Roku and save money!

Are you still paying high prices for cable or satellite? The wave of the future is TV and movies when the viewer wants, not when they are scheduled. You can easily pay up to $100 and more for the usual channels plus HBO, Showtime, etc. I have a friend who could take 10 minutes just to go through all the channels on their TV. I love to watch TV as much as anyone but I gave up trying to get home when I wanted to watch a certain show. And I don't want to pay for the extra fee to use a DVR or get high def TV. No, I don't get high definition TV. I don't think there is anything worth the bother on TV right now to warrant it. High def doesn't make the shows any better, most of them are still crap. But, I digress. But you have an Internet connection. So use it, while you can (the talk about extra fees and graduated pricing will be the topic of another post sometime)and get a box to stream video to your TV. All you need is a TV with an HDMI connection. Get a cheap HDMI cable (the higher priced ones are no better than the cheaper ones) and buy a box such as Roku or Apple TV. Then get your basic program package through your cable/satellite company and you can use your Internet connection to watch shows when you want. You can also use pay services through your cable/satellite to watch recently released movies. You can buy movies in standard definition or high definition, if so inclined. God knows, I couldn't tell the difference when I bought high def from the standard. The price is usually $1 more for high def. Get a subscription to Hulu, Hulu Plus (for a fee), get an iTunes or Amazon.com account and go to town. You can watch when you get home from work or save up for the weekend. There are plenty of additional channels you can watch and subscribe to...and the price will never add up to your old cable/satellite bill. There are several ways to do all of this out there. The most common right now are the Roku boxes that cost anywhere from $50 to $80. They are easy to connect and give you a variety of channels to choose from. However, iTunes users will be left out in the cold. For Apple people, there is Apple TV at around $100. There is also a Google Chromecast dongle that you can plug into a USB port for the same purpose at $35 but the selections are slightly more limited, from what I have seen. (I haven't really played around with one much so take what I said about the Chromecast with a grain of salt.) There are other various devices available. Do your research before you consider which one to buy. (Good advice for any purchase.) The benefit for teachers is that, once you have these programs available on the Internet you can use them in your classroom and they don't cost anything. Of course, that will depend on how fast an Internet connection you have in your classroom. And you will want to check with your IT people. But you can use your computer and a projector to show those shows and movies in your classroom, with the addition of some good speakers. The future of TV is flexibility of programming based on consumer schedules, not the other way around. A Roku or Apple TV device can make that happen at a very inexpensive price.