Hack a Day » netflix

Netflix Player source code released

Eliot — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:30:00 +0000

The Netflix Player continues to gain in popularity. Roku has finally released the GPL code for their Netflix Player. Just today Forbes published that Roku would roll out a software update allowing it to stream from other online services. The diminutive device has no internal storage and just enough RAM to buffer the stream. Many have wondered how a Linux box is handling the DRM; this is purely a feature of the NXP PNX8935 processor being used. While waiting for the code, hackers have already popped the box open to see what’s inside. We found [hokiokie7]‘s photos of the internals on Roku’s forum. The only really interesting thing we’ve seen so far is that the WiFi is on a daughter card that plugs into the USB. That should make it much easier to support other devices, if users ever manage to get into the system.

UPDATE: [mbailey] points out in the comments that he was able to telnet to the device.

Streaming Netflix to the Xbox 360

Eliot — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:50:00 +0000

We were just as excited as anyone when we heard about Roku’s Linux based Netflix Player, but not being ones to spend money on hardware, even $99, we’d much rather use something that’s laying around that’s not living up to its full potential. Lifehacker has a guide for using vmcNetflix to stream Watch Instantly movies to the Xbox 360. vmcNetflix is a Media Center plugin. When the 360 was originally released, you could only get Media Center by buying a new PC, now it’s included with Vista, meaning people might actually use it.

Media streamers: buy or build?

Juan Aguilar — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

The market is flooded with new media streamers, but which one is for you? One of the cheapest and easiest options is the unambiguously titled Netflix Player. With an active account, the Netflix Player streams movies and television shows from their online library (currently around 10,000 videos). It connects to the internet via 802.11b/g WiFi or ethernet, but delivers low-quality video if your connection speed is less than 1Mbps. It costs $99 plus at least $8.95/mo for a Netflix subscription. It runs Linux so hopefully we’ll see some hacks for it soon like we did with previous Roku products. A fine device, if you want to stream movies and nothing else, but if you want to stream data from other sources, like a network, usb hard drive, or (gasp) bittorrent, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

A friend of ours recently purchased the Popcorn Hour. This set-top box can stream video from a network or usb hard drive using practically any codec or container format, can be configured to download torrents with an internal hard drive, and supports a number of web services including YouTube and Flickr. The Popcorn Hour is at least a fair value at $180. The downside? It doesn’t come with a hard drive or WiFi.

The lack of internal storage might be deal-breaker for you; if so, the Myka could be a better fit. In addition to coming in 80, 160, and 500GB flavors, this device opts out of all proprietary content delivery services in favor of open ones. It has strong synergy with BitTorrent.com built in, downloading directly from it or a number of other torrent services like ISOHunt. Prices range from $299 to $459.

If you’re like us, you’d rather build your own Linux media streamer. All you need is a spare computer. Cheap graphics cards with component out are fairly easy to acquire. For a frontend, you could use DVR software like MythTV, but that might be overkill. Check out the Linux port of XBMC which is what the Mac version of XBMC we covered previously is based on.