Question: Do you ROKU?

I have a Roku and like it.

We had ATT Uverse and used it for our Internet and "TV" service. The bill was going up to $160 a month, and while I normally call and threaten to cancel and get a price break, this time it didn't work. The $160 plan was the 2nd from the bottom in terms of cost. No movie channels, no premium sports channels.

Now, we subscribe to Amazon, Hulu, HBO and Netflix. My Spectrum Internet bill is $70. Hulu is $10 or 12 per month. Amazon works out to be $10 or 12 per month, I subscribed to HBO a few months ago, that's $15 per month. A family member is letting us "share" his Netflix account for free.

Bill is now $105 per month, and I'm canceling HBO as I caught up on the shows I wanted to watch. Bill will drop to $90.

Roku is simply a piece of hardware that connects to the Internet. If you're getting less that 8 Megs of download speed, you may have streaming issues.

Roku is a portal that allows you to organize your streaming TV. If you subscribe to Hulu or Netflix, or Sling, or Amazon or Acorn, or FX, or anything else, you can access them from your Roku. You can subscribe and unsubscribe to whatever you want at will.

Roku offers "hundreds" of other channels, but most of them are shit. These channels can have streaming issues, commercials, etc.

The best thing about the streaming services I've picked, is that there are NO commercials. I haven't watched a commercial on TV in over a year.
 
One part of the discussion that''s kinda hinted at but not openly acknowledged is that much of the Kodi talk has been about illegal streaming. While you can find some private channels on the Roku that have pirate content, Roku has been pretty effective at finding them and shutting them down....so you're generally not going to be watching GOT for free, legally, on your Roku unless you have a subscription to a service that features that content (and that isn't free). A co-worker who is an avid Kodi streamer just got a letter from his ISP about his copyright infringement.
 
Lerxst said:
One part of the discussion that''s kinda hinted at but not openly acknowledged is that much of the Kodi talk has been about illegal streaming. While you can find some private channels on the Roku that have pirate content, Roku has been pretty effective at finding them and shutting them down....so you're generally not going to be watching GOT for free, legally, on your Roku unless you have a subscription to a service that features that content (and that isn't free). A co-worker who is an avid Kodi streamer just got a letter from his ISP about his copyright infringement.
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This was my assumption, but it's good to have it openly acknowledged.
You're generally not to going to watching GoT (or anything from a premium cable channel provider) for free, legally, anywhere.
 
we have a roku. it's great. netflix, hulu, amazon prime, youtube, nick jr. its all right there.
 
I should step in and explain what Kodi is. Kodi was originally called XBMC (for XBOX media center since it started on the XBOX platform). XBMC was ported to all major platforms (windows, mac, linux, android). Because of trademark issues, and that it was no longer associated with XBOX), it was renamed Kodi.

Kodi comes with no content. The intent is that you point Kodi to your ripped movies and music and it will index them, and present a nice interface for playing them.

Kodi also is extensible by writing python add-ins. There are several official add-ins that show various legal streamable content, and there are scads of unofficial add-ins that show legal, questionable, or even blatantly pirated material.

The problem with most handy add-ins is that they essentially pretend to be web browsers to interface with content providers' streaming web sites. The authors typically put a great deal of effort into writing code that will parse the web site and extract the URL needed to actually grab the video stream. Content providers typically try to obfuscate the actual video stream be cause they want you to view using a browser, so they can prevent you from downloading the content, and so they can show you commercials.

So these add-ins come out and people can watch ESPN3 or ABC shows or nightline, or whatever else is out there and everybody is happy. Then, the content provider changes their web site and breaks the add-in. The author fixes the add-in and everybody is happy - until it happens again. This will repeat for a while, until eventually the author gets bored, gives up, and moves on to another project.

Many unscrupulous people install Kodi on a cheap hardware box, change the splash screen to their own pet name (or sometimes not) and create an add-in that shows movies from a file locker account that they set up where they upload hundreds of pirated movies. They then sell these magic free movie TV boxes for $200 on various outlets (ebay is a favorite). They work fine, until a content owner finds the movie cache and sends the file locker a cease-and-desist at which point the content is purged and the account locked. The magic boxes quit working, and the scammer just sets up shop with a different name.

Kodi is really cool, but besides the above problems, it suffers from other issues:
  • Getting it installed on anything other than windows can be a challenge.
  • It's a bit of a bitch to get it configured. This has gotten vastly better over the years, but still has confusing parts.
  • Getting a remote to work with it can be done, but is far from simple.
  • The interface design is, um, lacking. It has a very low SAF (spousal acceptance factor). There are "skins" that can sort of ease this pain, but not eliminate it.
  • Android support is fairly new, and has lots of issues.
 
gtrjunior said:
Yup....now that you mention that, my buddy said the same thing. He put covenant on my firestick.
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Ok. I went through that when it went from its former incarnation to Exodus... I forget what it was called before. They killed it and brought Exodus online.

Fusion is a source which used to include a bunch of things (Exodus being one of them) but it is likely outdated now if Exodus is on its way out. My Android box is older and still on Kodi Jarvis. I believe that Kodi's current build is Krypton and I would need a new version of Android to run it but perhaps it will run whatever the new thing is called without me going to Krypton/new Android box.
 
While Gomez certainly can speak in much more technical terms about it than I can, I can only offer this: I bought my Android box about 22-23 months ago (it had its own remote BTW) for about $70 and aside from doing a little initial set up using a YouTube video and the upgrade from whatever the old Kodi build was to Jarvis, I have had little to no issues.

I have watched all of G ame Of T hrones on it and any other shows (V ikin gs, etc) normally hours after the initial broadcast on tv and (using Exodus most of the time) never had any issues with content disappearing as it would search for new streams/sources when I would select what I wanted to watch.

As I said, the broadcasters will likely employ whatever they can to prevent it from continuing but pirates will be pirates and people always seem to find a way. I am sure the new thing replacing Exodus will be awesome after they get the initial glitches worked out.
 
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I just opened Kodi on my 3 year old Android tablet and opened Exodus. Went to TV shows, G ame O f T hrones season 7 episode 6, it took the typical 30 seconds to load the sources and then I had to hit cancel on three which asked for authorization (less than 3 seconds...literally just hitting 'cancel' when it popped up) then it started playing perfectly.

Will it work this well in a week? I don't know. It works great now and has for as long as Jarvis has been out.
 
Directtv streaming has started (on my iPad) and the free roku shipped. We'll see how it goes.

I'm not dealing with kodi, looks like too much of a pia.
 
We’ve got two Roku units, have had various Roku devices since the first product release, and they’re the only way we watch TV anymore. The downside to Roku is that some companies create bad UIs for Roku. Amazon’s new design is just plain awful; it borrow’s Apple TV’s terrible habit of making you wait and listen to sounds as you jump around the menu of scroll through video. We also have Apple TV, which is so horrible that I don’t even keep it plugged in anymore.

The drawback to Roku is that companies can pay to auto-install their apps on your box. To block that you have to require a parental code for all channel installs.

And Roku channels in general have shitty parental controls. If you leave HBO installed for Sesame Street the kids also have access to Real Sex and Pimp Chronicles. Netflix has controls but they’re awful, and Netflix is bad about loading up multiple seasons of all the crappy toy commercial shows.
 
smorgdonkey said:
While Gomez certainly can speak in much more technical terms about it than I can, I can only offer this: I bought my Android box about 22-23 months ago (it had its own remote BTW) for about $70 and aside from doing a little initial set up using a YouTube video and the upgrade from whatever the old Kodi build was to Jarvis, I have had little to no issues.

I have watched all of G ame Of T hrones on it and any other shows (V ikin gs, etc) normally hours after the initial broadcast on tv and (using Exodus most of the time) never had any issues with content disappearing as it would search for new streams/sources when I would select what I wanted to watch.

As I said, the broadcasters will likely employ whatever they can to prevent it from continuing but pirates will be pirates and people always seem to find a way. I am sure the new thing replacing Exodus will be awesome after they get the initial glitches worked out.
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Jarvis....exodus, etc, etc....this is all too much for me, not interested. Besides that I'm not intereted in illegally streaming content. probably why I have an Apple Tv and I'm an Apple guy...it's simple plug and play and it just works. No need for kooky "builds" either. I can stream my photos and music and most videos that are on my mac. I'm guessing most people are like myself with regards to TV watching in that they want minimal hassle and reliable service. I'm also guessing Kodi will go the way of the Betamax
 
jp_nyc said:
The drawback to Roku is that companies can pay to auto-install their apps on your box. To block that you have to require a parental code for all channel installs.
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I have a Roku 3 and have never experienced this. Do you use the 'city scape' screen saver?
 
I'm ignorant here - why would / do I need 'a' Roku?

Currently, I have decent broadband as well as cable TV -- and both are shown on my large-screen TV. Does having my computer go to the TV mean I wouldn't need ROKU?
 
Where I live I can get HD broadcast local and other channels from a $30.00 onetime cost antenna.
If you add a Roku,Hulu,Amazon Prime and say Netflix there is plenty to watch ,and it is cheaper than cable tv.

You are still paying for the broadband connection anyway.
 
DdBob said:
I'm also guessing Kodi will go the way of the Betamax
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Not until they lose a huge lawsuit or get shut down from some government agency. 3 years ago nobody used it and now millions of people are using it. By the way, Beta had better quality sound and better quality video than VHS. What killed Beta was licensing.

If it sounds complex then never, and I mean ever, try recording music that you play on real instruments using a computer because that process is about ten times as complex (ten times being a conservative figure).
 
Danhedonia said:
I'm ignorant here - why would / do I need 'a' Roku?

Currently, I have decent broadband as well as cable TV -- and both are shown on my large-screen TV. Does having my computer go to the TV mean I wouldn't need ROKU?
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it's so you could dump cable (and the 70 dollar or whatever they charge bill) and have more to watch than 'rabbit ear"television. There are a few other "streaming boxes" or "smart tv's" besides Roku, Amazon fire being one of them.
 
smorgdonkey said:
Not until they lose a huge lawsuit or get shut down from some government agency. 3 years ago nobody used it and now millions of people are using it. By the way, Beta had better quality sound and better quality video than VHS. What killed Beta was licensing.

If it sounds complex then never, and I mean ever, try recording music that you play on real instruments using a computer because that process is about ten times as complex (ten times being a conservative figure).
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It will happen and probably pretty soon. I've recorded music using garageband on the mac. The Kodi is too techy for my interests though and again, not interested in bootlegging television or movies. There is enough affordable stuff I can watch in fact too much. For 10 dollars a month (Amazon prime) I get free 2 day shipping plus access to thousands of prime viewing content, add a netflix for 10 dollars and for whopping total of 20 dollars a months I can't keep up. the good thing is it's all legal, no fear of lawsuits or getting thrown in the pokey....bonus is a clean concious and good karma.
 
DdBob said:
... I'm also guessing Kodi will go the way of the Betamax
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Kodi and its sibling Plex are *extremely* popular, and the android port brought a whole new throng of users. Go have a look at the forum sometime.

Kodi isn't meant for people who don't like to roll their sleeves up, but there are plenty of people who like to tinker, and Kodi offers a wealth of possibilities to those who don't mind a bit of work.
 
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