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!
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?
Very interesting --- I didn't know about this. Will be checking it out because I would love to get rid of DirecTv
Thanks...
What plug-in do you have for live streaming? I love my Roku and want took get rid of my cable.
Could you please elaborate on the differences between playon and roku? Why would you need to add the playon app to your roku box?
Basically, I have an xbox that I can use for playon. Would getting a roku add anything playon doesn’t already provide?
thank you for the information. Do you enjoy using Playon with the Roku and is the episodes delayed by several days or weeks? Also, what plug-in would you recommend for being able to access live-tv?
Thank you.
-A
I’ve been trying to get Foxnews streaming through my Roku or through Hulu or Playon and nothing seems to be available. Did you find plug-ins for Fox News or CBS or NBC or ABC? If so, where did you find the plug-ins? Thanks!