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Has anybody here given "roku" a try?

#24
Eric Perry said:
My mom has two at her house (bedroom and TV room). I set them both up. They were simple to link to her Netflix account. They are affordable, easy to navigate, and work very well. I can't comment on picture quality, as my mother is stuck in the 90's with her box TVs! :D

Also, her Rokus are definitely snappier than my Blu-Ray player that has 'net connectivity.
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Her TVs look better with composite video than new ones- the old ones were made to accept that signal and now, it's not an important format and it doesn't "fit" the current video signal's resolution.
 
#29
Roscoe East said:
I'm aware of that, I was just concerned that the Roku might look worse than 480i DVDs, given possible bandwidth limitations of my ISP.

Eg., if a Roku looks as bad as most YouTube videos, I'm not interested. If it only (sic) looks as good as a DVD, I'm fine with that.
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I have no complaints on quality> Its pretty rare that its not HD, unless its old footage.
 
#31
I use an AppleTV exclusively, no cable. I use a lot of apple products so it seemed the best choice. It works well, I especially like the wireless streaming (Airplay), be it for music or video.
 
#36
Roscoe East said:
I'm aware of that, I was just concerned that the Roku might look worse than 480i DVDs, given possible bandwidth limitations of my ISP.

Eg., if a Roku looks as bad as most YouTube videos, I'm not interested. If it only (sic) looks as good as a DVD, I'm fine with that.
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It looks far better than that. If you want to try it and return it in the event that it doesn't look as good as you want, buy it from Best Buy- they have a liberal return policy.

I use ATT DSL and my plan is for 6Meg/sec- it doesn't hang up and looks fine. If yours is higher, it should work well. If you use broadband, it may slow down at certain times, but generally, it would work as expected.

I haven't seen anything Roku that looked like YouTube.
 
#37
Chunk-O-Funk said:
Antenna is an option too. Is there a decent in doors antenna brand that has a good reputation?

I know there would be a lot of variables like distance and objects in the way of a signal.
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Depends on where you are, in relation to the tower. Most of the channels are in the UHF spectrum and the range isn't hte same as it was with analog broadcast. Also, Signal to Noise ration is more important than it was before- I'm less than 1/2 mile from two towers and about 3 miles from the rest in MKE- my reception for ch 4 is crap unless I use minimal antenna and using an amplified antenna is the last thing I need. I have tried bow-tie, rabbit ears (extended and retracted), short sections of wire, amplified w/ built-in attenuation and some that are made for the new broadcast- all with and without attenuation. Turns out that the noise (reflected signal) is as high or higher than the direct signal. Proximity of one tower to the others makes a difference, too- one may be in the way of another, the signal from one may mess with another and you may be too close, like I am.

Another thing that affects the reception quality is the tuner being used- a cheap one won't reject bad reflections and noise the way a good one does.
 
#39
I've been using a combo of antenna (a large-ish one mounted inside the attic) and Roku for over a year now, and I'm quite satisfied. Lucky for me I'm not into big league sports, because that's the one serious weak spot in both formats.
 

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