Thursday, March 10, 2011

Roku, Best Gadget Yet

I've become irked with our cable company. Well, in reality I've always been a bit irked, just now I have a specific complaint. Namely, it's The Box. The stupid cable box that we must have to get the channels we want. And it's not just The Box, oh no there is yet another remote and an odious monthly rental fee per unit.

I remember when way back (20 years ago?) we used to have a box and then the cable companies phased them out. Now the stupid things are back. I wish I could just buy it outright and not have the obnoxious rental fee appended to my cable bill. We have two tvs and only one of them has The Box. On the other, smaller, set we have watched the available non-scrambled stations be whittled down to just a mere handful. On principle I refuse to get a second box, but it was getting to be a tough stand.

Then lo, Amazon announced that a selection of it's instant downloads would be FREE to Amazon Prime customers.

We have a Prime account- Woo Hoo!

I picked up a mid-level Roku box and set it up on the smaller tv. It works beautifully. We've been watching endless Top Gear for the past couple of days and a few kid shows. Larry and I checked out the selection of free movies available and we saw plenty to tempt us. From old favorites to more recent selections that we missed. No longer are there any more complaints about the lack of stations from the kids. Instead they are trying to figure out what to watch next.

The Roku was definitely one of my better purchases.

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