Roku?

I live out in the sticks and only have an antennae for the TV. It works good but I only get about5 or 6 channels most of the time. I just bought a new 42 inch TV and my Wife and I decided to get one of those gizmos called a Roku. I already have a wifi router that I hooked up for the grand daughters phones and pads so we thought we'd try it. Hey, for us out here it works great if you don't mind commercials. Thousands of free movies, weather nation, you tube, news and lots of other free stuff to watch. We bought the cheapest one and we are pleased. Neither of us are around here enough to really watch a lot of TV but when we do it's just the ticket.
Peace,
gordon

The Roku lets you have Netflix or Amazon Prime. Netflix is around 7 bucks a month and Prime is 99 a year but you also get free 2 day shipping on many items with prime. I have both and Prime was worth it for the Christmas shopping alone...not to mention the awesome cop series Bosch, in it's second season right now.

I have had a Roku 3 since the birth of the WWE network. It has worked well.

I do warranty work on flatscreen TV's and also self employed in computer repair. When I'm asked what to buy, I say when given the choice, get a non-smart TV and a ROKU. On the ROKU, get the separate box instead of the small thing (dongle) that plugs into the TV. The model box that you buy should be the one that connects by HDMI and not the yellow/red/white AV cables.

Thanks, icon. Does the type of wireless router matter?

tcon said:

I do warranty work on flatscreen TV's and also self employed in computer repair. When I'm asked what to buy, I say when given the choice, get a non-smart TV and a ROKU. On the ROKU, get the separate box instead of the small thing (dongle) that plugs into the TV. The model box that you buy should be the one that connects by HDMI and not the yellow/red/white AV cables.

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Why do you advise a "non-smart TV"? I just won a Smart TV and I was thinking about ROKU.

Bought the Roku 3 for Christmas and so far happy with it. The wife pays something like $9 a month through Amazon for some movie channels she likes. I just watch Hickok45, forgotten weapons, down range TV and others on the flat screen. To be honest I was doing that before the Roku. There's really nothing on normal TV channels that appeals to me.

Maddog 521 said:

Why do you advise a "non-smart TV"? I just won a Smart TV and I was thinking about ROKU.

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If you have a smart TV, you won't need a ROKU because your smart TV that you won has pretty much the same Internet and streaming apps that the ROKU has.

I don't necessarily advise against a smart tv but given the choice between a 60" smart and a 60" dumb, I would save the $100 or so and get the dumb. There's more to go wrong on a system board with a smart tv, but I'm seeing more and more where all larger TV's are smart and the only tv's where there's a choice of a version without Internet connectivity are under 46".

Just given the choice, I'd rather have something go wrong with a 5 year old $40 ROKU box than a 5 year old flatscreen.

Bullet Bob said:

Thanks, icon. Does the type of wireless router matter?

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Not really. There are stronger routers and there are weaker routers. If you have a big house and a weak router at one end, there will probably be issues. If you already have Internet, the modem device that they provided might already have wireless built in and you won't need an additional wireless router.

The common problems I see with wireless connectivity on smart TV's is mostly related signal strength. TV's have little bitty antennas inside so the closer the router is to the TV, the better. Remember that wireless signal is radio which is mostly line of sight. If your TV is on one end of the house and the router is on the other end separated by 3 bedrooms and a kitchen, ductwork, appliances, brick walls then you will probably have connectivity issues and even if it connects, there will probably be streaming issues such as excessive buffering and slow speeds.

Buying an additional more powerful router to piggy-back on your ISP's modem can help in many cases but it is important to disable the wireless in the original device if your ISP-supplied router has it enabled. The radio signals in this band given off by two devices in the same area can diminish the quality of the network signal you want to connect to and make it weaker.

I like to explain it using the example of throwing a single pebble into a pond. The ripples going out represent your wireless signal coming from the router. Now throw two pebbles at once at the same place and look what happens to the ripples. May not be completely accurate but its a good visual anyway.

If you have a wireless connectivity issue, there are solutions that I already know about - some of which are better given the situation. Sometimes, the best solution is hard-wire using Ethernet cable.

Feel free to PM me if you need specific help and I can steer you toward a solution so you don't have to throw money at solutions just to see if they work.

ROKU

We have had one for several years-- the wife was hinting at a newer updated model so I gave Her one-- the thing is junk and doesn't work-- wants to keep reloading the movie-- we gave up- after an hour and two hang upsI finally got someone on the phone. Not from around here for sure. they are supposed to be sending a return label-- by email, not here yet-- May consider one from Costco if this all ever can be fixed- at least I can return it with out all this crapola.

When I retired 2.75 years ago we did ROKU at our house. No more cable and their high cost.

Plenty of movies. We don't watch much regular TV, we bought a cheap HD antenna that stick in the window and get the basic channels if we want to watch the weather. The bad thing is when the weather is bad the HD antenna reception quits.

With ROKU there are shows we like, "Hell on Wheels", dexter, Breaking Bad. There are unlimited shows for the grandkids.

We were skeptical but it works great, as long as you have enough bandwidth.

We'll never pay ransom money to the cable networks again.

Sports, I used to watch probably too many, as I aged they are not as important.

I know New England has a favorite team that many others don't care for.

I can go to a kids house to watch the Super bowl. They usually keep asking until I go. I'm a Chiefs fan, have been since they were the Dallas Texans. My boys did not make it last year so I watched the game with my SIL who is a Bronco fan. We had a good time.....

P.S. we have 2 ROKU's, one in the bedroom. We can watch 2 TV's and still have bandwidth to use our computers. I think we spend in one year for ROKU about what we spent monthly for cable.

i absolutely love roku.
the u tube movies alone are worth it.
the cowboy channels are great if you like old westerns.
got amazon prime too.
i had satellite but this is way better n cheaper.

I have a couple of ROKUs. About two years now.

I only pay for Netflix and that's less than $10 a month.

I used to pay over a hundred a month for satt

For the math majors it's easy.

I was into the backyard dish business in the '80s. They were cool but the big money said no and they introduced us to scrambling. Lot's of people lost




They will make their money

I have never used roku, but dad did get a new smart TV, a Sony xbr something. The smart TV thing can be annoying. It was constantly nagging to update, along with a warning that it would take 30 minutes for which it couldn't be used. I finally figured out how to disable auto update. The Netflix app constantly crashes, once even requiring the TV to be unplugged to reboot it. This makes me think a dumb TV monitor with a separate box might work better, or at least be less annoying. The plus is it us all integrated with 1 remote.

johngalt said:

I have never used roku, but dad did get a new smart TV, a Sony xbr something. The smart TV thing can be annoying. It was constantly nagging to update, along with a warning that it would take 30 minutes for which it couldn't be used. I finally figured out how to disable auto update. The Netflix app constantly crashes, once even requiring the TV to be unplugged to reboot it. This makes me think a dumb TV monitor with a separate box might work better, or at least be less annoying. The plus is it us all integrated with 1 remote.

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If it were my Sony, and it had app issues, I would do the firmware update. The firmware update might specifically address the NetFlix issue. If you go to the Sony support section https://esupport.sony.com/US/p/select-system.pl?DIRECTOR=DRIVER&icid=home|type1_us_en|drivers you can read about what a particular firmware update is supposed to fix.

BUT - with regard to firmware updates, there is always the very small chance that the update could go bad and ruin the TV. The chance very is small but is still there nonetheless.

And my experience witnessing horror stories from Sony owners trying to get Sony to honor their own one-year warranties leaves me to believe that if the Sony were OUT of warranty and a firmware update bricked the mainboard, Sony would say "too bad, so sad".

VIZIO is best company to deal with on warranty issues and also issues relating to failed firmware updates. US based support, quick resolution.

When I dumped cable a couple years ago I went to over the air HD TV and bought a Sony Blu Ray player that has Netflx and all the other providers like Hulu etc.. From a layman's knowledge of the workings of this setup Sony is a proxy in the network and everything is passed thru them rather than the norm. I "think" Samsung does the same thing. The whole thing is a PIA if you have issues. So I bought a Netgear streamer and it had some really strange remote issues but worked fine otherwise. I popped for a Roku2 last month and it's the best. The GUI and controls are easy and streaming is excellent. As far as a "smart" TV, do you need anti virus/malware for it??

tcon said:

If it were my Sony, and it had app issues, I would do the firmware update. The firmware update might specifically address the NetFlix issue. If you go to the Sony support section https://esupport.sony.com/US/p/select-system.pl?DIRECTOR=DRIVER&icid=home|type1_us_en|drivers you can read about what a particular firmware update is supposed to fix.

BUT - with regard to firmware updates, there is always the very small chance that the update could go bad and ruin the TV. The chance very is small but is still there nonetheless.

And my experience witnessing horror stories from Sony owners trying to get Sony to honor their own one-year warranties leaves me to believe that if the Sony were OUT of warranty and a firmware update bricked the mainboard, Sony would say "too bad, so sad".

VIZIO is best company to deal with on warranty issues and also issues relating to failed firmware updates. US based support, quick resolution.

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It had the latest updates the last time I checked. Apparently Netflix crashing is a common complaint and has never been fixed. I suppose Netflix wrote the app, not Sony. It must be low on their priority list for fixes.

JcMack said:

As far as a "smart" TV, do you need anti virus/malware for it??

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No. It's app based.

I bought a Roku years ago and use in primarily for getting Netflix and Amazon Prime on my primary TV, but occasionally I use other channels on it, especially for newer pay-per-view movies that the other services do not yet offer. But for me, Roku is an addition to cable, not a substitute. My cable offers the Xfinity system which is excellent, not the least of it is that I can record four different shows at once on the DVR and watch a fifth one. I can also record from any room where I have a cable box and watch on any TV.

And for what its worth, Smart TV's are sort of poor versions of Roku or other streaming devices (like Apple TV or the new Amazon Fire TV). I have two Samsung so-called Smart TV's and the "smart" feature is a PITA. Navigation is extremely slow. The computer chip that controls this feature is clearly an outdated chip that the TV manufacturers can buy up at almost no cost. Stick with a separate streaming device and you will likely be much happier.

vito said:

And for what its worth, Smart TV's are sort of poor versions of Roku or other streaming devices (like Apple TV or the new Amazon Fire TV). I have two Samsung so-called Smart TV's and the "smart" feature is a PITA. Navigation is extremely slow. The computer chip that controls this feature is clearly an outdated chip that the TV manufacturers can buy up at almost no cost. Stick with a separate streaming device and you will likely be much happier.

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Absolutely.

I have a Sony TV and Blu-ray player both with Wi-Fi. The user interface for Apps is soooooo rookie. It's like the designer never thought about using it. I use Apple TV for everything other than Amazon Prime video/music cuz Apple TV don't have an Amazon App. Still I won't use the Sony interface. I just use the Amazon App on my iPhone or iPad and beam it to the Apple TV via Airplay.