Roku's Netflix Player Uses Trolltech's QT Embedded Linux

Trolltech issued a press release to announce that QT Embedded Linux powers Roku's Netflix Player.

“As we developed the Netflix Player by Roku we were keenly focused on creating the best possible user experience for Netflix’s eight million-plus customers,” said Tim Twerdahl, vice president of consumer products, Roku, Inc. “Qt provided us with the tools to implement our elegant and powerful user interface quickly, providing an important time-to-market advantage.”

Comments

[Mike B]

It still confuses me that they can make a standalone linux box that works with watch it now, but Linux PC's and Mac's still can't use it....

I do wanna get one of these though :P

[Frank]

It has crossed my mind that it might not be entirely coincidental that Linux PCs and Macs aren't yet IW-ready. What better way to encourage partners and jump-start set top box development than to provide an instant market of people who are eager but have no other way to use IW?

[Chris Elving]

Mike B, there is no generally available Windows Media DRM implementation for Mac OS X or any standard Linux distribution. NXP, however, provides a Windows Media DRM implementation for their chips. The Roku box uses an NXP chip.

The Roku box can play DRM'd Windows Media files because of the NXP implementation. The fact the Roku box runs Linux is orthogonal.

[dave]

I wonder how long it takes before someone figures out a killer hack for Roku...

[generic viagra]

It still confuses me that they can make a standalone linux box that works with watch it now, but Linux PC's and Mac's still can't use it....

[generic viagra]

Mike B, there is no generally available Windows Media DRM implementation for Mac OS X or any standard Linux distribution. NXP, however, provides a Windows Media DRM implementation for their chips. The Roku box uses an NXP chip.

[Prince Rehman Manjee]

@Chris Elving. thank you that is the first time I was able to understand WHY the Roku being linux based had the ability to decode the DRM yet no one was able to find a way to recreate that. Would be nice to see if someone MIT or Purdue geek could reverse engineer the NXP Chip I/O from an old ZUNE and write a software emulator for it ;)