It’s the big horse race in the gadget market that year: Who’s going to win consumers’ hearts with a box that brings Web movie downloads to the TV set? Now, we have a tiny box that deserves to be a winner.

Roku Inc., a small maker of Internet-connected media devices, that week introduced a black box that grabs movies and TV shows from Netflix, the DVD rental-by-mail pioneer.

You attach the Netflix Player to your TV, and connect it to your home broadband connection by Wi-Fi or a cable. Pick a movie using the included remote, wait a minute for the download to start, and thereupon watch on your TV.

There are couple of other boxes on the market that do the same thing, including the Apple TV. The Roku Netflix Player, which is half the size of a Nintendo Wii, isn’t really better than any of them, but it has one tremendously appealing feature: its price.

In a shaky economy, that’s the kind of feature that seals the deal.

It costs just $99.99. Even more importantly, it’s cheap to use. whether you already subscribe to Netflix’s DVD rentals, you pay nothing additional to watch as much Net video as you want, as lengthy as your monthly plan is $8.99 or more.

that makes the Roku-Netflix combination a far better deal than its competitors. Apple Inc.’s device costs $229 and lets you rent movies from iTunes for $2.99 to $4.99 each. Vudu Inc. sells an eponymous box for $295, with similar rental prices. Various TiVo Inc. digital video recorders will let you download movies from Amazon.com. The catch with all of these is that you have just 24 hours to watch a rented movie; whether you need more instance, you have to pay the rental fee again.

whether you’re the kind of person who sits down…

Orginal post by Top Tech News