I’ve always been interested in ways of getting my large music collection off my computer and into a decent component stereo setup. Throughout college it was consisted of running a 20 foot mini jack to RCA’s cable from my sound card to the stereo inputs. After college the mini jack to RCA cable just didn’t cut it when I had a real office with the computer and a real living room with the stereo setup. Enter the need for a music streaming device. After a short period of research I selected the Roku setup. It seemed to support everything I wanted to do and was capable of running digital outs along with the standard RCA. I did like the concept of Sonos, especially their color remote. Unfortunately their setup did not include any digital outs (even at the time of writing this article).

I picked up the M1000 from a local Fry’s for about $200 (US). The $200 step up to the M2000 for a larger screen was a little steep for my liking. Sometimes I do wish I had spent the extra dough, but for the most part the smaller screen works out just fine. The vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) is very bright and easy to read and it is not subjected to a max viewing angle as an LCD screen is. Depending on the software controlling the machine there are multiple options for displaying song and other setting’s info (more on that later). Setup was pretty easy using it’s wired RJ-45 connection. Using the M1000’s setup menu I was able to quickly search for firmware updates and install them. The simplest way to get music playing was with iTunes. I turned on music sharing and within several seconds I was able to choose that shared resource from the Roku. From there I was able to browse via title, artist and all the usual methods, including any of the playlists I had designated as shareable. For most people iTunes and Roku will probably be the easiest with the quickest setup time.

Next I tried to get the Roku onto my wireless network using the included 802.11b compact flash WiFi card. Once again this was fairly simple and easy as long as wireless security was off. When I tried with WEP on it took several tries to enter the correct hexadecimal WEP Key. While this could be attribute to user error, it is definitely time consuming trying to enter the proper Key without a keyboard, using only the remote control. When I finally was able to connect wirelessly everything seemed to work well. Every now and then the music would hiccup slightly when the wireless connection was weak.

The only one fault with the iTunes based server was that I could not stream the large collection of Apple Lossless encoded music. So I turned to another 3rd party provider, Slim Devices. Their primary product is a streaming music device such as the Roku, and I encourage checking it out. More importantly for myself was that they also write the “slimserver” software which is compatible with the Roku and will stream the Apple Lossless music files. The slimserver interface is entirely webbased, meaning it is possible to install on a remote/headless machine and control it from another computer. My experience is that slimserver takes a little longer to get up and running than with iTunes. But within several minutes of installation I was able to stream the lossless files to the Roku. Lately I have some problems initializing the Roku and the slimserver software, but they have released a new update which will hopefully take care of these problems. I plan on setting up a headless linux-based media server and running the slimserver on there which will also hopefully increase initialization time. One last point is that I highly recommend running a the wired network interface if you plan on going the streaming lossless route to ensure the Roku’s buffer is consistently full.

Overall I feel the Roku M1000 is an excellent product and is well supported by the Roku Company. The company is also a large supporter of open source software, it devotes and entire link to developers that has information on how to interface with the device, even IR information for a remote control.