Amazon and Roku seem to make it hard to delete a Roku or other device from your Amazon account and most people say to go to the My Digital library and remove the device. However at time of writing (March 2012) this advice is incorrect.
Instead sign into your amazon account and then go to https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/pin
You will have your roku or other device listed, select delete and then confirm the deletion. Seconds later you will be able to register your roku with Amazon again. Of course if you don’t have access to the original Amazon account then you will need to factory reset the Roku first.
I went to use my roku tonight and found it not responsive – the light on the front of the device wasn’t even on so I had to hard power it off and back on again.
After the reboot it was unable to connect to the wireless so I had to run through the wireless setup again. After clicking next all the way through it was able to connect. I then went back to the firmware settings to check for an update and sure enough the new firmware has been released.
For us Netflix users, the long awaited feature of being able to browse and add movies to the queue from the Roku is now available.
So far it looks nicer – the sideways scroll through the queue is a lot smoother and faster and it seems to make much better use of the screen space – the movie picture seems to be bixer and the information on the screen looks cleaner (although I don’t think there’s quite as much information displayed as there used to be – although I could be wrong)
Pressing the down button shows new arrivals – so there is no need to search, you can just pick the ones you want.
I’m not sure, but it looks like there are more tv series out there – at least I’ve stumbled across Monty Python and Blackadder 😉
Even the search function is pretty quick – as you start typing in the letters using a 6*6 grid for the letters and numbers, the available titles auto complete down the right hand side. The search is wild carded, so entering gent will find Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The League of Gentlemen.
Looks like a great upgrade and this device gets better and better.
A while back I applied for a coupon that would give me $40 off a digital tv converter box as the US is switching off analogue broadcasts on 17th Feb 2009. This is similar to the switch off that is happening in the UK at the moment but seems to be a staged process as opposed to one definitive date.
Anyway, the coupon arrived and I finally got around to going shopping for one. The coupon is for $40 off selected (low end) converter boxes but you would be very lucky to get one for $40. Most of them seem to be $49 or $59.
I went to BestBuy this afternoon and got the Insignia NS-DXA1-APT. About 10 minutes after getting it home I had 11 REALLY clear tv channels. The difference between tv on the standard rabbit ears aerial and the aerial with the digital converter is amazing. The picture is now very similar to the quality of the picture you’d get with cable.
A lot of the channels are broadcast in wide screen though, and then some of the commercials are broadcast in 4:3 format so you end up with a small picture in the middle of the screen with black bars all around it – however pushing the zoom button on the remote brings it to full screen (but you will loose some of each side of the picture).
The remote also has the ability to turn off the tv if it is supported (there are about 45 different makes supported) and there is a auto shutoff option too.
One other feature is analogue passthrough – by turning off the unit, the tv will continue to receive the analogue broadcasts which could be useful if your stations are still broadcasting in analogue only.
There is also a basic EPG guide that shows you whats on now and next – better than nothing but nowhere near as sophisticated as the EPG you’d get with cable.
If you are still using over the air transmissions for your tv then I’d highly recommend you apply for a coupon and get a box now rather than wait until Feb and this unit is well recommended.
Several people have asked me how to download videos from Youtube and unfortunately KissYouTube is no longer working. However, GiveAway of The Day has Wondershare available for free (today only) that will allow you to do just this. Naturally this should only be used to download public domain content.
A couple of people commented on my post about no ads with NBC on the web site stating that they got ads. I did a bit of testing tonight and with the NoScript firefox extension enabled, which should be used for safe browsing anyway, and doubleclick.net disabled, which should also be disabled for privacy reasons, then the adverts do not get displayed.
I missed The Office last week so I checked out nbc.com to see how the video online would be. Due to the fact that it uses a flash player I thought it would be a good idea to use Internet Explorer for the browser. All went well until after the second (annoying) advert break. I don’t mind sitting through adverts, but when it is the same advert played at every break it gets really annoying. So after the 2 break IE refused to carry on and play chapter 3 and more. I switched over to firefox to see if that would work and was surprised to see that it would actually play. The real bonus is that for some reason firefox skips the adverts so I can watch the whole thing without them – somehow I don’t think that is what NBC had in mind 🙂
It’s the “big game” tonight (what a stupid idea to not allow people to refer to it as the SuperBowl) and I was really looking forward to going round to some friends from church for a party. We actually got on the road and drove a couple of miles before turning around to go back home as the snow was starting to settle a bit too much on the road and we really didn’t fancy the drive back home afterwards in the snow. So I’ve still yet to actually go to a SuperBowl party.
So we got home and watched the first half. Most of the commercials were pretty good but I thought it was a bit crazy that there have been coca-cola adverts at every break, but it was the Pepsi half time show, with Prince (who seems to be no longer referred to as the artist formerly known as Prince). Although I don’t like Prince’s music I did prefer it to the Rolling Stones from last year.
I really wish the tv companies would increase their fees for advertising so that the politicians couldn’t afford to run their stupid mud slinging adverts which tell you absolutely nothing about what they will be able to do for the voter and that contradict each other. Some of the advert breaks are getting ridiculous with the number of political ads running one after each other. If the kids tv channels weren’t already running their christmas adverts I’d be watching the kids channels for the next week.
Politicians – grow up, stop slagging off the people you may well have to work with and get on with your job of improving the country and letting us know what you are going to be doing for the next few years.
Well 4400 has just finished season 2 and a very weird ending it was too. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered (as a good series end should) but I do wonder what the directors were smoking to dream up the “Hello Shawn” comment. It was good to hear Swiitchfoot’s This Is Your Life played in full over the ending too.
Kristen and I were watching the Hall of Fame football game last night on TV when an advertisment came on featuring Johnny Vaughan. He is hosting My Kind of Town on ABC Sunday, August 14 at 9/8c. We’re looking forward to it as we used to really enjoy the Big Breakfast when he did it. Wonder if Denise will put in an appearance……