I'm taking the liberty of reposting this comment and question of Steve C.'s from an earlier thread:

"... for the playback of HD on HD capable displays, I've been keeping my eye on the developments with the Roku HD1000. Despite the promise that the V Inc. Bravo D3 may hold, it appears the Roku may be more mature and capable with HD10 material...... the Roku board has some posts from Roku owners who've successfully used it with HD10 footage. There's an upgrade to the Roku's software which apparently is set to unlock more of the unit's MPEG2 decoder chip capabilities.

Anyone here know for certain whether the Roku really does deliver for HD10 owners? ..."

No-one answered Steve at the time, and enquiring minds would still like to know - HAS anyone here played back HDV footage on the Roku ?

Here's a link, for those unfamiliar with the player:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000DH8HH/002-9248132-8060801?v=glance

Graham,

Here's my take.

I had looked at this earlier and decided it really didn't do everything needed. While it appears to be possible to play HD10 material, it looks like you still need a computer - if nothing more than the hard drive. Playing material (say m2t files) from a DVD would require a computer type DVD player.

Since you still need a PC, why not let the PC do everything? My thought is to put the $300 toward a home theater PC.

The m2t files are still a little large (and require too high a data rate) to work from DVDs. I see the real answer (at least today) as WM9. I've played with it some, and I think two hours of 720p should easily fit on one DVD.

I'm beginning to think about a HTPC with basic HD, 2.8GHz P4, DVD player, and not much else - maybe an HDTV tuner card.

Am I missing something?

well, i've gotta say: wow again!

i did get a D-Link DSM-320 and a Roku HD1000 a few days ago to see about their video playback capabilities...the DSM-320 is nice in many ways, but definitely SD (component SD, mind you, but SD resolution).

the HD1000 on the other hand, while still a bit tweaky, does output the HDV streams right out of the box...all you have to do is rename the extanesion to *.ts, and off you go...in amazing quality...as a matter of fact, i've compiled some of my timelaps photography to 1080P, and it displays them full speed in breathtaking quality...as good or better than the HD10U's converter.

the reason i am experimenting with this, is that i am building high quality video loops, each maybe 5-10 seconds long, and since the HD1000 does seemless 1080P looping, there is little i can complain about...sure, the interface is still very basic, and transport controls are primitive, but the converters in that thing - both audio and video - are unbelievable...i pop in my 2GB CF card (can be had for a little over 100 bucks right now), the HD1000 sees them right away, push play, and be amazed... i have the HD10U capture directory mapped to the HD1000, and can step through my recordings from the day...wowiewow!

gotta play with it some more, but this is amazing...the ATI Xilleon processor in it is capable of playing 2 1080P streams or 8 SD streams in real-time...not even my 3GHz Matrox workstation can do that...$299 is still a lot, but soon they'll be down to 150 i am sure, and then they make for great preview stations.

that's my report from the front lines.