Once again the FCC has given us a sneak peek of gadgets to come. Bloggers over at Wireless Goodness (via Engadget) have found listings for a Roku XD and a Netgear Roku XD. No official word on what these boxes are designed to do yet, but we can only assume that whole-home networking is part of the plan. Meanwhile, it’s interesting to see Roku team up with another hardware player. And just how crowded is the home media networking space going to get over the next few months? Start your holiday shopping lists.
P.S. Remember those Roku price cuts last week? Looks like the company wasn’t only prepping for Apple’s announcement. It was getting ready to clear inventory before the next big product launch.
NETGEAR is interesting… As far as I can tell, their previous attempts in this space (via acquisitions and licensing/partnerships) haven’t done very well. On the other hand, NETGEAR gives the Roku brand and tech exposure to a large brick & mortar retail network.
Also, I sure hope the hardware is sexier this time around. And that it’ll output 1080i to my bedroom TV… which doesn’t do 720p.
I’ve read that the Roku XR will support 1080p soon with a firmware upgrade. I’d be surprised if this new XD didn’t support that as well.
Whether that helps you or not depends on whether it will also output 1080i and whether the output resolution is manually selectable.