[lynchburgwildcats]

Does anyone have a Roku? If so, what is the selection of free/on demand channels? Obviously the top draws are stuff like Hulu, NetFlix, the Pro Sports subscriptions, etc, but I am wondering what the selection of free/on demand stuff is like since I don't currently subscribe to any of that stuff. I don't watch movies very often and the sports that comes on TV is good enough for me, so I am just trying to figure out if I would be wasting my money to get it or not. Although Hulu would work well for me now since I can't stand watching regular season baseball so not much on TV for me to watch now.

Roku is having a sale - $80 for the Roku HD, an HDMI cable, and six months of Hulu (shipping included). http://www.roku.com/huludeal

[El Scorcho]

I have the 720p Roku which was the original model back when. It has honestly been a rock-solid device the entire time and the channel lineup has only improved since I got it.

Hulu Plus is meh. I paid for it for a few months but I got really annoyed being forced to watch so many ads on a service I was paying for. The more current the episode of whatever you're watching, the more ads you'll see. I think I counted 14 two minute ads in a recent episode of an hour-long TV show last I used it. The app was also terribly buggy at the time and caused me to reset the Roku often (which is something I never otherwise have had to do). I hear the app has improved, but not the ads.

Other than that, I really enjoy having Netflix and Amazon's video services on it. Amazon's On Demand offerings are current with what's offered by cable and satellite services. That's been nice to have.

You can see the total channel lineup here: http://www.roku.com/roku-channel-store

There are also custom channels you can install. I've used one called RoksBox to stream MPEG4 content from a computer on my network. It worked pretty much flawlessly.

[adam42381]

I have the HD one and mainly use it for Amazon and MLB.TV. The wife and I are currently catching up on Sons of Anarchy which has been awesome through 2 seasons so far. To be honest, now that my PS3 has Amazon, I'm not using the Roku that much. I hope they get HBOGO with Comcast access soon.

[JDUB]

Are the news channels free content, or do you have to pay for them?

[Hold My Own]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

[El Scorcho]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

XBMC? Please. Plex is the new hotness. XBMC is old school.

So, I actually just relegated my Roku to being a Plex front-end last week. I'm now running a Mac mini with Plex as the interface. There's some other stuff happening in the background that's pretty much magic, but I love Plex running the Alaska skin. It's gorgeous.

[El Scorcho]

Are the news channels free content, or do you have to pay for them?

The news channel content is all free, but it's spotty coverage. I don't think any of them actually just let you watch the live news streams yet. Some of their content is better than others.

[JDUB]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

XBMC? Please. Plex is the new hotness. XBMC is old school.

So, I actually just relegated my Roku to being a Plex front-end last week. I'm now running a Mac mini with Plex as the interface. There's some other stuff happening in the background that's pretty much magic, but I love Plex running the Alaska skin. It's gorgeous.

So for the 99%, are y'all gonna tell us what all this stuff is? I'm feeling like medic over here when you 2 start getting all worked up over something and I'm completely lost

[Sly Fox]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

XBMC? Please. Plex is the new hotness. XBMC is old school. .

So I take it Ubuntu isn't in your plans.

[El Scorcho]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

XBMC? Please. Plex is the new hotness. XBMC is old school.

So, I actually just relegated my Roku to being a Plex front-end last week. I'm now running a Mac mini with Plex as the interface. There's some other stuff happening in the background that's pretty much magic, but I love Plex running the Alaska skin. It's gorgeous.

So for the 99%, are y'all gonna tell us what all this stuff is? I'm feeling like medic over here when you 2 start getting all worked up over something and I'm completely lost

http://xbmc.org/

http://www.plexapp.com/

[El Scorcho]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

XBMC? Please. Plex is the new hotness. XBMC is old school. .

So I take it Ubuntu isn't in your plans.

Not at all. I am incredibly happy with the Mac mini setup I've got going right now. It's as close to media bliss as I've ever experienced.

[lynchburgwildcats]

Think I am going to pass on Roku or anything like that for now. Doesn't sound like the free stuff is worth a darn and I can connect the computer to the TV for the times I need to stream a movie from someone like Amazon. I don't have much time for movies for 9 months of the year due to work and football/basketball. For example, I watched a movie last weekend and it was the first time since I had off around Christmas, and then before that it was last summer, so paying for something like NetFlix is just retarded for me

[JDUB]

Ok so Plex looks cool and like it will work on my ps3. What free stuff does it give me access to? I'm not seeing a channel list on their site, so I guess tell me maybe the top 3-5 free things you use on it?

[PAmedic]

So for the 99%, are y'all gonna tell us what all this stuff is? I'm feeling like medic over here when you 2 start getting all worked up over something and I'm completely lost

thanks. it needed to be said.

i had a headache two posts in and still dont get the whole thing.

all i know is- I watch Action News on channel 6, ESPN is 140, History is Ch 121 and Military Channel is 195.

the kids watch Ch 170-178 for Nick, Disney, Cartoon Net, etc.

done.

[LUminary]

I like Roku. We use it for MLB, Pandora and Netflix mostly. There is a live news feed for Fox (although it's different from what you'll see on the network broadcast), but that's about it. A lot of new channels are added frequently to Roku, but much of it is obscure stuff. It's kind of hit and miss (mostly miss) but fun to explore.

[Hold My Own]

Plex is for N00bs


You really need to try it Schorchy...being a Mac guy you'd appreciate the UI Aeon has and some of the plugins like 1-channel, PseudoTV, ICE Films and Free Cable.


Hmmm...plex looks interesting though...can you add plugins like what I mentioned? Or is this not for the piratebay type users

[Hold My Own]

XBMC....change your life. Change your life man

XBMC? Please. Plex is the new hotness. XBMC is old school. .

So I take it Ubuntu isn't in your plans.

I'm really liking the new Ubuntu...they've stepped it up and started to put effort towards the UI

[adam42381]

Woot has a refurbished Roku XD 1080p for $49.99 today for anyone who his interested.

http://www.woot.com/

[El Scorcho]

Plex is for N00bs


You really need to try it Schorchy...being a Mac guy you'd appreciate the UI Aeon has and some of the plugins like 1-channel, PseudoTV, ICE Films and Free Cable.


Hmmm...plex looks interesting though...can you add plugins like what I mentioned? Or is this not for the piratebay type users

N00bs? Please. That you're even still using torrents tells me who the real N00b is. You know I'm just giving you a hard time.

Yeah, Plex has plugins too. I had considered XBMC originally, but Plex is fork of the XBMC project and seems to have a lot going for it. I've got no reason to switch at this point. I'm really happy with it. Maybe if there was something I wanted it to do that it didn't.

[Hold My Own]

True on torrents That's why I like Ice Films because it streams from download services like mediafire and others.

Isnt Plex a for pay service?

[JDUB]

I downloaded plex and couldn't figure it out. I guess I'll try that other one when I have free time in a few weeks

[lynchburgwildcats]

I've dabbled with Plex. I don't really like the PC program at all because it's a gigantic resources hog. RIght now the PlexScriptHost.exe process is consuming 260MB of memory and the Plex Media Manager tab in my Chrome browser at times consumes 30-40% or more of my CPU power, and it's not doing anything but running in my taskbar as it has already scanned my hard drive for all my media files.

[El Scorcho]

Isnt Plex a for pay service?

Nah. Freebie.

[El Scorcho]

I've dabbled with Plex. I don't really like the PC program at all because it's a gigantic resources hog. RIght now the PlexScriptHost.exe process is consuming 260MB of memory and the Plex Media Manager tab in my Chrome browser at times consumes 30-40% or more of my CPU power, and it's not doing anything but running in my taskbar as it has already scanned my hard drive for all my media files.

Hmm. That's not cool on the CPU part. 260MB of memory doesn't really bother me if that's the main server process, though. That's a pretty typical app these days.

The Mac version doesn't seem to suffer from the same resource consumption issues, thankfully.

[lynchburgwildcats]

I went ahead and got a Roku. Found one on Amazon for dirt cheap - sale is no longer going on, for those interested. Got Plex installed on it, took me a while to get some thing working on Plex on Roku (ended up having to move my router because the signal strength was strong enough apparently), but having Plex on there really takes it to a new level. Some shows still won't load through Plex - even on the computer - but it's nice to be able to get all my free Hulu content through it since the Roku Hulu app is just for subscribers. I also can get ESPN3 through plex, which is clutch.