I do have one big question: I went out and bought me a Roku because of Microsoft's asinine policy of forcing me to have a Gold account if I want to stream the services I already pay for, leaving me with the decision to pay for a year of Gold, or pay once for a Roku. If they really want to make this an all-in-one entertainment unit, that's going to have to end.
Right. How many middle men are we going to have to pay?
I have a roku, but I'm buying both amazon prime and Netflix. They in turn are paying Viacom, who is paying nickelodeon.
At the end of the chain we have nickelodeon making a fraction of a cent per Dora that my kids watch.
Why can't I just point my roku at them and pay them a few dollars a year, which is more than they're getting from me now, and cut out all these middle men?
The Microsoft streaming option is worse. Microsoft adds absolutely no value to being a middle man. They just know that they currently control your device, therefore they want a cut of the action.
At least Viacom adds value by aggregating several media outlets, and Netflix adds value by providing the actual caching and streaming that makes the videos start almost instantaneously and never buffer.
Blatant money grabs.
I'm really disappointed the Xbox one is a cable box controller with an ir blaster. That's simply so backwards. Those devices have never worked completely, nevermind worked well or seamlessly. They have to keep up to date on every cable provider device and every cable provide channel lineup, and its just stupid.
It's a hack, and a bad one.
The rest of the Xbox one intrigues me, though. Time will tell.
