Roku XR adds 802.11n, USB port and a longing for something more

Hard though it may be to believe, the Roku has been rockin' the lives of Netflix fanatics for nearly 1.5 years, and if you were thinking an updated version was in order, you'd be on the right train of thought. Images delivered to us today prove that a refreshed iteration is on the horizon, with the Roku XR (model number N1101) retaining the same overall look and feel as the original but adding in niceties like 802.11n wireless support, a USB socket (presumably for loading up media locally) and a 2.5A power input (as opposed to 1.5A). You can also see that the dedicated reset button has been yanked and the bundled remote is exactly the same; in fact, we're told that the old remote controls the Roku XR sans issue. There's no word yet on a price or release date, but we're guessing we'll know significantly more prior to Christmas. Oh, and yeah -- you're not the only one thinking this is quite the underwhelming update, but hey, maybe it'll street for $9.99.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 19th 2009 11:19PM]

Thanks murph,

Why doesn't netflix brand their own box? I think it would gain a lot more traction that something called "roku"

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 20th 2009 9:12AM]

Probably b/c Netflix isn't in the hardware business and doesn't want to be. Roku is a separate company from netflix. Roku has been around for a number of years and has had a number of other digital media hardware products on the market (mostly audio I believe). They were actually founded by the former founder of ReplayTV. Netflix invested money in Roku and they developed this box, but they are still separate companies. The Roku box now has a couple of content channels on it besides netflx:

Amazon VOD
MLB.com (live baseball games)

And they are supposed to add the following content channels sometime this year:

Blip
Mediafly
TWiT
Revision3
Pandora
YouTube
Flickr