Brehs, I just moved into a new crib the other day and only got internet because I'm never home to watch TV and if I am in the crib I'm not gonna just have the TV/Cable on just for background noise or something to "do."
So I copped the Roku 3 ($99), HDMI cable to hook it up and I have PLEX managing all of the movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc that I download since I don't like to watch shows with commercials in them. I have all of the content on a 2TB external hooked up to my iMac but you can easily plug the hard drive/USB drive into the Roku directly. For local TV channels, I just got one of those flat TV antenna's for like $20 bucks and it works well if I every wanna watch ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.
The Roku is the most flexible and "hackable" of the streaming devices and there are all of the channels/content providers that you'd expect (Netflix, WWE, etc) but there are also unsupported channels were you can get free content, along with tons of porn as well. I'm not deep into the Roku yet but I'm satisfied with it and all the content I have is managed very well with PLEX, which is responsive and I don't have issue with the Roku/PLEX playing well together.
HOWEVER - when it comes to live sports, its gonna be challenging. you can get your sports from streaming sites but its not gonna be that crispy HD quality that you get from cable. For the basketball crowd, there's Ballstreams, which you pay for but you get every game and the quality is excellent. I haven't heard of many issues with them. When it comes to other sports, however, you might have to stick with the streaming sites until a more pronounced streaming solution pops up. There may be something available now but I;m not 100 percent sure since I'm just getting back into the swing of things with the Roku.
While having cable is nice, I couldn't justify paying 99$ a month plus whatever premium channels you pay for. Not worth it to me and all the shows I wanna watch get put online within MINUTES after they air and the commercials are chopped out and the quality is piff. I can also watch at my own pace and put the shows on my portable devices.
I'm prolly gonna cop the new Roku streaming stick for my other TV since I have the Roku 3 already. The Roku app is easy to use so you can use your phone/ipad to control everything if you don't wanna use the remote that comes with it.
I guess I could purchase packages, right? I don't watch NBA or MLB really so won't need those. I can use regular TV for NFL. I just need ESPN for colllege basketball really.
ever since
