I have an older one of these. Any valid reason to buy a newer one? Especially: it will work more quickly- less buffering et al?
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I went to their site and they were pretty vague. On the surface, looks lime a console, PS3, XBox360, or a WiiU will cover what they have to offer, although the consoles will cost you more. Consoles =<$, but the kids/grandkids will enjoy the console much more than the Roku.

If you have no interest in gaming whatsoever, a new Roku looks like the way to go.
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I upgraded my dad to the Roku 2 last year, he wanted it just to be able to have subtitles on movies. He really likes it, and gets tons of use out of it. My only suggestion is to order from anyone other than directly from Roku. I had an issue with my order and their customer service is by far the worst I have ever dealt with. I ended up returning everything back to Roku, and ordering from Amazon.
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I have the original Roku from Amazon. It works wonders.

The buffering issue you are experiencing is from your internet connection. Many factors are incorporated into that, be it the speed of your connection coming to the house, the age of your modem, and last but not least: the router. I personally have Roadrunner Cable coming into my house, and I just recently upgraded my whole set-up 6 months back, and upgraded my cable plan to their better plan for free [From 10/1Mbps to 20/2Mbps] a month ago.

My modem originally was a Motorola SurfBoard 5100 from April 2001, and my router was a Linksys WRT-54G from the same time frame.. I upgraded to the Motorola SurfBoard 6141 [Got mine for $130, they're now $110 on Amazon], with an ASUS RT-N66U Router [Got it for $200, they're now $160 on Amazon]. After this, the buffering issues ended completely. After a few months, I was offered the upgraded plan. Now, I couldn't dream of living the old set-up -- It was like going from 28k dial-up to the first-gen home cable.

I realize this may be a costly upgrade, but all of these items are DOCSIS 3.0 compatible and IPv6 Ready [Nerd speak: basically means the future of the internet -- in broad terms. If you know what I'm talking about, perfect.. If not: Eventually, and by that I mean soon, the current IP system is going to run out -- The 192.168.1.1 you may be accustomed to is going to become more like 2001:0db8:85a3:0042:0000:8a2e:0370:7334]

Needless to say, my Roku runs flawless now [After my modem/router upgrade, I didn't even need to upgrade my cable plan -- that was just a bonus]. No buffering issues, and instead of getting like 1Mbps and lagging at times, I get in excess of 10Mbps, so the Roku now just shows 10Mbps+.
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So the issue is not so much my Roku as the other parts of the system. I kinda figured as much- nowhere on the Roku site does it actually say that the new Rokus improve stability/speed. I use it almost exclusively to watch Netflix movies, and listen to some radio and Pandora.

I am using a modem provided by TWC- Motorola SB 5101 and my router is a Dlink Airplus Extreme G. TWC charges me $3 a month for the modem, might be time to upgrade. My download speed is in the low 20s.
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I upgraded mine and there really isn't that much difference. The shows do start playing a little faster since it starts playing at a lower quality then catches up pretty quickly to HD. Other than that I can't really see why I did it now.
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Purchase your own gear for sure. It pays for itself. I have 11 years on my own gear, they charge $5 to rent a month over here. In 2 years it'll pay for itself. If you have Amazon Prime, free 2 day shipping. I could probably send you a free trial. PM your e-mail if interested.
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