Media Box!

A couple of months back we bought a Sony SMP-N100 network media player at CostCo for around $100 after tax and instant rebate.  It has a home in our living room with the dvd player.
It streams a number of internet video services (similar to Roku) and has a usb port to allow attachment of external storage devices like a thumb drive with photos.  A sleek-looking little black box, it has changed many of our home entertainment habits.

First, the setup:
The hardest part was reaching behind our old tube tv to hook up the rca (composite) cables, after that bit of gymnastics it was very very easy.  The device registered itself on our network quickly and downloaded updates to get itself up and running.  We registered it with Netflix and Hulu (Plus), and logged in to Youtube, and it was ready to go.

In use:
Netflix streaming is excellent, our connection speed is detected to minimize buffering and our instant queue is fully available.  Youtube is quite good as well, 720p video shot with my G2X comes across very nicely.  Hulu Plus...buffers a lot.  There isn't a way to downgrade the video quality like you can when viewing on a computer, and our internet connection isn't fast enough to keep up as video plays.  I don't mind pausing to let segments load, but since Hulu breaks a program up into pieces to allow commercial breaks it makes for an awful lot of pauses while video loads.

Drawbacks:
The 2nd one we got (for back in the bedroom) uses WiFi since I haven't run a cable back there yet.  It got too hot on its shelf and spewed out connection errors.  Until I can get a shelf to put it on for cooling purposes it sits on a can of beans.  There is a $20 credit included toward a Hulu Plus subscription, but only for first-time signups.  Since we already had the service, we don't get to take advantage of this offer.

Overall:
Good, 4 out of 5 stars.  Good enough that there's a second one in our house now.