Watching TV with Roku

A month ago, my boyfriend and I moved out on our own. We were excited, but also we were scared. The realization that many, many bills were going to become our responsibility was a frightening thing. In order to ensure that we weren’t going to drown the first month on our own, we had to make some cuts. One of those was cable.
In reality, we hardly ever watched TV. On average, the TV was on maybe an hour or so a week, which is impressive for this day and age. When we moved in, though, the constant quietness was too much for me to handle. I knew that I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg every month for cable, but I also knew the no-TV thing wasn’t going to last. In order to fill the void, we purchased a Roku 5000 and a Roku Stick.
At the beginning, the Roku seemed awesome. It was $150 overall for both the 5000 and the Stick, which was better than a $250 Comcast installation fee. When we got home and set up the Rokus, the streaming world was in our hands. Not only could we watch things like MIT Open Courseware for free, but we also had cooking channels, health and fitness channels and gaming channels. There’s a lot more than just that, but I’d be going on and on if I listed them all.
The Roku 5000 is about the size of my palm, so it doesn’t take up too much space. The Roku Stick looks very similar to  a USB stick, hence the name. Either way, both devices are very easy to make space for.
As time went on, my love for the Roku faded. I’ll admit I regularly use the yoga and pilates channels because they’re free and they make me feel like I’m doing something active. Outside of that, I don’t really like the content. All of the videos look like they’re imported straight from YouTube via potato, and they couldn’t possibly be any more outdated. If I was out-of-my-mind bored, I could probably force myself to sit down and watch something on the Roku, but I’d never do it by choice. All of the free movies are decades old, which, let’s face it, is not fun.
After exploring the Roku a little bit more, I was stoked to see channels like CBS, ABC and so forth. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I would be able to watch regular TV. To my dismay, I discovered that all these channels had to be paid for individually or with one of the season packages which go for $20 apiece. That wasn’t going to happen. The whole point of purchasing the Roku was to save money, not splurge.
So, here we are a month later with a cool little concept device that doesn’t have very great content to offer. In the end, we caved and  created a Netflix account. The Roku luckily has a Netflix app, making it fast and easy to operate Netflix via our Roku.
My suggestion to any and all college students and first-time home owners is to not purchase a Roku unless you are willing to shell out vast amounts of cash for “free” channels. You’re better off getting yourself a Netflix account at $8 a month and binge-watching “Breaking Bad.”