Okay, change subject.
I purchased a
Roku box the other day and finally got around to installing it last night. Pretty damned incredible little device as some of you may already know but I am going to describe it for those who don't.
Roku is one of many different devices that allow you to stream video (and audio) content onto your television via a high speed internet connection. I will reserve full judgement for a week or two but I have a feeling that I may be cutting back on my satellite subscription in favor of this thing.
First of all the quality of the video is nothing short of amazing. Last night I was streaming an HD television program and I would not have known the difference from my satellite receiver...it was indistinguishable. The same for sound. Now maybe during the next week or two I will see some drop in quality or something. Time will tell. But for right now I am thoroughly impressed with the video. Oh, yeah...this thing is working over my wireless router connection so that makes the quality all the more impressive. Also, as long as I am on first thoughts, the setup was as easy or easier than anything else I have ever had to do with AV. It took about fifteen minutes total. Plug power into the box. Connect the HDMI cable from box to television. Follow the steps on the screen to connect to the wireless router, set up an account (free) and choose channels. Which leads me to believe that the people who reviewed the thing on Amazon and gave it low marks because they couldn't get the thing to work, well, they are ObamaVoters...total morons. I had a bad HDMI cable and it took me longer to figure out that that was the reason the television wasn't seeing the box than it did to do the actual setup once I switched out the cable.
Available content is not the same story, though...not amazing. Good but not amazing. There are many different "channels" available and some are free and some are not. For instance, Netflix requires an $8/month subscription. There are many hundreds of movies available to stream via Netflix but unfortunately most of them are crap. There are also dozens of network and cable television series available for streaming but none of them are current. For that you have to subscribe to
hulu plus which is also about $8/month. Example of what I mean: On Netflix you can watch the first two seasons of "The Walking Dead" but the current season is unavailable. The current season is available on hulu plus. However, not all television series are available on hulu plus in their entirety. So...if you want to see a series from beginning to end and it is still a current show you have to subscribe to both.
Or...you can become a member of
Amazon Prime (cheaper at $6.58/month) and rent an entire series. Usually on Amazon the previous episodes are free to Prime members and then you can watch current episodes for a per episode fee. Which seems ridiculous if you can watch them on hulu.com for nothing. Which is okay, I guess if you don't care about watching them on your laptop. To stream to your television you have to shell out for hulu plus. Sorry, there are no simple solutions here but they do all seem to be cheaper than satellite. Of course, there are other benefits to being an Amazon Prime member but I'm not going to go into that here. Amazon does seem to have more free movies (a LOT more) than hulu or Netflix but, like the other two, most of them are crap.
There are other free channels on Roku (and other devices) like Crackle which also have free movies available to stream. Crackle is owned by Sony so that is the source of their movie selections.
Roku and other streamers are not a full substitute for cable or satellite, though, because they lack (so far) the advantage of live streaming. In other words, you aren't going to be able to watch NASCAR or the US Open or live news programming from FNC or CNN. Perhaps some time down the road but not now. And so long as that is the case I will probably not be able to dump satellite completely. Exception: There are subscriptions available that allow you to watch MLB, NBA and NHL. Haven't checked them out but I am expecting the fees to be similar to what cable or satellite charge for the same thing. So, I guess they can do live streaming but it's expensive and as of now does not include news.
There are a LOT of channels available. Some of them are bizarre. I have a feeling that these streaming channels are probably the new home of what used to be public access channels on cable television where some clown is uploading his own content from his mother's basement like Wayne's World. Party on, Garth.
I will be experimenting with this thing for the next several weeks and then I will decide if I can drop part of my satellite subscription because, honestly, a lot of the stuff on the movie channels that I pay extra for is also crap. Stuff I wouldn't watch ever. And yet, I'm paying for it. So it's sort of the same thing as these streaming pay subscriptions except they cost more. Or at least, I think they do. I will need to find out what I want to pay for and then do a cost comparison with satellite. Right now, though, I am encouraged that maybe there is a way to cut back my satellite bill and still have more content than I know what to do with.
If anyone else on the forum is currently using a streaming device I would like to know their thoughts and experiences so that maybe I can benefit from them in this experiment.
