Looks like the good folks at Roku aren’t phoning it in this holiday season as they’ve pushed a modest update to their media streamer lineup ($60 and up). Highlights include the promised 1080p support for prior generation XR units and a variety of Hulu Plus optimizations for everyone. The complete 2.9-b1509 changelog can be found on their forum, or you can just run with my excerpt:
- Enabled 1080P support for XR units.
- Hulu application optimizations for quicker trick play navigation and start of playback.
- Fixed playback of poorly interleaved video streams which resulted in rebuffers around the 25 minute mark in Roku Newscaster programs.
- Fixed a remaining case of playback at the incorrect aspect ratio.
- Fixed a subtle audio playback issue in UFC streaming.
Got the update and switched to 1080p in the display settings, but I can’t seem to find any 1080p content. Is there any?
Morac, Right now the choices are limited; Vimeo, YouTube and content via the USB port are about the only choices I am aware of. Check out the Roku Forums for more potential options.
http://forums.roku.com/
I tried YouTube and Vimeo (videos marked 1080P) and neither was in 1080p on my XR HD connected to an Onkyo receiver via HDMI to a Sony Bravia 1080P set. I haven’t tried USB though.
Has anyone confirmed that Vimeo and YouTube actually work in 1080p?
@Morac,
I can confirm that Vimeo does work in 1080p. However, I am using a LG Blu-Ray Networked player to access Vimeo, not a Roku device.
Roku Newscaster programs still have major problems. I can’t get past the 30 minute mark on “Meet the Press” – it rebuffers and gets stuck around 3/4 of the bar. When I discovered the PodTV channel and saw the same programs, I tried there – while it still rebuffers, it actually continues playing eventually.
I have a ROKU XDS and unlike what Roku advertises, it cannot play 1080p content. I have tried this in Sony Bravia TVs and Samsung TVs. You get a blank screen when playing 1080p content in Roku.