New Roku

TV Central

It's fall which means football quickly followed by basketball. Time to get everything lined out so it all plays smoothly come game time. We canceled our TV service with Ziply a couple of months ago, which saved us about $150 per month, but now we've signed up for some Fubo sports package that is costing us about $100 a month. 

Anyway, we're trying to sort out just what packages we need, which is a giant pain, and we come across one channel that will be showing some important games, but the game is only going to be broadcast in 4K, so if your Roku box can't handle 4K, you won't be able to watch the game. Sounds like marketing bullshit to me, but it's not worth the time and effort to investigate. First it will be almost impossible to figure out whether you will really need a new Roku box to properly receive these new 4K signals, and 2nd who knows what will actually be coming down the wire, what with all the high skilled meth-heads putting their own sick twist on the encryption scheme.

Short version is I went ahead and ordered a new Roku unit from Amazon for $90 and it showed up that afternoon. That was yesterday maybe, or maybe it was Saturday. I forget. In any case I sat down today to plug it in, but when I opened the cabinet door I saw an inch deep layer of dust. Okay, maybe not an inch, but it covered everything. Shit, can't have that, so everything comes out and all the wires get disconnected. You might be able to clean the cabinet without disconnecting the wires, but for me it's just easier. Get all the gizmos and wires out of the way and it's very easy to clean out the dust from the cabinet.

Curiously, the shelves in the cabinet that hold the gizmos were bowed. Not much, mind you, maybe a millimeter over 40 centimeters. (That's me experimenting with the metric system.)  The shelves weigh more than the gizmos. I think they just sagged because of their weight and their weak construction. I only noticed this because I carried them into the kitchen to clean them and when I set them on the counter they wouldn't stay still, they wanted to slide all over. Turn them over and they would stay still. That's when I sighted down the edge of the shelf. I could see the slight bow.

After we got everything hooked back up, we sat down to see if it was all working. Going through all the menus and sign up services to get everything working took us at least half an hour, maybe a full hour. We had to resort to the laptop and my password file a couple of times, but we got everything lined out and apparently working.

As a bonus I got the HDMI switch moved into the cabinet. It had been sitting on top, but it really belonged with its brethren behind the glass door.

Gizmo Brethren in the Cabinet
Top row: HDMI Switch and new Roku Ultra
2nd row: LG Blue Ray Player sitting on top of
Panasonic DVD Carousel / Home Theater sound system
Bottom shelf: Power strip festooned with wall warts

We got the home theater system around the same time we got the TV. We got the Blue Ray player because we needed to watch a movie someone had loaned us. It was cheap enough, cheaper than the Roku box even. I am not sure when we got the HDMI switch. We must have needed it for something, but I don't know what. The TV has two HDMI inputs and that was enough for a while, but something happened and we got a new widget so two HDMI ports just wasn't enough any more, so I got the switch. We don't use it anymore, but we have it just in case we need to watch a DVD or a Blue Ray disk, and who knows what will turn up?

Sorry about the out-of-focus pictures. I have no patience with my smartphone. They're not great, but it should give you an idea of what's happening.

Checking my archives I realized I had written a bunch about this stuff. If you want to know that hole gruesome story, click on this Home Theater link.

P.S. This simple little task was a major ordeal for me with my cranky body. Bunch of crawling around on the floor and changing from sitting to getting up on my knees and back again. Next time I'm gonna have a couple of tough guys lift the whole dang thing three feet in the air and set it on some sawhorses. It'll be tough for them but it will make my job easier.