In searching for the perfect solution, I came across this great resource. It let me filter a wide field of competitors and narrow it down based on my requirements.
There were none.
A Boxee Box came close. However, you couldn't customize the streaming experience like you could on a Roku. It came with a fixed set of popular streaming services (Netflix, Vudu, YouTube) but that was it. Furthermore, the Boxee box had undergone a revision between the publishing of that matrix and when I was looking for a box to replace my cable TV service. The new boxee touts itself as the first cloud DVR (for a $9.99 a month fee in limited areas - not available where I live). Essentially, instead of recording your over-the-air (OTA from here on out) on a local hard drive, you upload it to a boxee server. I suppose on the plus side you don't have to ever worry about running out of space. And you could watch your shows from anywhere. However, while I have a screaming download speed, my upload is S-L-O-W. How long would it take to upload a 5 gigabyte 1 hour HD program at 1 Mb/s? And I really didn't want to bump into my ISP data limit and get charged again for my DVR habit. It just didn't seem worth it to me when a one time cost of $50 for a local hard drive would suffice.
The other option was a Tivo. But that was quickly ruled out due to 3 factors: 1) to avoid the subscription service you can buy one for $500. It was more than I wanted to spend. 2) It has limited customization of the streaming experience, and 3) I can't put my own movies (mkv's) on the thing and play them back. But you could easily combine a Roku and a Tivo to accomplish my goals. In fact, in polling some friends of mine, one of them highly recommended a Tivo combined with a Roku. I suppose that could have got us what we wanted...but again, I wanted to avoid any subscriptions, and $600 seemed like quite a bit to drop.
I soon realized I'd have to do something else to get what I wanted. But it involved building my own system.
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