Dropbox Lands On Roku, Possibilities Intrigue

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With no fanfare, Dropbox has arrived in the Roku channel store. And the video playback possibilities are highly intriguing.

Dropbox is a simple way to store and share your files. And now you can bring all the photos and videos in your Dropbox straight to your TV.

While I haven’t yet taken the app for a spin, I’m envisioning a scenario where exported TiVo recordings could live… for a Plex alternative or even in conjunction with Plex, in handling those transcoding and archival duties. Hm. Those of you with Blu-ray rips may have some interesting options as well.

In reviewing my Dropbox account this morning, it appears I have 55GB available. That’s decent, but pales in comparison to Amazon’s $60/yr cloud storage plan to include unlimited storage… but doesn’t yet have an equivalent Roku app. And then there’s rumors of a new Apple TV with, once again, an app store — which I’ll need for any scenario given Apple’s stingy iCloud plans.

9 thoughts on “Dropbox Lands On Roku, Possibilities Intrigue”

  1. or you can just install the TivoToGo channel on your Plex server and use the plex app on the roku to stream right from the Tivo.

  2. “While I haven’t yet taken the app for a spin, I’m envisioning a scenario where exported TiVo recordings could live… for a Plex alternative or even in conjunction with Plex, in handling those transcoding and archival duties”

    Well, unless Roku has acquired the ability to playback MPEG2 while I wasn’t looking, you’d have to run it through Plex, no? (With the inherent PQ transcoding hit that Dave seems not to mind, but which bothers me a good deal.)

    ——

    “In reviewing my Dropbox account this morning, it appears I have 55GB available. That’s decent, but pales in comparison to Amazon’s $60/yr cloud storage plan to include unlimited storage… but doesn’t yet have an equivalent Roku app.”

    Well, yeah. There’s the rub. 55GB will let you save a bit of recordings, as long as you record everything in SD, of course.

    Dropbox is damn expensive compared to Amazon Cloud Drive. To do Dropbox, you’d have to pay $120/yr for 1TB of storage, while Amazon is $60/yr for unlimited. And even 1TB isn’t going to go very far if you want to do TiVo archiving.

    Sure, Amazon at present, with their lack of varied endpoint options, requires you to download your stuff to LAN storage before playback, but if you’re even halfway serious about TiVo archiving, putting together some cheap LAN storage won’t break the bank.

    Finally, while there is most definitely a de facto ‘personal use’ exemption to the DMCA, I still wouldn’t feel comfortable uploading decrypted TiVo recordings to the cloud without encrypting them first with my own keys. It seems to me that once you start using the cloud, you are beginning to push the line on that exemption in certain ways. Not to mention that Dropbox may well have policies like Amazon does that prohibit copyrighted material from being stored, which would mean encryption is mandatory. And once you start encrypting, the Roku Dropbox endpoint loses its functionality.

    IMHO, the best use-case-scenario for Roku Dropbox is for viewing video that you’ve personally shot, not for TiVo archiving. For personally shot video, it seems like it could be an excellent solution for the masses. TiVo backup/archiving is why god invented Amazon Cloud Drive.

  4. Bob, Al, I like the idea of have video archived in Dropbox that I can access from all sorts of endpoints in all sorts of location. Had trouble using Plex’s remote access out of the home to Android…

    Chucky, Plex can transcode TiVo files. But so do some of the utilities that pull it off the DVR. It’s not necessarily a requirement. The bigger issue is the cost of storage as you indicate. Wonder if I could cobble something together with Amazon.

  5. Interesting… TechCrunch has riffed off my post with additional detail:

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/31/dropbox-arrives-on-roku-with-an-app-for-viewing-your-personal-photos-and-movies/

    1) Sarah Perez took it for a spin and it would only play videos (of various formats) for 14-15 minutes. So this may be limited to personal videos.
    2) She wonders if this might be part of a broader Dropbox video initiative. Might Carousel expand to include video? Or a new video-specific offering? Hm!

  6. Dave, i dont think you understand the power of this TivoToGo plugin. this channel installed on the plex server, will allow you to download and decrypt the tivo file to any folder you want. you can specify a drobpox folder and add that folder to your plex library. having the video file in essentially two locations accessible via a plex client with its nice metadata or dropbox.

    the plugin will also let you MRS inside plex clients that support channels directly from the tivo. better than a tivo stream with the tivo app. the iphone plex app with this plugin streams in hd quality over lte or wifi, bypassing the stupid tivo stream proxy.

    this has also been my defacto roku tivo client. fire up plex on the roku and i can browse everything on the tivo.

    https://github.com/tivoguy/TiVoToGo.bundle

  7. You’re right, I didn’t have the complete picture. I really need to replace that desktop computer I unloaded a few months ago to try that MRS out. That opens some interesting options. Does the Roku TV have a Plex client with channel support? Was thinking of putting one in the kitchen, where I’d rather avoid set-tops and don’t have Ethernet nor coax. Hm.

  9. Yes, but there may be some people who want to manipulate video without Plex in the mix at all. My personal goal is always fewer services. Plex probably takes precedence over Dropbox for most, but like I said I haven’t had good luck piping things outside the home natively. (I have PlexPass.) Sort of a moot point in regards to Dropbox given Sarah’s testing today, tho…

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