How Does Roku Work to Cut Your Cable TV Bill?
Owning a Roku is a great way to watch TV without forking huge sum of money to a cable TV or satellite provider every year.
With an average cable TV bill now costing from $90 to $150/month Roku works reduce or eliminate your cable or satellite TV bill altogether.
Roku is a small company located in Los Gatos California. And the company was started by a gifted inventor Anthony Wood who is the CEO and mastermind behind Roku. Originally to serve as a Netflix box to take the company from a DVD by mail company to an online TV and movie streaming service.
The Roku name comes from the sixth number in the Japanese language and was Anthony Wood's sixth invention. Another invention of his was the Replay TV. This was a DVR that was highly popular at the height of the Cable TV era which allowed you to record unencrypted cable TV signals to a hard drive. Bought second hand with a lifetime guide there was no expensive monthly fee. This made it an affordable alternative to TiVo.
After Replay had sold to DirecTV, Anthony Wood began working as a project engineer along with Reid Hastings the CEO over at Netflix on Project Griffen. Netflix at the time was working on an Internet streaming solution to replace sending out DVDs by mail which was costing the company a small fortune on shipping costs. At the last minute, it was decided by Netflix's CEO that it would be better if Netflix remained independent and it would be better to not have its own media streamer. In May of 2008, Anthony Wood launched Roku as it's own independent media streamer company which at that time was mainly a Netflix player with little other content.
You can read more about and the early history of Roku in this excellent article "Inside Netflix’s Project Griffin: The Forgotten History Of Roku Under Reed Hastings" on FastCompany.
Along with Apple TV, Roku was also an early adopter of streaming TV technology. This was already becoming prevalent at a time when YouTube, a small startup which was later purchased by Google would let people upload videos so others could watch them from a web browser on the Internet from a computer.
Back in the early 2000's Internet-connected devices were still pretty rare so many people would actually hook their computers to their televisions to play back downloaded content with an app called XBMC the app know known as Kodi and also Plex. We still have the big fat 75' HDMI cable we snaked from our basement gaming PC to our television upstairs to prove it.
Kids today don't know how lucky they have it. Back then parents or grandparents needed to first download a movie from their computer over the Internet, and then transfer it to a media streaming device that was hooked to a TV either by USB stick, portable drive or from your home network and then the movie could be played back onto a TV screen.
Many media streamers like the Apple TV and even Roku are limited to only playing certain file types so if you wanted to play avi's or some mkv files, this often this would require lengthy transcoding sessions where you first had to convert the files into an mp4 or m4v format on a computer so that these media streamer would be able to then play your downloaded files.
While Roku still to this day works best with mp4 videos files, this has now pretty much become a video standard and transcoding is no longer as important as it once was.
Roku made a name for itself early on because they chose to be different from what was the number on media streamer at the time the Apple TV. Instead of locking down their platform and controlling everything that was streamed on it the way Apple did. They chose to follow the YouTube model and allow anyone who wanted to sign on as a developer could do so for free. They did so because they needed content for their platform or no one would want to buy it.
Roku channel developers came to the platform in droves. Soon there were thousands of Roku channels filled with videos of all kinds of content from Religion to Porn, Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, tons of Family channels, News, Live TV and much, much more. (Check out our Handy Channels Guide to find them all.) It was not long before Roku overtook the Apple TV as the number one best selling media player and continues to outsell them and most other media streamers today.
Big content providers also adopted the Roku platform early on and Roku soon became known as a great way to watch your cable TV anywhere channels without needing to subscribe to an expensive 2nd or 3rd cable TV or satellite receiver. Roku an internet connected device that streamed videos over the Internet to a television was a huge hit.
A Roku media streamer uses either WiFi or Ethernet to receive a streamed video from the Internet and send this stream directly into your TV by a HDMI cable.
Streaming TV is different than downloading a file to your PC. When you stream a video, only a small portion is downloaded to your device into what's known as a buffer. The size on a typical media streamer buffer is not very large. It typically only holds 10-20 seconds of data. When you have a reasonably fast Internet connection, it can fill this buffer faster than you can watch the data from the file that is in your buffer.
It's only when you have a slow connection and the video is watched faster than the new data is downloaded to refill the buffer that you will experience pauses in playback. This is called buffering.
When you download a video file the entire video file resides on your device. The video plays back without any buffering.
One really easy to reduce buffering with any media streamer is to use an Ethernet cable from your Router instead of WiFi if your device supports it. This eliminates any WiFi interference from walls, distance or neighborhood congestion which can all slow down your Internet connection and cause buffering.
Roku uses a form of Linux for its operating system. They use a somewhat rare scripting language called BrightScript. Not many devices run on this and there are not that many gifted programmers or enough people that want to put the effort and time in to learn another computer language for a single platform. This has hurt Roku in a way because since it is not a common computer language, not many people have mastered this OS. Groundbreaking development has not been as rapid as many channel developers simply chose to build their channels on a template rather than push the envelope and come out with all new channel designs and enhancements. That's why you see many channels on Roku that look all the same and rather plain.
Roku has been working hard to fix this and have been busy updating their software. They have now made it more friendly to developers to help them build channels faster and easier with their new Direct Publisher software which pretty much holds your hand and walks you through the steps while building your channel for their platform.
They both pretty much do the same thing and on Roku. A Roku channel consists of a small package of files which a developer uploads to Roku's server as a zip file. This archive consists of several different sized images which make up the channel icon and splash screen. It also contains several BrightScript files which make the channel work and most importantly embedded is a link to a media.rss or JSON file which is the playlist that typically is hosted on a web server somewhere that can easily be edited. This file contains links to video thumbnails and mp4 or m4v videos that can be located anywhere on the Internet.
Roku offers several standalone media streamers either in a Streaming Stick format or in a tabletop model. They have also made great progress licensing their operating system into many different brands of smart televisions as well.
You can find a Roku at pretty much any major department store that has an electronics section like Walmart, BestBuy and also here on Amazon.
Most popular Roku models are the 4K Roku Ultra as it has one of the best features in a media streamer an Ethernet Port and also a USB port so you can use it to play media files and playlists to it directly.
The Streaming Stick + is another great option if you need a small low profile 4K media streamer you can easily take with you if you travel or don't want any wires dangling from your wall mounted flat screen TV.
If you don't need 4K, the now discontinued Roku 3 which can still be found refurbished or used is another great Roku model that came with all the bells and whistles.
If you have not yet cut the cord, a new Roku media streamer should be right at the top of your list. It offers one of the easiest ways yet to stream content to your TV. You will never run out of great stuff to watch and the money you save every month by cutting or shaving your cable TV cord is a bonus.
With cord-cutting now ten times more popular than it was ten years ago, a Roku media streamer is a great device to keep helping new cord cutters cut the cord and save a lot of money on their cable TV or satellite bills. If you have not yet joined the cord-cutting revolution, there's no better time than today.
You can read more about and the early history of Roku in this excellent article "Inside Netflix’s Project Griffin: The Forgotten History Of Roku Under Reed Hastings" on FastCompany.
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Our First Roku the top of the line 2010 XD/S |
Along with Apple TV, Roku was also an early adopter of streaming TV technology. This was already becoming prevalent at a time when YouTube, a small startup which was later purchased by Google would let people upload videos so others could watch them from a web browser on the Internet from a computer.
Roku Streams Content Directly To Your TV
Back in the early 2000's Internet-connected devices were still pretty rare so many people would actually hook their computers to their televisions to play back downloaded content with an app called XBMC the app know known as Kodi and also Plex. We still have the big fat 75' HDMI cable we snaked from our basement gaming PC to our television upstairs to prove it.
Kids today don't know how lucky they have it. Back then parents or grandparents needed to first download a movie from their computer over the Internet, and then transfer it to a media streaming device that was hooked to a TV either by USB stick, portable drive or from your home network and then the movie could be played back onto a TV screen.
Many media streamers like the Apple TV and even Roku are limited to only playing certain file types so if you wanted to play avi's or some mkv files, this often this would require lengthy transcoding sessions where you first had to convert the files into an mp4 or m4v format on a computer so that these media streamer would be able to then play your downloaded files.
While Roku still to this day works best with mp4 videos files, this has now pretty much become a video standard and transcoding is no longer as important as it once was.
Roku made a name for itself early on because they chose to be different from what was the number on media streamer at the time the Apple TV. Instead of locking down their platform and controlling everything that was streamed on it the way Apple did. They chose to follow the YouTube model and allow anyone who wanted to sign on as a developer could do so for free. They did so because they needed content for their platform or no one would want to buy it.
Roku channel developers came to the platform in droves. Soon there were thousands of Roku channels filled with videos of all kinds of content from Religion to Porn, Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, tons of Family channels, News, Live TV and much, much more. (Check out our Handy Channels Guide to find them all.) It was not long before Roku overtook the Apple TV as the number one best selling media player and continues to outsell them and most other media streamers today.
Big content providers also adopted the Roku platform early on and Roku soon became known as a great way to watch your cable TV anywhere channels without needing to subscribe to an expensive 2nd or 3rd cable TV or satellite receiver. Roku an internet connected device that streamed videos over the Internet to a television was a huge hit.
A Roku media streamer uses either WiFi or Ethernet to receive a streamed video from the Internet and send this stream directly into your TV by a HDMI cable.
Streaming Vs Downloading
It's only when you have a slow connection and the video is watched faster than the new data is downloaded to refill the buffer that you will experience pauses in playback. This is called buffering.
When you download a video file the entire video file resides on your device. The video plays back without any buffering.
One really easy to reduce buffering with any media streamer is to use an Ethernet cable from your Router instead of WiFi if your device supports it. This eliminates any WiFi interference from walls, distance or neighborhood congestion which can all slow down your Internet connection and cause buffering.
Roku Operating System
Roku uses a form of Linux for its operating system. They use a somewhat rare scripting language called BrightScript. Not many devices run on this and there are not that many gifted programmers or enough people that want to put the effort and time in to learn another computer language for a single platform. This has hurt Roku in a way because since it is not a common computer language, not many people have mastered this OS. Groundbreaking development has not been as rapid as many channel developers simply chose to build their channels on a template rather than push the envelope and come out with all new channel designs and enhancements. That's why you see many channels on Roku that look all the same and rather plain.
Roku has been working hard to fix this and have been busy updating their software. They have now made it more friendly to developers to help them build channels faster and easier with their new Direct Publisher software which pretty much holds your hand and walks you through the steps while building your channel for their platform.
Roku Channels Vs Apps
On the Roku platform, the containers that hold the content are known as Roku channels. On other streaming devices like an Apple TV, Android Media Streamer or Fire TV they are called apps.They both pretty much do the same thing and on Roku. A Roku channel consists of a small package of files which a developer uploads to Roku's server as a zip file. This archive consists of several different sized images which make up the channel icon and splash screen. It also contains several BrightScript files which make the channel work and most importantly embedded is a link to a media.rss or JSON file which is the playlist that typically is hosted on a web server somewhere that can easily be edited. This file contains links to video thumbnails and mp4 or m4v videos that can be located anywhere on the Internet.
Roku Models
Roku offers several standalone media streamers either in a Streaming Stick format or in a tabletop model. They have also made great progress licensing their operating system into many different brands of smart televisions as well.
You can find a Roku at pretty much any major department store that has an electronics section like Walmart, BestBuy and also here on Amazon.
Most popular Roku models are the 4K Roku Ultra as it has one of the best features in a media streamer an Ethernet Port and also a USB port so you can use it to play media files and playlists to it directly.
The Streaming Stick + is another great option if you need a small low profile 4K media streamer you can easily take with you if you travel or don't want any wires dangling from your wall mounted flat screen TV.
If you don't need 4K, the now discontinued Roku 3 which can still be found refurbished or used is another great Roku model that came with all the bells and whistles.
If you have not yet cut the cord, a new Roku media streamer should be right at the top of your list. It offers one of the easiest ways yet to stream content to your TV. You will never run out of great stuff to watch and the money you save every month by cutting or shaving your cable TV cord is a bonus.
With cord-cutting now ten times more popular than it was ten years ago, a Roku media streamer is a great device to keep helping new cord cutters cut the cord and save a lot of money on their cable TV or satellite bills. If you have not yet joined the cord-cutting revolution, there's no better time than today.
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Use of third-party trademarks on this site is not intended to imply endorsement nor affiliation with respective trademark owners.
We are Not Affiliated with or Endorsed by Roku®, Apple, Google or Other Companies we may write about.
