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Review: I Like my Roku3

December 14, 2013 - Filed under: Information,products,Recommendations

roku-3I recently bought a Roku 3 to replace an old VuNow box that I’ve had for many years. I’m probably one of the first cord cutters (6 years in Feb) and I’m always looking for new ways to stream to my TVs.

The Roku was much easier to use than my old box. I especially like the headphone jack in the remote, what a wonderful idea. It’s a pretty simple setup, but you do have to sign up for a Roku account where you can download your *channels*. There were many to choose from and while I didn’t pay for any, there were plenty of free channels available. Some of the *Free* channels are only free to download, you have to pay for content, so be careful of that. You have to give Roku your credit card when you sign up and they will charge that for content. There is a setting where you will be asked for your password before any charges can be applied and I would highly recommend turning that on.

For ease of use and quality of the streams I definitely give it 5 stars. Scrolling through your channels is fast and pretty easy. I did find a lot of duplicate content on the free channels, but adding or deleting channels right from the box is a snap.

It definitely loads content much faster than my old box,  but to properly judge a box like this you have to look at what content is provided and available. While there’s a lot on the Roku network, it’s missing some biggies. Things like regular Hulu, YouTube, playing different formats on local media storage and others (ESPN3 is worthless on Roku without a cable subscription). That’s where PlayOn.tv comes to the rescue. I’ve had PlayOn for many years, too and I do have a lifetime subscription ($59.99 a real deal). It allows me to watch most all the things Roku is missing and it was easy to add to Roku. It’s a private Roku chanel and a little extra work, but certainly not hard to install.

I’m still giving Roku 3 four stars out of five, but it would be lower without the availability of PlayOn media server on it.

With all that being said I bought a second one for my living room.

 

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