Roku-3 question ?

Conradicles

We bought one last night and my guess is that my wife will love it so much we will buy another for the bedroom. You would think that these type of units would drive down the cost of cable/sat soon.

Jimbo18

tonyb - I pay $8 each for Netflix and Hulu Plus. I don't have cable so no HBOGO or Showtime Anytime. There are dozens of free movie channels on the Roku, like Crackle, where you have to sit through commercials. Most of them are older movies or independent internet type stuff though, so I seldom watch any of them.

The History Channel, Lifetime and A&E have free on demand channels which are nice (Vikings was awesome, btw). There are also dozens of specialized, free, channels for exercise, music, hunting, cooking, tech stuff like CNET, etc. The biggest drawback if you drop cable is sports. No sports to speak of. CBS and ESPN both have channels but not for live stuff, and mostly for news about sports.

TNHNDYMAN

tonyb wrote: »

Color me curious, but all you Roku users....how much is each of these services ? Hulu/ HBOGO/Showtime/Netflix/Redbox/Amazon....plus any local channels....news or sports ?

Once you add it all up, plus internet service....seems to me your not too far off cable prices.

It does add up, but for us it's our biggest entertainment expense. We don't eat out much at all, travel or take vacations. My wife works 12hr shifts as a nurse and by the time she gets home its comfy clothes and lounge on the couch. We still do Dish TV with a 250 channel lineup and most are HD with 2 Hoppers and 2 joeys. Netflix is around $8/mo, Hulu the same, and Amazon prime membership works out to about $7 month. For me internet service is the same as paying for power or water- today it's just another utility, so I don't really include it in the entertainment expense category.

The hardest part for me not cutting the cable bill (or Dish) is the convenience of the DVR. Being able to record up to 6 shows at any given time and watch in any room of the house keeps me tied to their service. I know a lot of that can be done thru TIVO and or a tuner card in the computer, but not nearly as elegantly. Another bonus of Dish is having Glenn Beck's The Blaze network included in the package. I could subscribe and stream thru the Roku, but then I'd pay about $100 a year to subscribe. Sports are really the only thing keeping a lot of customers from cutting the cable cord. You can piggy back service to streaming devices if you are already a cable subscriber, but it's not available for Dish customers.

I know most parents are at least somewhat concerned about the amount of time their kids spend in front of a screen, but for us we are more open to the doors it has opened for our autistic 4 year old. When she was first diagnosed around age 2 1/2, she only had a vocabulary of 3 words and tested quite poorly in most language areas. She would not sit on anyone's lap to listen to a book being read nor show any interest in most forms of one on one communication. She is more of a visual learner and has really shown interest in cartoons. I'm not talking about Scooby Doo or Sponge Bob, but things that have math and language as an integral part of the story. She loves cartoons like Bubble Guppies, Super Why, Blue's Clues, Team Umizoomi, and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.

From these shows, she had developed an amazing vocabulary and also a lot of appropriate emotional responses that were missing just 2 years ago. She now tests above age level in vocabulary and her ability to focus on tasks at hand has improved dramatically. She will now sit in my lap to read a book and is reading 3 and 4 letter words by sight. Her fine motor control is still delayed and she has very little interest in writing her letter or numbers, but I think she will actually be reading by the end of the year.

Not sure how I got off on this tangent other than to maybe explain why the expense is worth it to us. Being able to stream these shows thru Amazon or Netflix and now the ability to push any content live or recorded from my Dish service thru the slingbox platform integrated into the Hopper to our iPad or Kindle's anywhere we have a wifi connection gives us even more options. It is convenient for me and has opened the outside world up to my daughter. Her Dr's told us two years ago that she would probably never live on her own and was most likely moderately retarded are amazed by her progress. Her IQ now has been measure over 100 and her vocabulary is equivalent to an 8 year old at age 4. They are not thrilled by all my methods, but they can't deny the results.

At the end of the day, I'll gladly pay over $250/month for these services and it feels cheap compared to the costs we were going thru paying for Speech Therapy, and Occupational Therapy every week with very limited positive results. Sorry for the long soapbox.