SmallNetBuilder

Inside

I always wondered what was behind the Roku's box near-flawless playback of Netflix content. So I finally opened up both the original N1000 and XDS to see what's going on. Figure 5 shows the top of the XDS board, which is nice and clean compared to the N1000's board in Figure 6.

Figure 5: Roku XDS board

When I went through the the components, however, I found the designs surprisingly similar.

Figure 6: Roku N1000 (original) board

Table 1 summarizes the key components of the original Roku and XDS, which both use Nexperia's PNX8935 multi-format source decoder. It's obvious that a newer version of the PNX8935 is used in the XDS, given the device's smaller size.

Bottom views of the N1000 and XDS show where extra RAM is stashed. I'm not sure when flash size was increased from 64 to 256 MB; probably in the previous generation HD-XR. I wasn't able to determine the maker of the Wi-Fi radio devices used since they are under the soldered-on shield and Roku has requested that the FCC delay posting the internal pictures.

The difference in antenna design is startling, though. Compare the etched antennas of the XDS with the N1000's two bent-metal ones in Figure 6. And remember, the XDS' are dual-band antennas vs. the single-band 2.4 GHz antennas in the N1000.

Figure 7: Roku XDS antenna detail

To prove that the XDS really is dual-band, Figure 8 shows that it detected both the 2.4 and 5 GHz radios of my NETGEAR WNDR3700. The signal bars show the relative strength of the signals. But you can't get any info on the link rate being used.

Figure 8: Roku XDS wireless network selection