Ben Posted January 14, 2014 Report Share Posted January 14, 2014 I have two Samsung tvs in the house. They both do youtube/hulu/netflix/prime/plex/etc... I recently bought a roku 3 just because i got it really cheap. I am just curious if there is any advantage to using the Roku? Right now to watch a movie on my media server or netflix, my wife just hits a button on the tv remote and the apps are there. Really... I am wondering if i should just sell the roku and go buy beer with my winnings or hook it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted January 14, 2014 Report Share Posted January 14, 2014 Once you set up the ROKU, its about the same. Roku has WAY more stations than your TV and you can take it anywhere. My kids were watching netflix at the hotel thru my phone's hotspot for free (unlimited data with grandfathered plan). They can also access Time Warner cable thru the ROKU since we have an account, anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JC Posted January 27, 2014 Report Share Posted January 27, 2014 Question about Roku. I'm getting an HD DVR for my smart TV, but for the other TV I have, I don't think I'm even getting a box. If I want to stream netflix and such should I look into something like this? It looks like I can turn this kind of into a DVR. Can I access my TWC DVR from a Roku? Is a Roku worth it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Elflocko| Posted January 27, 2014 Report Share Posted January 27, 2014 I've had a ROKU for over a year and it has been an exceptional investment. Even if your TV has a built in DLNA player, I'd still get a ROKU... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gatorclaws Posted January 27, 2014 Report Share Posted January 27, 2014 I use roku for TWC TV so I can get stations on other tvs in HD without renting more boxes from TW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mullichicken25 Posted January 27, 2014 Report Share Posted January 27, 2014 I bought a roku to run plex on my bedroom TV and works like a champ...but all indications are that the Samsung plex app works just as well. I've never used the roku for anything else, I'm sure its great for netflix/hulu and that stuff but i really can't imaigne it having much more capability than the smart TV. The roku has hundreds of other apps, but the vast majority are useless or require a monthly subscription, or both. At the end of the day its a great device but not worth having an extra remote if your TV already has the same functionality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homer_Rice Posted January 27, 2014 Report Share Posted January 27, 2014 Long time Roku user here. Also recently bought a smart tv. The smart tv is okay but I decided to upgrade to a Roku 3 because I prefer its interface over the Visio apps. I also wanted the usb connection on the Roku 3 so that was a factor in my decision. I'd suggest playing around with your Roku to see if you like any of the wide variety of channels (as mullichicken says, many of them are crap, but there are also a number of good ones, too.) I like that I can get PBS stuff easily and YouTube, too. It may be that in your case the Roku is redundant--if so, give it (or sell it) to a friend who might put it to use and make their day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Tigers Johnson| Posted February 4, 2014 Report Share Posted February 4, 2014 Twc has a channel... You can put it in a room that doesn't have cable run to it and get the channels you pay for on your roku without having to send a cable line to that room... I have roku boxes in both my sons rooms.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Tigers Johnson| Posted February 10, 2014 Report Share Posted February 10, 2014 roku has a slingbox channel now too for you slingbox users... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-GoBengals- Posted February 10, 2014 Report Share Posted February 10, 2014 roku has a slingbox channel now too for you slingbox users... thats pretty cool actually.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CincyInDC Posted February 17, 2014 Report Share Posted February 17, 2014 Monday I should get a Roku 3 in the mail. I'll have to set my home router to use SmartDNS to get US channels. I'm curious how well it will work... A buddy of mine said Netflix are being complete bastards in that they are trying to change the internet to suit their needs. I assume this is an anti-net neutrality issue? Does anyone here already have opinions on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie_B Posted February 17, 2014 Report Share Posted February 17, 2014 I use roku for TWC TV so I can get stations on other tvs in HD without renting more boxes from TW. Is this something you can do with DirectTV? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-GoBengals- Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 Monday I should get a Roku 3 in the mail. I'll have to set my home router to use SmartDNS to get US channels. I'm curious how well it will work... A buddy of mine said Netflix are being complete bastards in that they are trying to change the internet to suit their needs. I assume this is an anti-net neutrality issue? Does anyone here already have opinions on this? sort of the opposite, from what i understand, the comcasts and century link and bright houses of the world are throttling bandwidth used for netflix so its not as good of quality since it has a direct impact on their pay-per-watch streaming movies, etc... net neutrality governs that ALL bandwidth from anyone to anyone must be treated equally, netflix just wants dibs on fair bandwidth.. how could netflix be bastards exactly? all they could do is make their own product worse? what needs do they have? other than getting fair bandwidth? your friend is either confused, or a commie bastard who works for a major internet/tv provider.... or i am completely lost... (least likely scenario, yet still possible) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gatorclaws Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 sort of the opposite, from what i understand, the comcasts and century link and bright houses of the world are throttling bandwidth used for netflix so its not as good of quality since it has a direct impact on their pay-per-watch streaming movies, etc... net neutrality governs that ALL bandwidth from anyone to anyone must be treated equally, netflix just wants dibs on fair bandwidth.. how could netflix be bastards exactly? all they could do is make their own product worse? what needs do they have? other than getting fair bandwidth? your friend is either confused, or a commie bastard who works for a major internet/tv provider.... or i am completely lost... (least likely scenario, yet still possible) based on my knowledge, you are correct. Net Neutrality is about the internet providers being fair, not the content providers. Without it, I believe they could even block access to things such as Netflix. Netflix is probably one of the companies with the most to lose. Is this something you can do with DirectTV? TWC has their own app which allows it, so unless DirectTV has a similar app then no. The app is the same thing they have for watching TV on your phone or computer. However, the TWC TV app doesn't have all channels on it and can occasionally have drops in quality. ESPN is the most notable exception but I'd guess about 90% of my regular channels are there including NFL network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CincyInDC Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 This might have been part of it... http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/02/18/0157238/killing-net-neutrality-could-be-good-for-you Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Berin Szoka and Brent Skorup write that everyone assumes that cable companies have all the market power, and so of course a bigger cable company means disaster. But content owners may be the real heavyweights here: It was Netflix that withheld high-quality streaming from Time Warner Cable customers last year, not vice versa and it was ESPN that first proposed to subsidize its mobile viewers' data usage last year. 'We need to move away from the fear-mongering and exaggerations about threats to the Internet as well as simplistic assumptions about how Internet traffic moves. The real problems online are far more complex and less scary. And it's not about net neutrality, but about net capacity.' The debate is really about who pays for — and who profits from — the increasingly elaborate infrastructure required to make the Internet do something it was never designed to do in the first place: stream high-speed video. 'While many were quick to assume that broadband providers were throttling Netflix traffic, the explanation could be far simpler: The company simply lacked the capacity to handle the "Super HD" video quality it began offering last year.' A two-sided market means broadband providers would have an incentive to help because they would receive revenue from two major sources: content providers (through sponsorship or ads), and consumers (through subscription fees). 'Unfortunately, this kind of market innovation is viewed as controversial or even harmful to consumers by some policy and Internet advocates. But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven't priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm,' conclude Szoka and Skorup. 'Bottom line: The FCC should stop trying to ban prioritization outright and focus only on actual abuses of market power.'" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gatorclaws Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 This might have been part of it... http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/02/18/0157238/killing-net-neutrality-could-be-good-for-you sounds like some well crafted lobbying. Bottom line. There are plenty of competitors to Netflix. If they want to screw themselves and make their own product worse, that's their issue and choice. There are generally not competitors for home high-speed internet for people to turn to. For me, if TWC decides to slow down or block Netflix I don't have any other way to get it. I don't consider a slow speed dsl connection a competitor to Time Warner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-GoBengals- Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 i have been dealing with comcasts throttling of netflix for the past 6 months. i got better streaming speeds via my iphone hot spot on 3g Sprint data... it seems to have subsided slightly, i can get 720p out of it... meaningwhile when im not streaming i can pul 3mb/sec torrenting.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Bunghole| Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 How does an ISP "know" if you're watching Netflix? Is there a record of some kind being kept on every customer and what they use their home internet for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Elflocko| Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 How does an ISP "know" if you're watching Netflix? Is there a record of some kind being kept on every customer and what they use their home internet for? 1. Easily. They can tell if you are watching Netflix, torrenting a file, watching Amazon Prime, or posting on Go-Bengals. 2. Every transaction you make online is cached for a certain amount of time either by your ISP or the search engine you are utilizing (except for Duck Duck Go). Keep that in mind the next time you're searching for midget tranny porn; someone somewhere has a record of that search, at least for a few months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JC Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 Roku announced it is has somekind of Showtime app out now. Anyone experience it yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Bunghole| Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 1. Easily. They can tell if you are watching Netflix, torrenting a file, watching Amazon Prime, or posting on Go-Bengals. 2. Every transaction you make online is cached for a certain amount of time either by your ISP or the search engine you are utilizing (except for Duck Duck Go). Keep that in mind the next time you're searching for midget tranny porn; someone somewhere has a record of that search, at least for a few months. Those cached databases must be HUGE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CincyInDC Posted February 26, 2014 Report Share Posted February 26, 2014 Well, the Roku arrived but I have yet to trick it into thinking it's in 'Murika. The free, geographically unrestricted (read: crap) channels are there but what I want ... hulu, pbs, netflix, etc. are not. Tech details that might interest only Elflocko: problem is that my spiffy fiber connection doesn't give me an unshared ipv4 address, so the Smart DNS service I have won't work at the router level. At least that's what I think is going on. This weekend I intend to put a custom firmware ala WRT on my Fritz!Box (the most prevalent brand of router in Germany) with the intention of connecting to the VPN service I already use for other certain activities. Freetz.org is the firmware's name/website, ha ha ha. Who says Germans can't do humor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Elflocko| Posted March 3, 2014 Report Share Posted March 3, 2014 Well, the Roku arrived but I have yet to trick it into thinking it's in 'Murika. The free, geographically unrestricted (read: crap) channels are there but what I want ... hulu, pbs, netflix, etc. are not. Tech details that might interest only Elflocko: problem is that my spiffy fiber connection doesn't give me an unshared ipv4 address, so the Smart DNS service I have won't work at the router level. At least that's what I think is going on. This weekend I intend to put a custom firmware ala WRT on my Fritz!Box (the most prevalent brand of router in Germany) with the intention of connecting to the VPN service I already use for other certain activities. Freetz.org is the firmware's name/website, ha ha ha. Who says Germans can't do humor. Wait, you have fiber? Never mind that they seem to be NAT'ing it, you have fiber?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Bunghole| Posted March 3, 2014 Report Share Posted March 3, 2014 Well, the Roku arrived but I have yet to trick it into thinking it's in 'Murika. The free, geographically unrestricted (read: crap) channels are there but what I want ... hulu, pbs, netflix, etc. are not. Tech details that might interest only Elflocko: problem is that my spiffy fiber connection doesn't give me an unshared ipv4 address, so the Smart DNS service I have won't work at the router level. At least that's what I think is going on. This weekend I intend to put a custom firmware ala WRT on my Fritz!Box (the most prevalent brand of router in Germany) with the intention of connecting to the VPN service I already use for other certain activities. Freetz.org is the firmware's name/website, ha ha ha. Who says Germans can't do humor. That is actually pretty funny. I'm sure some German marketing executives let loose a rare smirk when they thought of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CincyInDC Posted March 3, 2014 Report Share Posted March 3, 2014 Fiber from the street to the cellar and VDSL from the cellar to the apartment. So yes, fiber. Fiber fiber fiber fiber. Oh, it's socialist fiber by the way. M-Net is owned by SWM, which in turn is owned by the city of Munich. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. The actual problem, as it turns out, is that the stupid router provided by my ISP won't actually use the DNS IPs I give it. It displays them, saves them, but simply ignores them. As a simple test, I turned off ipv6 everywhere (except the router), set DNS at the router to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and still no dice on my regular computer. If only I could set DNS manually on the Roku. Maybe if I set up a DHCP server (assuming I can turn it off at the router) I can force it to use smart DNS. As a fun project and proof of concept and to buy a new toy I picked up an Asus router, flashed easytomato, and now have this router and everything behind it connecting to a VPN in the US. Roku happiness abounds except that it's not surprisingly a bit sluggish when starting up a video. commercials are especially bad because they don't seem to want to bounce down to a lower resolution, so it buffers. :-\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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