Gadget Of The Week: Roku

As the Madman made clear last week, Roku's Netflix set top box is a miniature orgy of instant gratification: Netflix subscribers (above the $9 mark, I believe) can now shell out a humble $99 for Roku, a device that brings streaming video straight to your television without any mucking about with iTunes, Amazon's Unbox, or Internet Explorer (where Netflix's exploratory streaming offerings have lived for the past year or so).

A limited selection of material and imperfect video performance keep Roku's initial reception cautious, but the price is dirt cheap and immensely competitive with Apple TV. And as NeonMadman pointed out, Roku arrives with an enormous pre-existing customer base to help swell its actual hardware install base in what could be record time.

Most of the complaints against Roku aren't new problems for television technology, and considering it's taken TiVo the better part of a decade to get its AV feature set together, options such as near-DVD quality video (or better, hopefully), surround sound, and UI improvements are already pretty advanced demands for a dirt-cheap box that's less than a week old. I may not snatch up a Roku right away, but I'll be keeping my eye on it for a good long while.