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Roku vs AppleTV vs ?

best internet TV box

  • Total voters
    9
I've found it fairly easy to avoid spoilers here (it's much more dangerous to visit entertainment news sites, some of them can be quite careless about spoilers in titles and video thumbnails).

But there's really no Lost type show out there that makes me feel like I MUST comment in threads. Instead it's Falling Skies/Dallas/Awake type shows - good enough I suppose but ultimately all my posts are some variation on "I wish this was better."

The Roku box is also compatible with Hulu Plus. Lots of current shows available, and it's $7.99 a month.
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I don't really want to rack up multiple subscriptions just to have all the content I want. Pretty soon it adds up and I might as well just stick with arm-and-a-leg Comcast. :rommie:

To date, the most thorough source of content appears to be Netflix 1 DVD + unlimited streaming at $16/month. Anything I can't get via streaming I can still get on DVD. Better yet, I can focus on getting through the DVD only part of my queue and then switch over to unlimited streaming only at $8/month.

My goal here is to get everything for the least amount of money possible; and to get it without ads. Getting it quickly is a lesser goal, as is getting it easily (meaning from a single source without too much hunting around.) Keeping anything is not a goal at all; I rarely rewatch anything.
 
I really like my Roku box. Unfortunately, it doesn't do uPNP/DLNA, and the "USB media player" is useless. For streaming content from my PC, I use an Xbox 360 or PS3.
 
GoogleTV news. Big announcement this week - still can't tell if it's worth bothering with, for what I want.

I'm thinking the best combo is Roku with hulu subscription when there are network shows airing that I want to watch, and then drop that and go back to Netflix otherwise, for older shows and movies. Netflix is easy to drop and pick back up; if hulu is easy, too, that would be the ideal situation.
 
I do know quite a few people who have dropped cable in favor of the Netflix/Hulu combo. They love it.
 
Yep. $16 a month (for the two), and you have instant access to thousands of current movies and TV shows, as well as classic shows (WKRP in Cincinnati is one of my favorites). Plus, again, with the Roku box, you get free access to Crackle, PopcornFlix, global live news feeds, instant music, and a lot more. I love my Roku box.
 
The main thing for us (well, my roommate) is sports. It would also kind of defeat the purpose of the TiVo HD he just bought....
 
From what I've been able to gather, cord-cutting is best for those of us who don't care about sports (or reality TV).

Ironically, we're coming up on the one sports event I actually do like to watch - the Olympics! Maybe I'll just keep ye olde cable until that's over, and then make the big switch. Another month or two of Comcast bills won't kill me...

I took a look at hulu plus - they say there's limited advertising. How limited is limited? ;) If I'm paying, I'm not going to have a lot of patience for ads. A bigger concern is their library. They don't have The Walking Dead, Mad Men, American Horror Story, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, Game of Thrones or Justified. They do have Once Upon a Time, Smash and Grimm. So I am right in assuming they cover broadcast a lot better than cable?
 
We actually tried to do the whole "antenna" thing for a while just to get the basic channels so my roommate could keep watching sports. Our antenna picked up one channel -- it plays nothing but religious crap all day.
 
Temis the Vorta said:
From what I've been able to gather, cord-cutting is best for those of us who don't care about sports (or reality TV).

Ironically, we're coming up on the one sports event I actually do like to watch - the Olympics! Maybe I'll just keep ye olde cable until that's over, and then make the big switch. Another month or two of Comcast bills won't kill me...

I took a look at hulu plus - they say there's limited advertising. How limited is limited? ;) If I'm paying, I'm not going to have a lot of patience for ads. A bigger concern is their library. They don't have The Walking Dead, Mad Men, American Horror Story, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, Game of Thrones or Justified. They do have Once Upon a Time, Smash and Grimm. So I am right in assuming they cover broadcast a lot better than cable?
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From my experience with Hulu Plus, most of the time the ads last a grand total of a minute to a minute and a half, 2 or three times over the course of half an hour. You get to watch more show between each set of commercials.
 
I got the wrong idea about hulu plus, I see. I thought the subscription = no ads. Otherwise, why subscribe? I could get network shows with ads for free, as per usual, via ye olde TV.

Maybe I'll just be patient and wait for everything to hit Netflix. Cheaper, simpler, ad-free.

Hulu was thinking about an ad-free service last August. I heard about that, which is why I expected hulu to have it by now but I guess plans never moved forward. It would be more expensive than the $7.99 level, but considering that Netflix offers ad-free streaming for the same price, with a far more extensive library, I'm far from convinced that would be a very good deal anyway.

Really, you're trading hulu's ability to get shows faster vs Netflix's ability to offer a far wider range of content - even at the same price, I'm not sure I'd say hulu's value is greater. (I also don't really know how quickly Netflix offers shows, since I haven't yet jumped over to a streaming membership. Just because they don't have Grimm on DVD yet doesn't mean it's not available via streaming.)
 
Well at least you won't have to consider one more option, Google's new Nexus Q media streamer. I completely fail to see how this thing's going to compete with anything being priced at $300. Big fail on Google's part unless this is a proof of concept they know isn't going to sell, but will try to get integrated into future TVs or other devices like cable boxes.
 
Update on Roku - works great, I'm a happy customer! :)

Even with a mere 3-4 Mbps, the Netflix streaming works like a dream. My brother warned me that sometimes it hangs up for a sec, but I must have a better connection because I've never seen that happen.

I'll probably only use Netflix and Pandora. Hulu Plus isn't appealing as long as they have ads, Crackle's movie selection is blah, and for news I guess I'll stick with PBS Newshour on my iPad. I wish Netflix had a bigger streaming library, out of 300 titles only a tenth are streaming, but I can cope with DVDs too.
 
I voted for Roku, simply because what I've read of it so far makes it a more appealing option than AppleTV. Glad to hear you like your Roku, Temis the Vorta.
 
I've got a Sony Bluray player that plays YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, some oddball ones like Crackle, plus...well...blu-ray discs. Even comes with 802.11n for those not willing/able to wire it up properly. And it cost around $120. So these $100 devies don't exactly impress me. I don't care if they play Angry Birds, I don't want to play that on a TV.
 
I cut the cord nearly two and a half years ago. Between DVD, Netflix, Hulu and the occasional...umm... torrent... I can pretty much watch what I need to. Broadcast television shows (like "Community") usually show up on Hulu next-day. Fine with me. Cable series (like "True Blood" or "The Walking Dead") aren't available online, so I either wait for the DVD release, find it online.... somewhere..., or on rare occasions watch it at a friend's house.

I'm honestly not obsessed with anything currently airing, so I can be patient and wait to watch it later. I don't need to be current with anything. There's no water cooler show amongst my circle of friends that I feel I need to be caught up with.
 
If Hulu offered an ad free option, I'd subscribe. But since they don't, I'll wait for Netflix. I really don't care when I get shows because my queue is so enormous at this point, there's always something to watch.

Even if there was an ad free Hulu, there's still the annoyance of the ads for other shows that run on the bottom of the screen more and more now. I even find the channel logo at bottom right too distracting sometimes.

There's no Lost style show anymore that really motivates me to keep up on the discussion, so when I see a show no longer makes any difference.
 
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