Streaming tv....what to use

Hey, man. The one time you actually showed up for something.

 

Apple TV, Sling, Fanatz, Amazon Prime mostly because I watch a lot of Brazilian soccer (futbol) and the wife likes movies.

 

I've been off the DirectTv for at least 5 years. Roku works great for us. I pay for Sling and I'm not sure why I even do that. I'm not much of a TV watcher anymore, especially anything new. Most of the time I turn on to watch anything other than racing, it is old sit coms on Pluto and it is free. Enjoy not flushing your cash down the crapper with DirectTv.

 

Roku device with a subscription to YouTube TV. Netflix and Amazon prime for movies and shows that have series.

 

Fixed

 

Yup.....a nice side

Ahhh, well that narrows it a bit more then. In my personal experience I have tried a few things. I have 2 older Vizio TVs, one has a Chromecast plugged into it, the other has an AppleTV (my other 2 TVs are newer Sony and LG and have all the apps built in natively so they dont need any external boxes....which I guess I would say I like the most as I don't want extra devices if I don't need it).

Having said that I would probably give the nod to the Chromecast just because I like the GoogleTV interface a little bit better than the AppleTV's. I've also used Roku on my sisters TV and its fine as well I guess, but yeah I'd say Chromecast/GoogleTV for me.

 

Your boyfriend will be angry at you because you are posting about women.

 

If it’s quality of feed you’re looking for, AppleTV handles the metadata the best out of the streaming devices. It’s also more expensive than most others, so there’s a question of value as well.

 

Very timely thread.
So, broke down and replaced the 16 year old Panasonic plasma TV last week. Bought a 55" Samsung NEO-LED. Picture difference is staggering.

On to the steaming questions. With the old TV I would hook the laptop up through an HDMI cable and watch MotoGP, SuperCross through subscriptions.
Any TV shows and movies would be through Amazon prime and Netflixs. (Been feeling nostalgic and watching Rockford Files lately.)
Obviously the new TV is a Smart version so I did away with the Laptop.
My question is, what benefits, if any, would a Roku or other device be? I know nothing about them.

 

Had 3-4 versions of Roku, using the Ultra now. Wifi seems to be better than some of the cheaper ones. Got Netflix free (shared ex's login) and paid for nothing until I got suckered into a trial version of Prime... now about half of what we watch is on Prime. If the wife wasn't around I'd be content watching free content on Youtube. I've had YoutubeTV, Hulu, and Sling; they're all ok but not worth the $$ with their limitations.

 

"smart" tv means the Roku (or other device) functions are built in, no need for another device IMO

 

it usually works faster (cache wise) than the built in apps on the display unit.

 

Hardware wise, I recommend Nvidia Shield. They are pricey, but they work really well.

 

Apple TV for the hardware side. It has two advantages for us - first, it works well with the rest of the devices in the house (phones, tablets, laptops, etc) so throwing things over to the TV is easy. I can even put project files up on there when I really want to blow up a drawing. Second upside is ongoing updates to the software and apps. A lot of the built in TV apps don't get updated very often. The Apple TV actually replace a Tivo streaming box (worked well for recording off air as well as streaming). The issue with the Tivo is that none of the apps were being supported so I couldn't use all the features that came with the streaming packages. Hulu was an especially big PITA to deal with.

 

I wanted to like Apple TV. We have 3 different versions of it currently. But Roku just seems to work better and is easier. I kept having issues with my MotoGP feed on Apple, all of the devices. Tried it on Roku and it works perfectly. Since then the Apples just gather dust which is a shame because they aren't cheap.

 

I was just watching PBD's podcast earlier and he was talking about how, pertinent to this discussion, how July was the crossover point where streaming has surpassed cable for the first time. Cable is now going to go the way of newspapers essentially.

I'll post a link to the vid in the Youtube thread, its worth a watch, if you don't already know you might be surprised to learn where Cable receives the overwhelming lion's share of its ad revenue dollars from. ........ Death of Cable

 

they have tons of tv's that have an app store so you just need one remote. No need for roku, amazon sticks or whatever middleman device.

 

Endrick or Roque?

 

I find the apps in the Smart TV we use to be more than adequate. I used a Roku (and still have it attached to a Stupid TV out in the workshop). Having only one remote to deal with trumps any speed/caching advantage the Roku *might* have. But we have gigabit fiber internet and performance just doesn't seem to be an issue at all.

I built a DVR from a half-height Lenovo PC with a decent NVidia half-height graphics card. I recently upgraded it with a 16TB hard drive (basically just copied the previous 8TB drive). I use Plex (lifetime subscription) to run the DVR and manage the multimedia content I have. I have a 4 channel HDHomerun tuner attached to a homemade Gray Hoverman antenna, so the Plex DVR can record all the local TV content I care to record, and the Plex app on my smart TV does a more than adequate job of serving that content up along with episode descriptions where appropriate. Total monthly cost is $0.00. And Plex includes all those same channels Pluto includes, but with the HDHomerun tuners I can also watch all my local TV that I want to, which really isn't all that much but I do use it at times.

There are several things I can't get with that arrangement, most notably sporting events that are exclusive to ESPN or one of its derivatives, but most of that I can do without. And I usually splurge for 4 months of Sling during college football season. They don't mind getting treated like a thirty dollah ho.