I so wanted to quit my DIRECTV.
I wanted to quit not because I disliked the service. In fact, I love it, and perhaps that’s why I’m finding it so hard to leave.
Here’s what I like:
Channel selection. It’s great. At the basic level, I get all the channels that I would ever want to watch including NESN, ESPN, BBC America, The Travel Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Food Network and The Cooking Channel.
Our current favorite shows: Downton Abbey, any of Anthony Bourdain’s shows, my wife watches anything on the Cooking Channel and Food Network.
The picture is clear and sharp. I had cable previous to my DIRECTV and it was crap. DIRECTV’s picture is ten times better.
Their customer service is top notch. No confusing mazes when you call their 800 number, bright, upbeat, and extremely helpful people when you call, the few issues I’ve ever had have been fixed almost immediately. Their Twitter support is useless, but otherwise it’s overall great customer service.
Their interface. It’s intuitive, bright and aesthetically pleasing. I’ve used cable interfaces, and I can’t figure it out. The channel order doesn’t make any sense and it’s ugly. Plus I can easily record shows from my iPhone.
So why would I leave?
The one negative? The price. It costs me something like $95 a month.
So I bought a Roku hoping to save some cash and jump into the new hot thing. Perhaps given my love of my current service, it’s not surprising that I’m disappointed with the Roku.
Here was my original idea:
Buy a Roku box – initial investment of $65
Subscribe to: MLB, NFL, & NBA (Sorry NHL) – $125, $299, for a total of $593
I already have Netflix – $8.99
And I’m an Amazon Prime Member – $45 (student discount don’t ask me why?)
This would save me $300 in the first year and more thereafter especially given the Celtics season and hopes for the future.
Unfortunately, there were a few hitches in this pan. One is that local teams are blacked out on these season subscription packages. For MLB it’s 90 minutes after the end of the game. On nights that Josh Beckett’s pitching, that literally means tomorrow. *Update* This is further proof that the west coast is the best place to live if you’re an east coast sports fan. Football starts at 10 a.m. and even when Beckett pitches, Sox games wrap up before 9 p.m. Plus, you have a couple of decent teams to root for as you ‘B’ teams in the 49er’s and the Giants.
The other issue is the content. Both the streaming on Netflix and the content available for free on Amazon Prime is, frankly, 97% crap. It just stinks. The same goes for all of the Internet TV channels on Roku. They are all crap. I’m all for choice and diversity, but when it’s all crap, then it’s not choice and it’s not diversity. It’s just crap.
The interface. While it looks nice, it’s impossible to find anything. There’s just too much garbage. I don’t want to have to go to 7 different services to get the content I want. I want to go to one. I also don’t want to wade through piles of garbage shows to find something that’s barely worth watching.
The service. Ten or fifteen minutes into streaming something, the audio gets all screwed up turning Dora into a Syth Lord. *Update* Upon further reflection, the distortion sounds more like the demon from the Exorcist I’ve googled it, and every message board talks about the lousy customer service Roku has, and I’m still looking for an answer.
So now I’ve got a Roku currently designated to streaming Dora the Explorer. And that’s about as useful as I find this thing right now.