Thanks for your thoughts on the Roku 3. I just got mine from Amazon.com a couple days ago and have been playing around with it. I'll add my thoughts as well.
I wanted to be able to use my unblock us subscription so I could have all the US channels on my Roku 3 (netflix, hulu+, pandora,etc) but you can't sign up for a roku account without a credit card or paypal account online. It also seems that unblock us's DNS settings don't work on the roku home pages. What I did to get around this is clicked support and then opened a livechat with one of their customer service reps. I explained I purchased a Roku 3 and I wanted to create a US account but I didn't have paypal or a credit card. The rep asked where I got the Roku 3 from then asked for my address. I didn't have a US address so I gave him the zipcode I wanted to use. He said his chat window showed I was in Canada but I told him I was in the US and wanted a US account. He asked for the serial number and the authorization code that was on the screen when the roku was turned off (after all the updates) then he created an account and gave me a temp password. As soon as the account was created the ROKU 3 went to the home screen and all the US only apps were there. I was also able to add any of the apps via the device or by logging into my Roku account on my laptop. Kind of a pain in the ass workaround to get it set-up but worth it in my opinion.
The GUI on the unit is very good. Super fast and responsive especially comparable to the older versions of the device. I put it through its paces with no lag or issues.
The amount of apps or channels available as they are called on the Roku is very impressive. The company says they have over 750 channels, but I would guess many of them wouldn't be much use to the average user but having more options of content is always better than less options. In addition you can add "private channels" You just need a code work from that channel to add them. I didn't play around with this much but I did add the "nowhere music" channel which enabled me to access my google music account which was very cool and worked well. Apparently there is a workaround channel for youtube as well but I didn't get a chance to research that yet.
The Plex app works very well for streaming your personal collection of movies, TV shows and music. The interface is a little clunky and not as polished as the Plex client app on the Apple TV 2 but its functional, fast and works well. I streamed a variety of content through plex at different bitrates and had no issued with lag or crashing. I have a Plex server set up on my Synology NAS which is on 24/7 so individual results may vary depending on what your plex set-up is. I was used to using XBMC from my Apple TV2 to catalog and access my media but I am really starting to prefer the plex setup. You only need to update the database on the server itself and the process is very simple and intuitive. Also its nice to be able to start a movie or TV show on one device in the living room for example and then be able to continue from the same point on the bedroom TV.
As mentioned the remote looks like a mini wii mote, it works fine but its nothing special. It was very easy to add the Roku 3 as a device on my harmony remote and set up an activity for it. If anyone does this you have to select "DVD player" as the device to find the ROKU. This took me a bit of searching and trial and error so it may save someone some time. You can also use the Roku app on the android to control it (I'm sure its probably available for ios too but I don't have an iphone anymore) There were some third party remote type apps on the google play store but I didn't get into trying any of those yet. My preference was to Harmony and it worked very well for what I needed it to do.
Overall I'm pretty impressed with it so far and I would consider it a solid purchase for anyone who is in the market for a new set top media streaming device.
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