Roku, chrome cast, Amazon, or Apple?

[trlcavscout]

I am dropping my crappy cable service at my house December 31st and I need to find some alternatives, I have very little first hand knowledge of the available devices but I do like the Roku from what I have seen. I hate anything Apple but I am open. Just curious of those that have or have had any of these devices which ones worked best, pro's and con's etc. I am setting up a NAS as well and it doesn't appear that any of these will cooperate with that? Any suggestions?

[Circuits]

Chromecast is probably the best/most versatile if you have a PC or laptop to use as your media PC. Roku is great if you're using a supported service - e.g. Amazon Prime, Netflix or Hulu+.

I have Amazon Prime, which I mostly stream through my Roku, and stream my media server (NAS-based) via a media PC over the chromecast.

I have an old Gen 1 AppleTV I no longer use, and tried the FireTV stick - they duplicated most capabilities of the Roku and Chromecast, so I stuck with the platforms I felt worked best (Roku and media PC via Chromecast). When I still bothered with Hulu+ and Netflix, I did those over the Roku, as well.

[Great-Kazoo]

I'd make a suggestion, but........ i'm still waiting for you to answer my pm , regarding a wireless router etc

[Irving]

We have a Roku and do not have any experience with the others. Like Circuits, we mostly use the Roku to stream stuff on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I think Sling TV would be a good complement as well. I also use the Roku with my Plex server, but recently got a warning from Comcast, so I'm not sure how often I'll use that in the future.
The Roku has more and more channels all the time, but most of them are like watching crappy cable channels in the middle of the night, on youtube. Except for Netflix, Amazon, Plex, and Pandora, most of the other channels get watched at 3:00 am when I've been drinking just to see what cool stuff I can find. Redbull channel is pretty cool, but I'm not really into sports so don't take time to watch it. There are some cool gun channels, a pretty decent Homesteading channel, lots of cooking channels, a handful of decent hunting channels, and quite a few good workout channels, BUT it's all stuff that you could most likely find on Youtube, or is exactly the same content on that same providers Youtube channel.

I think with SlingTV, it'd come pretty close to replacing cable.

[Circuits]

I think with SlingTV, it'd come pretty close to replacing cable.

I used to have a slingbox, and it was freaking awesome... IF you had a cable box and good cable services for it to forward to your laptops and such. Without a primary HDMI content source like an HD cable box, the slingbox becomes mostly irrelevant next to streaming services on your other platforms, for any given type of content.

Slingbox will forward your Roku signal to your tablet, but the tablet can probably already stream your Roku sources as well, too, and without the intermediate step of the slingbox.

[TheGrey]

We've got a Roku 3, and we subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. We primarily use it for our living room TV, and have a ton of other channels that we bop through on occasion. We love it! Went with Centurylink, because our need for internet was compatible for what they offered; our cable and internet are less than 1/3 of what we were paying Comcast.

[Irving]

Can you stream stuff from your Roku into a tablet? If so, that'd be awesome. What about a Chromebook? It sounds like a Slingbox and SlingTV might be different products, are they?

Oh yeah, like Grey, we've got a Roku3. One of the upgrades is a head phone jack in the remote. When I was researching, that was a feature I did not care at all about, but it's great to be able to watch a show on my big TV in the middle of the night without bugging my family.

[Circuits]

Can you stream stuff from your Roku into a tablet? If so, that'd be awesome. What about a Chromebook? It sounds like a Slingbox and SlingTV might be different products, are they?

Slingbox is a hardware device, that encodes an HDMI source and transmits it to anywhere on the web where you have logged in with a Slingbox client. It might be different from SlingTV - dunno.

Yes, if you have a Slingbox attached to your Roku, you could send that signal to your tablet, or Chromebook, from the slingbox.

[kwando]

Sling tv is a totally different service than sling box. Sling box is dependent on an input (cable, dish, vcr, etc). SlingTv is for the cord cutters, you just need Internet.

[stenz]

I have the fire stick by Amazon in addition to a digital antenna and couldn't be happier. If you have Amazon prime its even better.