Nice to see Roku back and how about hooking up with Netflix in the announcement of a $100 set top box that streams free movies (for Netflix subscribers) to the living room.

Instead of wading into a losing battle over cheap downloads and rentals (see Vudu, BlockBuster, AppleTV, Google, etc., which charge for each movie), we now see somebody getting the magic four-letter word right -- "free." That's what I'm talking about!

Of course, the service isn’t really free. Users have to buy the $100 box, and continue to keep a Netflix subscription active ($18/month). There are 10,000 movies available on on the box, which is significantly less than the 100,000 or so titles on Netflix’s DVD mailing service (and it’s old titles, not new releases). And that's a lot!

To read more about it, visit "Bits" at The New York Times.

]]>