Looking for advice from the collective...
I have a relatively new (2015) Sony Bravia LED TV in our family room and a 2017 Samsung LED TV in my home office. Both are hooked up to Dish satellite for our main TV viewing enjoyment. The problem I'm having is that the built-in TV apps suck for streaming Netflicks & Amazon Prime video (what we mainly use). Sometimes it streams flawlessly but sometimes it freezes or stalls and continuously tries to load video and then stops altogether. Infuriating. A friend suggested bypassing the TV apps altogether and using a separate streaming device.
I'll probably end up ditching the Dish satellite service too and save myself $84 per month. May look into picking up an amplified HD antennae but I really don't care about the local channels. Our main TV watching habits are pretty much all recorded from the Dish satellite including cartoons for the kids, vanilla stuff like International Househunters or Fixer Upper for Mom & Dad, absolutely horrifying soap operas for Mom, and various car shows like Wheeler Dealers or Chasing Classic Cars for Dad. We rarely ever watch live TV, never watch sports, sitcoms, etc.
My internet is the fastest available in my area, Cox Gigablast, advertised at "up to" 1 Gbps download and upload. I just ran a test and I'm at 249 Mbps download and 70 Mbps upload.
I also have the family room TV hooked up to an Onkyo home theater and I'd prefer to use this as opposed to the TV's shitty speakers. My office TV uses the TV speakers but someday I'll get around to hooking up one of the amps and pairs of speakers I have in boxes in the garage.
I'm looking at the Roku Streaming Stick Plus...any comments or suggestions? We have a little Roku box from around 2015 connected to an ancient plasma TV in our bedroom and it works flawlessly. The menu features and search on the Roku are pretty lame though. That TV really only gets watched when someone is sick in bed so it doesn't much matter. Any opinions on Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire, or any others? We sure as hell don't do any of the Alexa or Google voice control bullshit.
As always, thank you in advance and please feel free to derail this thread with any bullshit you see fit to throw at it.
I have a relatively new (2015) Sony Bravia LED TV in our family room and a 2017 Samsung LED TV in my home office. Both are hooked up to Dish satellite for our main TV viewing enjoyment. The problem I'm having is that the built-in TV apps suck for streaming Netflicks & Amazon Prime video (what we mainly use). Sometimes it streams flawlessly but sometimes it freezes or stalls and continuously tries to load video and then stops altogether. Infuriating. A friend suggested bypassing the TV apps altogether and using a separate streaming device.
I'll probably end up ditching the Dish satellite service too and save myself $84 per month. May look into picking up an amplified HD antennae but I really don't care about the local channels. Our main TV watching habits are pretty much all recorded from the Dish satellite including cartoons for the kids, vanilla stuff like International Househunters or Fixer Upper for Mom & Dad, absolutely horrifying soap operas for Mom, and various car shows like Wheeler Dealers or Chasing Classic Cars for Dad. We rarely ever watch live TV, never watch sports, sitcoms, etc.
My internet is the fastest available in my area, Cox Gigablast, advertised at "up to" 1 Gbps download and upload. I just ran a test and I'm at 249 Mbps download and 70 Mbps upload.
I also have the family room TV hooked up to an Onkyo home theater and I'd prefer to use this as opposed to the TV's shitty speakers. My office TV uses the TV speakers but someday I'll get around to hooking up one of the amps and pairs of speakers I have in boxes in the garage.
I'm looking at the Roku Streaming Stick Plus...any comments or suggestions? We have a little Roku box from around 2015 connected to an ancient plasma TV in our bedroom and it works flawlessly. The menu features and search on the Roku are pretty lame though. That TV really only gets watched when someone is sick in bed so it doesn't much matter. Any opinions on Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire, or any others? We sure as hell don't do any of the Alexa or Google voice control bullshit.
As always, thank you in advance and please feel free to derail this thread with any bullshit you see fit to throw at it.