Digital Home Thoughts: Roku's Streaming Stick Boosts TV IQ into the Land of Smart

"Smart TVs are great and all - who doesn't want a dash of WiFi with their daily dose of reality television? - but the segment will face challenges in the market. For one, a $49 Roku LT is a much better value proposition than a $1,000+ smart TV. Secondly, the hardware moves at such a rapid pace that even with solid software updates, your smart TV will likely be outdated much sooner than you're ready to buy a new one."

There's nothing worse than a dumb TV right? Most TVs are pretty low-IQ in terms of what they can do - it's a recent development that we have TVs capable of running apps, streaming media, etc. The Roku looks like an interesting solution, but TechCrunch points out a key problem: it requires an HDMI port that supports the MHL standard, which only newer TVs do. For a product like this to be successful, it should work with the oldest, most basic HDMI port there is from years ago. Anything less than that and Roku might have a hard time selling many of these...