Electronics

[Snoopp]

Is the roku easy to set up?  I know nothing about these things and am getting ripped off by cable every month.  

AT&T is going to offer a new service as an option to cable at a low price.  

[Liverbird1]

I dont know a lot about this as my husband   and son set it up .But they said we have saved a lot as we no longer have satellite tv ripping us off with those charges . 

I never used half of the channels on satellite so now we have basic channels such as , PSB , local channels , , ABC , also netflix , which is enough for me .

Hope this helps .

[gardenman]

Is a Roku easy to set up? Generally yes. You have to be able to plug in an HDMI cable to both the TV and the Roku, then plug the Roku into a power outlet and select the correct input on the HDTV. At that point you'll be prompted to scan for a signal from your router. Once it finds the right signal you'll have to enter your router's password. Then you'll have to activate your Roku for whatever (if any) subscription services you have (Netflix, Amazon Vidoes, CBS All Access, etc.) That typically involves a password being flashed on the screen that you then have to enter on the website of the service provider. Once you enter the password there, the device is activated and linked to your account. Many cable channels now stream online, but you typically have to maintain a cable subscription to access their online streams which once again requires entering a pasword or logging in through your cable provider.

There are now multiple streaming services that are aiming to replace cable TV. Direct TV Now and Playstation Vue are two such options. More are coming. You pay a monthly fee and get access to multiple channels, but the cost savings aren't especially huge and the channel selection is somewhat limited. Eventually, cable TV as we know it will disappear and everything will be streamed on demand. In fact, I suspect over the air broadcasts will eventually (the next 20+ years) cease entirely and everything will be streamed freeing up the TV and radio bandwidth spectrum for other uses. 

The future is clearly in streamed media available on demand and from anyplace on Earth. We've made big strides in that direction over just the last couple of years, and we'll see a vastly different way of viewing programming and events in the next couple of years. Broadcasting over the air as we know it now is grossly inefficient. Streaming will be the wave of the future.