Request - HOWTO: for Roku/AMC

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SickPup404

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Sep 15, 2006
99
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I see a nearly 300 page thread on the Dish/AMC fiasco. It has devolved into a corporate greed discussion and how the same situation can happen with any provider. I would kindly request that nothing like that be discussed here.

What I would like to document here is how to get going with the Roku to view AMC programming. I will be receiving a Roku 2 XD and have no idea how to get AMC on it. The CSR said it was easy and just follow on screen prompts.

So, beyond the A/V and Ethernet hookup, what else will I need to buy/subscribe to/etc??

- Amazon Prime?
- Amazon Instant video?
- Anything to AMC?
- How soon can my wife and I watch Mad Men/The Walking Dead/The Killing? (Ex. The Walking Dead season 3 premier broadcasts on 14 October at 22:00. Will we be able to watch it then or will there be a delay (hours/days/weeks)?)
- Is it on demand? Can we treat it like the DVR and "record" it for later watching, "pause", etc.?

Anything else I should know?
TIA
Sick
 
SickPup404 said:
So, beyond the A/V and Ethernet hookup, what else will I need to buy/subscribe to/etc??

- Amazon Prime?
Not necessary. If you plan to do a lot of streaming, might be worth it.
- Amazon Instant video?
Click to expand...
Yes. A dollar more than with prime

- Anything to AMC?
Click to expand...
NO
- How soon can my wife and I watch Mad Men/The Walking Dead/The Killing? (Ex. The Walking Dead season 3 premier broadcasts on 14 October at 22:00. Will we be able to watch it then or will there be a delay (hours/days/weeks)?)
Click to expand...
Sometime day after on Amazon.
Click to expand...
- Is it on demand?
Click to expand...
Yes
Can we treat it like the DVR and "record" it for later watching, "pause", etc.?
Click to expand...
You can pause streaming video. You can watch as many times as you want after purchase (I think).
[/QUOTE]
 
Last edited:
mike123abc said:
If you buy the episodes from Amazon they tend to be available the next morning. You just pay per episode.

Amazon.com: The Walking Dead [HD]: Season 2, Episode 0 "The Walking Dead: Season 2 Trailer [HD]": Amazon Instant Video

For example that is season 2 in HD. You can buy any episode individually or the whole season.
Click to expand...

If you have a Roku then buy the program episode or season from Amazon. I think it is like $30 per season.

If you haven't already talked to a CSR phone and tell how disappointed you are to be missing the Walking Dead and see what they offer. Don't let them put you off and you should end up talking to a customer retention CSR. They should ask you if you have any on line access then once they find out you have a Roku they should offer to reimburse you for the rental cost of your favorite AMC programs.

This worked for me so good luck!
 
It's not a dollar more for Amazon Instant Video than with Amazon Prime. It's a dollar more for HD than SD, regardless of whether you have Prime. It's $1.99 per episode for SD or $2.99 for HD. If you buy a TV pass for a current season you get a 5% discount per episode.

For most series if you buy the entire season for a past season the discount is more, sometimes substantially more. For example, if you buy the first season of Breaking Bad (7 episodes) you get about 21% off. The second and third seasons (13 episodes each) you get about 30% off. The fourth season (13 episodes) you get about 20% off. If you buy the TV pass for the fifth season (which starts today) you only get 5% off per episode.
 
Once the Roku is connected to the internet, you will then register it online at the Roku site. There you can give your credit card info to be used for payment when you buy something from the Roku. You will generally not need to go back to the Roku site for much else, except to install "Private" channels. That can be learned as you go, private channels are not in the Roku store, instead you go to the specific Private channel site and get the code, then go online to a specific site where you enter the code to get the private channel into your Roku. There are sites on the internet that list the private channels and their codes, if you get the code first you don't generally need to go to the actual private channel site, just go to the site where you enter the private channel code to get it into your Roku. For watching AMC none of that is needed.

Roku is made up of APPS, very much like a smartphone. There is no cost to install any of the APPS, it's the programing for some of them that costs money. Already installed is the Roku store APP. You go there and find the Amazon APP, and install it to your Roku. When you click on it, you will see how to link it to an account with Amazon if you have one. If not you will need an account at Amazon. You will be paying Amazon (Or Netflix etc..) for any programming that costs money, not Roku.
That Amazon APP will have everything available from Amazon that you can watch, including whatever AMC shows they have.

When you do pick a show it will start immediately, it does not download. You can pause it, can't record it unless you have a DVD recorder or some other external device to send the Roku signal to. It is a form of "On Demand."

All of that applies if you install Netflix, or most any APP that requires a registration and/or payment for progamming. There are tons of APPS with free programming, including as I mentioned those not in the Roku Store.

Site to add a private channel
https://owner.roku.com/Add
 
Last edited:
skidog said:
I have Netflix, is the current season of Breaking Bad going to be available immediatly or do I need to wait to watch trough Netflix?
Click to expand...

You would have to wait on it with netflix.Amazon would be the quickest solution.
 
There is no A/V or ethernet involved with the Roku XD that Dish is providing. It's wireless ONLY. Just sayin' for SickPup404.....

Ed
 
With Amazon VOD you can download to a TiVo or a PC...

I have for example downloaded a couple TV seasons to my laptop to take on cruises, and can watch them without an internet connection.

Amazon VOD lets you download to 2 PC at the same time. You can then check them back in when you are done. You can also stream them while they are checked out. If you have a TiVo for example you can set a season pass to auto download to the TiVo when a new episode is released. This is handy if you have a slow internet connection since it can start the download automatically and be done before you are ready to watch it.

Itunes lets you download to a PC also, and you can also download to an iPhone/iPad for taking with you. But, also be aware some of the iTunes stuff is download only and does not have streaming from the cloud. They are adding more stuff from the cloud, but some studios like Fox do not have a streaming agreement with iTunes so you have to download only.

Also, Amazon and iTunes have differences in their libraries, different shows/movies are available in them. They mostly overlap, but there are differences. I finally broke down and got Apple TV to pick up some stuff that Amazon does not carry.
 
skidog said:
I have Netflix, is the current season of Breaking Bad going to be available immediatly or do I need to wait to watch trough Netflix?
Click to expand...
Netflix won't have it until next summer at the earliest. They just added season 4 yesterday. To stream season 5 now you'll need to use Amazon.
 
dan188 said:
I belive amazon let's you buy the whole season even though a season just started
Click to expand...
Yes, I bought all of season 5 last week with a 5% discount. They only charge you for each episode as it's released and you can cancel anytime during the season.
 
Just saw a Breaking Bad S5/Amazon banner at the bottom of the Roku main screen.
 
Yep. Amazon doesn't miss too much when it comes to timely merchandising.

"Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made".,,,, Spaceballs
 
Some really good info here people - thanks to all!

Just to let others know, here's my sequence of events:
- Saturday, did online chat with "Dexter (ID: B6D)" who transferred me to chat with "Andrea (ID: NPC)".
- Knew what the possible offers were and had to coax Andrea along the path to Roku and statement credit. Got $35 one-time, but was told to call in to get order processed.
- Called in on Sunday and talked to "Matt (ID: PLT)" and said I heard of higher credits than $35. He immediately offered $35 1-time, $10/mo for six months, the Roku 2 XD, and an HDMI cable.

Also, for those who "moved", don't forget to get them to ship to your billing address as they default to ship equipment to your service address.
 
Just a quick update on our experiences:

- Dish sent the Roku out to our "service address" and not the billing address as requested.
- We received the HDMI cable fine. Called about the missing Roku and they offered to ship again. I emphasized that it needed to ship to the billing address like the cable, not the service address. CSR again said "No problem!"....
- When we hadn't received it after another two weeks, gave up on Dish and went down the path of Comcast.

Didn't drop Dish until we had Comcast for a few weeks. Glad we didn't. It is UNBELIEVABLE how crappy the whole Comcast/Xfinity experience is:
- Banner ad in the on screen guide that takes up the bottom two rows of channel listings.
- Because of the banner, when you scroll through the listings, it hits the banner each page....
- No 30-second skip. Even using the methods to add it to the "A" device key were useless.
- Skips/rewinds/fast forwards are slow to respond.
- Channels are all over the place. Locals are in the 2-13 range for SD, and HD are in the 200-220 AND in the 800-820 range.
- Favorites are a nightmare to try to set up.
- The list goes on and on....

So we are back in the comforting arms of Dish, except for the whole AMC Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Killing thing...

Dish recently called to inquire about how we liked our Roku second shipment attempt. When I tothem we still didn't get it, they said they would send a third and assured me it would go to the same billing address as the HDMI cable. Well, two weeks and still no Roku, so I got a Logitech Revue.

I must say that it can do quite a bit, especially with the ViP622 (and a couple others). It can search the DVR contents and present them in line with web results. We watched Walking Dead on Amazon Video and the quality was as good as satellite except for a minor lip-sync issue that I noticed (the wife said she didn't notice it).

Anyway, all is well once again with just a few hiccups...
 

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