brain trust: streaming TV

[cellio]

I've been thinking about updating my streaming. You can help. :-)

Apple TV (forthcoming) and Roku are both attractive and are clearly competitors. Both offer voice input, and "hey Siri, find $movie_title" would be way, way easier than using a remote control or phone to type a search, perhaps multiple times (once per channel/app). How well it works, and whether Siri will make it hard to find free alternatives to things in the Apple store, are open questions. I do not care one whit about playing games on my TV.

I have a first-edition Roku ("Roku 1", except it was just "Roku" then) and its user interface is pretty good, though I haven't gotten software updates for a year or two now (no longer supported) so I don't know what the modern UI looks like. One thing that I find annoying on my Roku is that you can only rewind or fast-forward in "steps" that are about 10-15 seconds apart, and when you jump it pauses to contemplate its navel before resuming (at which point you find out if you hit the spot you meant). So advancing to the end of the opening credits or backing up to hear that dialogue again is tedious and should be seamless. I much prefer the conventional rewind/fast-forward of my DVD and TiVo, where you see sped-up video as it goes by.

I mentioned TiVo, which streams. But TiVo's UI for streaming is really bad for people with less-than-stellar vision and measly little 42" TVs. If I can't read the titles from my chair, it's not very useful.

I also have a (new) Chromecast, an inexpensive experiment to see if that would do the job. I like it in principle, and you can't beat either the price or the footprint, but I've run into two issues. One is that it needs my phone's WiFi to be on and that sucks battery. That's probably livable because I keep a spare battery charged. The other is that Chromecast is only as good as the phone apps that drive it, and I really, really need a better Netflix app and haven't been able to find it.

The Netflix Android app is all about the eye candy. When viewing either my queue or search results, it shows me the cover art for each title -- but not the names in plain old text. Consider cover art, three to the row, scaled for a phone. I can't see that, and the app doesn't support zoom. I've found no setting to toggle between cover art and a text list. I've searched the app store for "Netflix" hoping to find third-party apps, but no luck so far. (By the way, the Crackle app has the same problem.)

Also, rewinding or fast-forwarding by moving a YouTube-style pointer really, really stinks. Netflix, where are the rewind/fast-forward buttons?

I'm mentioning Netflix a lot because that's really the only thing I stream from now. Roku has hundreds of channels but you have to interact with them individually, so I never do -- a unified search, on the other hand, would provide an entry to that. Since I'm already paying for Netflix I'm otherwise only interested in the free ones; I had thought that included Hulu but the phone app suggests that it's all paid now.

Dear readers who are technologically way ahead of me, any input?

Comments

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

I doubt I'm way ahead of you technologically, but we have a smart Samsung Blu-Ray DVD player for Hulu, Netflix, etc. We also have a Google Chromecast and an Amazon Fire TV Stick, which we use via its Android app. My beauteous and oft-praised jungle_goddess tends to use them more than I do, but we like the Amazon Fire TV Stick because we're both Amazon Prime members. It gives us most Smart TV functionality and easy access to Prime music and video.

I haven't tried Roku yet; the 4th generation device looks quite interesting. We still have a pretty big cable bill, but as I get closer to retirement I'm trying to find the best configuration for getting almost everything I want over broadband and getting rid of most other monthly content delivery charges.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Not much to say except to un-recommend the Roku Stick; the hardware just isn't up to the task, and navigating the menus is an exercise in frustration. (Plus some annoying behaviors/bugs like auto-playing a show if you ask for details about it.)

I'm curious about the Apple TV but greatly worry the ecosystem lock-in.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

We are about to replace our firewall, as our current one is commercial and blocks most ports. Imagine asking Roku what ports to unblock and getting "derp"in response. I stopped trying.

For Netflix purposes we use an old iPad on Wi-Fi, which gets us decent image quality and a decent ui. Used iPad 2s are pretty cheap. I gather Chromecast works well there also, and of course any laptop will also do the trick.

We have a second generation Roku I bought used, a Chromecast we got for free, an internet enabled early generation Blu-ray player with awesome upscaling... I've got to replace that firewall. Can't use any of it.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

We stream off of a PS3 and a Roku3.

The Roku3 has an app that you can use to turn your phone into a remote, which is useful for typing in the name of a show (you get a full alphabet keyboard). We don't have the voice recognition, but that feature creeps both of us out, so we wouldn't use it either.

The fastforward-rewind on the PS3 version of Netflix is the type that lets you scroll through still pictures. There's still a pause before the action continues, but it's easier to find what you're looking for than on the Roku3.

Netflix on both systems will show you images of the cover art, and you have to select the title for it to type it in the top of the screen with the show description (much larger text than the cover art). Sometimes on the roku3 the system will freeze/stall and I'll restart the system (you can do that with remote if you press a certain button sequence) and then it'll be fine.

We also use Hulu. Hulu on a non-PC requires a paid subscription (I don't know if you can still watch things on a desktop for free). I haven't cared for any of the Hulu exclusive content yet, but it's worth it if you watch certain networks (Fox, CW, Comedy Central, I can lookup the whole list if you want). Current shows take about 24 hours to show up after airing.

We also watch Amazon Prime on both systems (we have Prime, and sometimes rent shows because we don't have cable and who can wait for Netflix to get Doctor Who). Shows arrive for pay after about 24 hours, several months to be free for Prime. We mostly use it for BBC America.

I've played around with streaming podcasts to the Roku3 (to listen to while falling asleep). The native podcast app/channel does not allow any fast-forward/rewind. There's a channel to allow you to play media off of a NAS, but that ALSO does not allow fast-forward/rewind at all.

I do seem to remember a unified search on the Roku3, but whenever I'd look for something I'd get a list of pay apps that I hadn't used before. I've never found it useful, I just tend to check Hulu for a recent show that I'm watching (they group them together) and open Netflix if there's nothing new.

In other technology - we have purchased a Samsung smart TV, but the UI didn't get updated and it had less processing power than the Roku3. The plan was to move the dumb TV and Roku3 to my sewing area (smart TV in the bedroom), but after a few weeks we put the Roku3 back in the bedroom and I need to buy another.

We originally had a Sony Blu-Ray with streaming that worked well until it broke. We replaced it with a Sony streaming box (at the same price point as the Roku3). That box sent it's Netflix signal through a proxy server somewhere and it gave us terrible stuttering quality during prime time. I wouldn't trust Sony for streaming without some verification that they fixed that.