Hi,
Thank you very much for this reference; we didn't know about the BrightSign devices.
It seems to be a very interesting option, although it could be hard to scale this to mass distribution, since these units don't seem to be designed for residential end-users. I don't know about their cost, but most probably they will be much more expensive than the DVPs STBs.
In our opinion, the Roku STB, based on the NXP STB225 system, is a great unit which could be sold in the US as a "Netflix-box", and also re-branded or white-labeled to be sold outside the US -where Netflix, and most other Internet live streaming services don't work-, as a separate solution.
I understand the developers might want to stick to the Roku-Netflix "partnership", but they are missing a great business opportunity for customers outside the US. All it would take for them would be to customize a parallel firmware (even without completely re-imaging the unit with a different one), allowing certain customizations such as being able to stop the unit trying to access Netflix/Roku servers, and providing an easier way for integrators/providers to program MPEG4 on-demand channels (without the need to build an app). They could perfectly charge for this "extra" firmware and still be competitive with other STBs manufacturers that have already opened their OS plattform (i.e. Amino).
