Okay, Roku box and PlayOn, as promised if not a day late.
We'll start with PlayOn. What makes PlayOn useful (if you can call it that) is the fact that it allows a Roku/Wii/PS3/Xbox360/iPad/any other assortment of "media devices" that are restricted to only receive what media conglomerates deem allowable to watch that are heavily restricted otherwise from what normal and regular desktop computer users are allowed to watch. (A great example of this is the difference in content availability between Hulu and Hulu Plus.) You're probably asking yourself why the differential is made, it's all internet video being displayed on what's basically a computer appliance. Well, that's where big media gets its panties in a wad. They're computer appliances attached to a television, not a computer monitor (not that there's much differential between those these days anymore either beyond a tuner), and as such, big media screams bloody murder about advertising and subscription revenue loss of streaming media being available on
televisions. Yes, I know... it only makes sense if you sustain enough brain damage to be able to actually watch and enjoy America's Got Talent, let alone think it's a good idea to greenlight.
As for stuff like iPads and phones? Well... frequently, those are just viewed as cash cow devices and second class citizens, so they just get lumped in with the TV devices, but I digress...
What makes PlayOn suck is that it's literally giving you no more content to watch on these devices than what you can already access for
free on a desktop or laptop computer for a price premium. In fact, that's
exactly how it works! You have to install their media server/remote desktop client on your desktop/laptop computer and have that computer running in order to allow your other device access to that free content. So in addition to paying extra for free content just to get it to your television, you're having to run your computer as a middle-man media server on top of it. Yes, the more you understand the logic and stupidity of all this, it's natural to desire to partake of it even less.
Now, the Roku Box, Apple TV, GoogleTV, Boxee Box, and other sealed media consumption boxes of its ilk. These devices are primarily designed to provide a-la-carte
paid programming from same said big media companies to your television, but you'll notice they still control what you have access to with an iron fist and refuse to provide anything digitally to your
television in any time frame that might undermine their immediate cable and advertising revenue streams. It's the promise of a-la-carte cable programming being fulfilled in a way that keeps many people from dropping cable and instead winds up becoming a trojan pay-per-view scheme to sucker people into doing pay-per-view who normally aren't stupid enough to do pay-per-view through the cable company.
As for the less sucky nature of the Roku box? This is what puts it head and shoulders (as much as a locked down media platform can be, anyway) above the rest, and this is where the "over 350 channels" comes from: they support the ability for people to roll their own content channels. Roku doesn't particularly offer any more crappy big media content for viewing than the other guys, and yes they convert some of the free desktop content that is deemed acceptable to be put on television as suddenly requiring paid monthly subscriptions to access as well, but they can inflate the numbers of what's available to watch artificially by providing amateur and pirated content as well from sites like Justin.tv. Just like regular cable, "350 'channels', and nothing but crap on," only this time, the majority of the crap offered is produced and distributed by 14 year olds instead of Hollywood. Mixed bag, eh? You bet it is. And it's hard to justify spending $70 on a box for the living room just to only be able to watch TED and Kahn Academy videos for free.
I mentioned alternatives to this in the
communications thread and here. The neat thing about Android is the proliferation of web browsers like Dolphin HD versus Apple's browser lockdown and the availability of Flash, so clever people can use an Android device to fool websites into thinking you're on a desktop computer and display desktop media content. Thus the potential beauty of the $50 VIA APC running Android. Alternatively, if you're not opposed to a bit of hacking, it's also why I recommend re-purposing an older desktop or laptop into a homebrew HTPC using XBMC versus buying a dedicated device.
That add some light to the subject?