Posted on 03/07/2012 10:07:55 AM PST by PJ-Comix
I am interested in whatever info you can provide about ROKU. What channels are available? Cost? Which channels are FREE and which do you have to pay for? Picture quality? Etc.
You won't find everything. History Channel Dogfight is out there, but some old movies I can't find - "Kelley's Heros" comes to mind; it's not on the list ...
I didn’t expect it would be free. I’m thinking of the cost of cable TV vs the cost of services that would be available through Roku or an internet ready BlueRay or TV. Don’t want to upgrade my near-new TV, but if a service is available, that’s something to consider.
I have a roku player and love it! I received it for Christmas and use it with my Amazon Prime membership to watch lots of free stuff. Then, I did some more investigating in their channel store and discovered this: playon.tv
It is one of their beta channels and has a free Playon-lite version and then a trial period for Playon Premium. If you purchase the Playon Premium lifetime version for $79, you also receive a free Roku player.
With Playon Premium, you get FREE hulu plus access (it’s usually $8 per month, I think) and tons of other channels. Although none of these are “live streaming” cable channels, you can install plugins that give you live-channel access. Some are free, and some cost a few dollars ($2-10) range. this is a one-time fee, not monthly.
I purchased a plugin that cost $5 and now I get basically every cable channel I want—live! I also use a tv-links plugin that gives me access to hundreds (or even thousands) of tv shows, movies etc.
I have a really good deal on my dish network that will be expiring within 6 months, and I am testing Roku/playon as a replacement. So far, it is perfect, and I am ready to use it as a replacement (if I can convince my husband!).
This is the answer to cable/satellite, as far as I am concerned!
I know it drives the Glenn Beck haters crazy every time I say it, but I stream GBTV through ROKU. Then only other channels we view through it is Netflix and Pandora. There are lots of other channels, but most of them are pretty worthless.
Do you ever watch Fox News on it? If so does it really only go from 9am to 3pm Eastern time? Also does it pick up the History, Discovery, National Geographic, Nova Channels. What about regular channels also?
Now we’re getting somewhere. My cable bill is around $132/mos, but that also includes Internet access. The cable TV portion is around $100 of that.
Basically, what we watch on a standard basis is
NCIS/NCIS-LA (including reruns)
Dancing With the Stars (wife, when on)
Fox News
Golf (including golf channel)
Food channel (when nothing else is on)
Travel channel (when even the food channel has nothing on)
History channel (very occasionally)
Local channels (for news, etc).
I wouldn’t expect to get local channels, but if we could reduce our cable bill down to the very minimum lineup, eliminate the HD boxes we need for HD reception (including the DVR), we’d be saving some serious cash if we’d have 2-3 premium access channels we’d have to sign up for.
Am I wrong on this? Or is it something to consider?
“a switcher box for our old, one-input, TV. Got one on Amazon for $15.”
Ah, that’s what I needed to know. My ancient TV works well, and I don’t want to replace it.
Roku is great. I have a Onkyo stereo receiver that I plug the Roku into and use it mainly to stream Pandora. Sounds awesome.
Only thing I can’t figure out is why they didn’t program a web interface into the darn thing. I’d love to use it “headless” when I stream Pandora but am forced to use a monitor to select my music genre. Once that’s done I do turn the monitor off though.
It’s a five-minute process to hook up a Roku. Plug into outlet, plug into HDMI port on TV, and run the set-up. You need to know your network password if you want to attach it to a wireless network. My Roku also hooks to a hard drive, so I can listen to my music on my surround sound, or play video content.
There’s a very nice menu. It’s a bit easier to go to your Roku account to add channels. They now require (GRRRR) a payment method on file even if you don’t have any pay channels. I’ve had no problems with that, though.
I have a YouTube channel on mine, which I understand isn’t available any more. I treat it like gold. :)
I don’t know anything about Apple TV. I’m happy with my Roku. I don’t watch Glenn Beck, either. There’s a thing called Playon that’s supposed to let you get internet content off of many channels. I haven’t tried it yet. You have to have the program running on your computer in order to access it on the Roku, I think.
Here’s a nice article comparing Apple TV to Roku.
——“a switcher box for our old, one-input, TV. Got one on Amazon for $15.” Ah, that’s what I needed to know. My ancient TV works well, and I don’t want to replace it.-——
But it necessitates.... cue ominous organ music.... getting off the couch!
I have to admit, it bugs me. Especially when I’m half asleep. That’s why I ask the kids,to do it...
PJ this device seriously rocks, it rocks so much that I’ve cut cable and made the Roku my main form of television entertainment. You need two things to take advantage of the Roku 1. A Netflix membership 2. A Hard Drive.
Netflix is essential to Roku as you will get a lot of material from it, and it only starts at $10.00 a month for streaming. There’s also great services that you can get such as Amazon Prime where you can buy new and old tv shows ala carte for as little as $20.00 for an entire season or $1.50 per episode and $2.00 an episode in HD, you can cancel at any time if the show sucks. I’m still able to watch my favorite shows like The Walking Dead, Cake Boss, and Ice Road Truckers on this for an amount that when added to Netflix comes in way under my old cable bill of $120.00.
In addition, I highly recommend getting the more expensive Roku model because it has a usb port. If you couple that to a 2TB hard drive you can burn movies you get from the library, RedBox, and Netflix this saves me so much cash.
As for sports, I hook up my computer to the tv via HDMI and google sports stream to find sites that stream sports for me. That saves me a HECK of a lot of money. The cable companies suck, I hate them, I found a way around them they can go pound sand the internet is going to kill cable. jmo
Once you are accustomed to "on demand" programming, I don't know why anyone would ever go back to cable or satellite again.
My oldest son bought me a Roku for Christmas back in 2010, and I enjoy being able to live-stream Netflix movies on it. They are always adding more channels. Some cost extra, others are free. You can live-stream radio programs as well. I’ve listened to Rush on mine. I probably don’t use it as often as other folks, but for the low cost, it’s definitely worth it.
Thanks for starting this thread ... I’ve been thinking about Roku or Apple TV too.
And thanks to everyone else and the great feedback here. I think I might just go out and get Roku real soon and cut ties with Uverse.
Get an internet connected bluray player (which is almost all of them) instead. Most of them connect to all the same services roku does, and many can connect to shared content on your computer in case you want to use a service they don’t support, and they play DVDs and bluray, and the entry level ones cost about the same as a roku. These days so many TV peripherals (and the TVs themselves) stream there’s just no reason to get a device that only streams.
Forgot to mention that there is a private Yahoo Group you can join that is specifically for Roku users. Good info and help available, and you can get the postings in an email. Here’s the title for the group: RokuDigitalVideoPlayer, or you can do a search on Yahoo.
MARK
> We don’t watch much except NCIS, NCIS-LA
I have had Roku for about a year. I use it for Netflix, Crackle and several others.
As for NCIS, NCIS-LA and a full menu of other shows, I watch them for free on the PC (in full HD) using the XFinity service.
There is a feature available from Roku that allows you to stream video files from your PC to the Roku device and watch them on your TV. We use it to stream Vietnamese TV shows from Vietnam directly to the TV. I’ll admit it was a bear to setup but works very well.
here is a link to the playon website:
http://www.playon.tv/content-channels
You can get a free 2-week trial, but you need a roku player or playstation, xbox, etc. to use it on your tv. the website lists the different devices it uses.
If you get the lifetime subscription, you get a free roku player. I use it for a second tv in my house. You can do a google search for playon plugins. There are websites/forums dedicated to developing plugins for it. For live channels, I used the superusvox plugin and have been very happy with it. I’m sure if you googled “superusvox playon plugin” you could find a page that would list all of the channels it provides.
There is something else available for use with the playon software called PlayLater. I am still looking into it, but I think it records shows for you to watch later. It’s 19.95 per year—not a one-time charge.
Here is a link: http://www.playon.tv/pl/buy/
I’m looking into this further to see if I need it.
Good luck!
Very interesting --- I didn't know about this. Will be checking it out because I would love to get rid of DirecTv
Thanks...
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