Amazon Video now on Roku in the UK.

TV Bit of an inside announcement only of interest to a miniscule number of you, but I awoke the other morning to the news that Amazon Video now has an app on Roku boxes on the UK.

This will be of little interest to US users of this useful little black box who've had access for years, but for some reason, in the UK, Amazon refused to budge forcing us, or me, to use the astonishingly ropey app on the Sony blu-ray players which began life as the Lovefilm streamer and a hopelessly slow version on a television which took at least five minutes to reach a stream which was less than HD.

Eventually I bought an Amazon Fire stick but that's never been ideal due to frame skip and immensely obtuse interface which mixes films with music and games and other bits and bobs.  Plus its on-board wifi receiver isn't as strong as it could be.

The Roku app uses the basic on board structure utilised by most of the streaming apps and ironically resembles the earliest version of Netflix. 

But it's entirely fictional and the picture quality is great.

Watching the charming Daniel Radcliffe/Zoe Kazan meet-cute, The F Word or What If? (depending on your territory) tonight, on a couple of occasions I forgot it was a stream and glanced at my blu-ray player wondering why it wasn't switched on.

If only either Amazon Video or Netflix had a decent back catalogue I might consider cancelling the postal dvds.  But they don't, yet, so I won't be.

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