Reply #13: Cable channels available this way are just the internet feeds of those channels [View All]

[kenny blankenship]

They also make past shows/segments available. It's not a substitute for cable if you want all the cable channels, (I don't care about that myself) but the main caveat is that when someone speaks of watching MSNBC or Al Jazeera English, or CNN International live, it's just the internet stream. In other words the video quality is very low. But if you don't want to pay the cable company month after month for 200 lousy channels of crud just to tune in a couple of news channels, then having a Roku is a great deal. In addition to music services like Pandora, and video streaming from Netflix, HuluPlus, Amazon (which all require subscriptions) you can get free live internet access to all the cable news channels via "private channels" like JustinTV and Nowhere TV. Nowhere TV is how I added the live feed of BBC TV news to my Roku. The so-called private channels that aggregate live feeds are not listed in the Roku channel store for one reason or another. Newscaster and Mediafly are two channels that can be found in the official Roku channel store that enable me to watch Al Jazeera English service live and podcasts of Democracy Now.

With all these news channels available through the internet and collected one way or another through the Roku for my TV, I can live happily without cable tv. For someone else who wants more of what cabletv offers, like HBO for example or, someone who just wants to look at Chris Matthews' face in HD, a Roku would not be a substitute.