Logitech Revue now only $200? No! Must… remain… loyal… to… Roku!
Follow-up: I’m typing this on a Logitech Revue with Google TV. As many others have said, it’s an interesting but problematical product. For example, Amazon Instant Video requires getting into the Amazon site with Chrome, instead of having a custom player. At first it thought I had a bad Internet connection and video quality was horrible, but I seem to have fixed that by going to an SD source then back to HD. Neither Amazon Instant Video nor Netflix have surround sound. The Roku player does this fine, extracting the center and surround channels for Dolby Pro Logic from the stereo channels. I’m not hung up on having true 5.1 Dolby Digital for streaming video, Pro Logic is good enough, but knowing it can be done, and very nicely, and not having it work is annoying. Another complaint is that it doesn’t seem to be able to find the Logitech Squeezebox Server that’s in the house. This is ridiculous, being a Logitech product! The Squeezebox Radio and Squeezeplay programs do this, so why no MySqueezebox support for the Revue?
Further follow-up: I’m still not sure if Squeezebox support is built-in, but if it is the server needs to be on the same IP subnet as the Revue, which is silly. There should be an option to enter the address. Much more consistency is needed between the various video players. Having to use Amazon’s web interface is particularly annoying. I’d like the option of using either that or one like the Netflix app has. It should also be easier to edit the home menu. But still, now that I’ve been using it for a few hours, I’m seeing more of what Google was thinking, integrating with cable TV instead of cutting the cable.
There’s a big Android update coming supposedly in a couple of months, and if I keep Logitech Revue I would expect it to fix the lack of surround sound on Amazon and Netflix. At the moment I’m on the fence about keeping the Revue, whereas I never had any doubts about its audio cousin the Squeezebox Radio, or the Roku player. But now that I see it’s working well with the FiOS DVR, and I am, after all, blogging with it right now, I’ll probably hang onto it in the hopes the software improves.