily do Netflix streaming on your TV without even knowing it.

Caveat: there are still only a fraction of titles in the Netflix library that are available to stream.  Right now I have 489 DVDs in my regular queue, 200 of those are available to stream.  A lot of new releases/blockbusters are not available.  If you don't already have a Netflix subscription, streaming content would not be the reason to join alone, but the combo of streaming plus physical DVD's though is totally worth it.

Ok, so one day I woke up and now my Roku supports HD (it updated itself overnight).  The picture quality looks great (720p), it queues up movies really fast, and it's easy to tell which content is in HD and which is not.  The only downside is it's not in Dolby Digital 5.1, even though there are optical outs on the Roku box.  Pro Logic II does a pretty good job, but, we still don't have a perfect alternative to DVD yet except when it comes to documentaries and old shit.  Supposedly it's not coming anytime soon either.  Oh well.

Here is a list of a few things in my queue that turned into HD automagically:

Severance
The Office: Season 4
John Waters: This Filthy World
Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?
Quid Pro Quo
Stand and Deliver
Star Trek: Season 1
Independent Lens: The Atom Smashers
Bigger, Stronger, Faster
The Devil Came on Horseback
2 Days in Paris
Confessions of a Superhero
Eraserhead

and a handful of others

Look for the little (HD) box next to the rating to know which is which. 

Here is a handy page to see all the available HD content on Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/WiHD

and some additional links:

Roku: http://www.roku.com/
Roku Forums: http://forums.rokulabs.com/
Geek info on the encoding specs: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10102284-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crav
Endgadget shootout of devices: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/19/do-not-time-netflix-hd-streaming-shootout/