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The roku is a great way to stream tv viewing. Comes complete with everything to get up and viewing right away. Plug it in and follow the on screen instructions. A little exploration of the functions and setting up any account is easy. There are many channels to view absolutely with no cost whatsoever. Beat the cost of expensive pay tv providers.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Refurbished
This one failed me. You can watch HDMI or RGB but not at the same time. My older Roku ran 720P HD into my LCD TV while at the same time driving all the devices hooked into my stereo set. The new one will drive all the sound equipment at the same time HDMI drives my newest TV but it will not simultaneously drive the older TV set. I passed it along to my son. I will continue to use my old Roku that does not have YouTube. It used to access YouTube when I first hooked it up but Roku decided to curtail that service so I bought a smart TV mainly to watch YouTube. My old Roku has Fox News, PubDHub, EWTN, Weather Underground, Pandora, TWIT, and TuneIn Radio. That will have to do since they are no longer putting out updates. The new Roku, subject of this revue, has hundreds of apps and a relatively more complex menu along with a few other improvements over older versions. It has that annoying plastic tab on the remote and direct buttons for stuff I don't care about that clutter it up and make it a big nuisance. The old remote works with the new Roku. Incidentally, if you have more than one Roku box, one remote changes all the boxes at once. You can't single out just one of your boxes.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
We ordered this Roku 1 so we could watch our Netflix movies & shows on our big screen instead of always on a computer or tablet. We were using the streaming function on our Blu Ray player but it was terrible. I received this Roku and within 30 minutes we were streaming shows to our TV in great HD quality. Super easy to install and activate, just as easy to understand and we got a ton of feature channels with the unit. We can stream movies, animations, YouTube, TV shows, Pandora music and more. I love it when something works as it is described to work, and this Roku 1 does. They could improve it by having an on/off button on the unit. I have to unplug this one to shut it down. They may have changed the newer versions! I'm satisfied.......
The streaming function quit working on my Blu-Ray player, although it still plays discs just fine, so the easiest, most cost effective fix was to replace that missing functionality with a Roku box. I already had a Roku LT box on another set in the house, so I knew what I was getting into. Setting up the device is a snap. It literally took about two minutes. Registering it on the network, logging into my existing Roku account and logging into Netflix (the main reason I have the box in the first place) took another five. That's right, in under 10 minutes, I had the device unboxed, hooked up, and was watching an episode of "The Blacklist". It's just that easy. One minor annoyance with the setup was it defaulted to 720p resolution when my TV is capable of 1080p. I had to make that adjustment manually. The fact that the Roku 1 even has 1080p is a step up from the Roku LT. The user interface is virtually identical to the Roku LT, so it didn't take any getting used to. Of course, that included a somewhat limited Netflix interface that isn't as user friendly as the one on my malfunctioning Blu-Ray player. One caveat to be mindful of with Roku boxes is you have to create a Roku user account, which requires you to give a credit card number. Had I known this before buying the first one, I might not have. To be clear, they don't actually charge you a monthly fee; they just use it if you make on-screen purchases, such as watching a pay-per-view movie. Neither my Panasonic Blu-Ray player nor did the Netgear NeoTV box I have in the kitchen required me to surrender a credit card number. The flip side of that coin is I cannot add or delete channels on those two devices the way I can on the Roku boxes. It should be noted that although Roku boasts that it offers viewers thousands of channels, many of them don't carry much real content, just previews of the cable channels to which they correspond. Some, like History, only offer full access to cable subscribers who already receive that channel, so antenna users and those on cable systems History doesn't recognize are just plain out of luck. I discovered this the hard way when I tried to watch a program on History that I had missed when it was broadcast on the cable channel. When I was referred to its Web site to unlock the content, the online form asked me for my cable provider and AT&T U-verse wasn't on the list, so I remained locked out. Another oddity about the Roku is the remote lacks a power button. The device goes to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity and wakes up when you press any button on the remote. Still, i would prefer to be able to control the power manually, thank you very much. I realize it sounds like I don't like this device very much, but really I do. I just want to point out the flaws—for which I gave it four stars instead of five—so others can make informed decisions. The overall performance is very good, actually better than my Roku LT, which has an annoying tendency to cut in and out. I wouldn't pay full price for the Roku 1, but having paid roughly half of retail, I feel it's a bargain and a great value, not to mention a valuable tool in my long term effort to free myself from overpriced cable. Really, with a good antenna and Netflix on the Roku box, who the heck actually needs cable anymore? I surely don't.Read full review
ROKU really doesn't have much to offer when it comes to free and live video streaming. I ordered the SLING channel, hoping to "cut the cable", but found out the stream quality is rather poor and the load is sluggish. The free video channels are usually garbage quality and sometimes rank below VHS level! So I'll probably go back to antenna since most programs we watch are over the air anyway. As for the other services, on-demand video and radio channels, it's excellent. But despite the fact channels such as Netflix are generally fluid and clear, you still have glitches at times. Frankly, I recommend buying DVD's and Blu Ray discs instead of streaming on-demand favorites because there's a much larger selection and a much higher resolution on discs. Plus, DVD's and Blu Rays aren't really all that expensive, especially second-hand buys. No buffering required either. Now, as for radio channels, hooray! Plenty of free radio channels are available and they usually stream perfectly. You can easily hook up your stereo system to the outputs in back and you'll hear some excellent audio. Of course, you can also do this with a cellphone or tablet, but combining ROKU with your TV screen is easier to navigate. Oh, the apps and games, well I recommend a real gaming console for that. ROKU has a TETRIS app and they charge you about $5 a month for it. This game is free on Google Play, so like uh, no thanks. The only apps actually worth installing are weather reports and screensavers. Weather Underground gives very clear forecasts and statements. It's nice to just go to that app when you need a weather report on the fly. Yawn, so yeah, ROKU isn't the latest greatest tech item they make it out to be. It's just an average streaming player that, in my humble opinion, is most useful to audiophiles.Read full review
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