Same, but in reverse. My father turned me into an early Roku adopter, but then my early generation machine started to become unuseable - freezing and glitching constantly. Since my DVD player had conveniently died as well, I went out bought a new Samsung Blu-ray that does a pretty good job.
I do miss the Roku interface though. The Blu-ray is perfectly useable, but a bit less user-friendly for Netflix. When this Blu-ray eventually starts going nuts, I’ll probably migrate back to Roku again ;).
Amazon has announced their “Fire TV Stick”. A competitor to Chromecast. It’s only $19 for Prime members for the first two days of sale. So I ordered one. (It’s going to take a while to get.:() It will be interesting to see how much I can watch on it without having to stream the video thru my tablet.
Supposedly I will be able to use voice commands to control it via my tablet.
Finding content and controlling streaming devices is all-too-often a major pain. Standard remotes just can’t hack it.
There is an android app for controlling a Roku box. iOS too, I think.
I do have a “smart TV” but don’t have the dongle for it. I don’t use Netflix etc but I do watch most of my TV on catch-up services like BBC iPlayer. For that, I just plug the laptop into the HDMI slot.
It works well, when it works, but for some reason it has a random habit of not playing any sound through the TV sometimes. The fix seems to be jiggering about with the Sound control panel on Windows until some process in the background crashes, at which point the sound comes through. :rolleyes:
Oh, the usual. Various rectangles of different sizes.
Next time that happens, try right-clicking on whatever the TV shows up as in your sound panel and selecting default communications device.
I move seamlessly from my TV (via chromecast), to my laptop, to my phone.
Not without paying for cable/satellite. ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports all have streaming options, but they are only accessible if you are paying for the channels through a conventional subscription.
“Cord-cutters” tend not to be sports fans because you won’t get much other than what’s broadcast over the air.
I have a laptop and a chromecast. The chromecast works great for netflix, youtube and streaming my ripped movies from the desktop. It does not seem to work well with watching soccer via the NBC sports website for that I use my laptop.
I can’t speak for them, but here’s my guess: Roku was designed for one thing only, and it does it great. Blu-ray was designed to play Blu-ray disks, and then they started cramming other stuff into it; how much quality can you expect from an afterthought? Ditto for using a Playstation for something other than games.
But what, specifically, is the problem? A cumbersome interface? Lack of useful features (like rewind/fast forward/skip buttons?) Is the actual quality of the video somehow worse?
I ask because I was thinking of getting a “smart” Blu-ray player or Playstation and having that double as my streaming device, and am wondering what would be the specific downside to that. Just saying “it does a bad job of it” doesn’t tell me anything.
I’ll vouch for this one for my machine. Having used both I think Roku is a bit more intutitive and easy to navigate in terms of things like menus and switching between episodes with episodic show. Nothing major, but there is a difference.
However I suspect it is very machine-specific. I’d be diligent about searching reviews on specific models to see where they fall down and where they excel. For instance I believe my machine was specifically singled out in its day for being a solid streaming device, but a little subpar when it came to up-converting DVDs and had some ergonomic issues. There are usually trade-offs and I understand the streaming expereince can vary a lot with not just the hardware, but the software package the manufacturer is using.
Roku I’m sure is more idiot-proof for streaming, but all-in-one machine might still suit you perfectly well. Just research carefully.
So I bought the Amazon Firestick. It’s probably a pretty good little device. My problem is that I also wanted to be able to send whatever was on my computer screen to the tv, and the Firestick won’t do that. (I’m thinking that it would be nice to be able to show porn on the tv, in addition to a number of other websites that would be good to watch on a large screen.) We have to get a Chromecast gizmo to do that - at least with the Chromebook. Firestick looked to be a pretty good deal and a good idea, to boot. But without the capacity to get the computer output to go to the tv, it was lacking one of the major features I wanted to have. So I’m going to have to try to find a chromecast gadget to get all the features I wanted.
update:
I’ve been playing with my Amazon FireTV stick a bit more.
Errrrr. It’s just “not ready for prime time” yet.
The stick itself seems reasonably capable. But the remote is awful and then some.
Then there’s the software. The interface is crap. The “search” keyboard is a joke. And without a real mouse/touch interface, a lot of stuff just can’t be done. The downloadable app for your phone/tablet is beyond a joke. I got a bluetooth keyboard/pad, jumped thru some hoops to pair it, and that helps tremendously.
Sideloading apps can be done. I’ve installed and tried out Kodi (XMBC), but I think I’m going with ES File Explorer+VLC Android Beta player.
I have no idea why Kodi-type programs think I want “media libraries” that need to be indexed, thumbnails created, etc. And that music/TV/Movies/Pictures somehow need to be organized and kept completely separate. All my stuff is organized and named already. The rest just wastes time and screen space. That “working” circle is a sign of terrible interface thinking. With ES-F-E I just click on it and either the app plays it or throws it to the app of my chosing.
Watched some stuff for free off of Amazon Prime. Transparent, re-watched Coupling, etc. Really poor (basically absent) collection of recent movies for free. But significantly better (but not all that good) collection of older movies for free than Netflix.
There’s apps for Netflix, PBS, CBS News and on and on. Tried those. Okay-ish.
Haven’t tried casting yet. Don’t expect that to work too well.
No rooting possible yet for the Stick (or later versions of the FireTV box). But there may be something on the horizon. You can track that and a lot more at the XDA forum for the FireTV stuff.
Summary: It sort of works, the interface sucks. The content is okay, but only by comparison. They should have kept it in beta and worked on it more before releasing it.