yngldy

On another thread, someone mentioned you can get British and Australian shows on Acorn. Can you also get other countries on it? The reason I ask is, one of our PBS channels would show Italian, Swedish, and French shows, like Maigret and Salvo. They were detective shows, but from other countries. DH loved watching them. All of a sudden they were gone. Does anyone know if Acorn or another channel has those shows?

Prism99

For specific shows, Google to see if they are currently being offered by any of the channels. I Googled Maigret and it is not currently available on Amazon; however, it might become available in the future. Acorn showed it as being available for purchase as a DVD set, but not being streamed on their channel.

Offerings on the channels change periodically, as the channels negotiate contracts all the time. They might purchase the rights to a series for a year and have to drop it when their contract runs out. Some contracts are exclusive, some are not.

We enjoyed Lord & Master, a German detective series with subtitles, on Acorn and I think it is still there. We have watched other foreign series with subtitles from a variety of countries with on Netflix, and also I think on Amazon. Offhand I can remember a French detective series and at least one Scandinavian detective series.

PBS now has its own subscription channel. You should check them out too.

We like Roku. What you might want to do is buy a Roku, set it up, and experiment. Most pay channels offer a free trial period and you can cancel if you don't like the offerings. Acorn is very affordable at $5/month. I would not recommend Sling, based on its price and the poor reviews I have seen for it. If you have Amazon prime, they have quite a few free movies and series (although most of them are not my favorites) for prime members, so no cost to add that to Roku. Netflix is definitely worthwhile, I think about $10/month. I have held off on subscribing to PBS, which I think is fairly new.

If you have cable tv, some cable companies give you certain streaming channels free. We dropped our cable tv from our internet provider, but because we still use their broadband they gave us a free app that provides us with our local tv channels on Roku.

Hope this isn't too confusing.

Edit: Should mention we added a subscription to Great Courses and it is terrific for us. Dh loves science and math, so he can watch as many different lectures as he wants without running out. They also offer many other courses on just about every subject imaginable, from Indian cooking to Tai Chi. They offer a one-month free trial to see if you like it.

QuiltnNan

thanks for all of this wonderful information.

Prism99

I should add that there are a lot of free channels available with a Roku. You can add them and drop them at will. For example, my husband found a couple of free channels on cooking that he likes. I like Newsy, a free channel that offers a quick recap of all the major national news; Newson, which offers a replay of a local news channel; and I sometimes watch the major news channels such as NBC, CBS which offer snips of their own broadcasts. All of these free channels that I have mentioned (with the possible exception of the cooking channels) have commercials, but they are easier to watch than standard commercials because they are shorter, most 30 seconds or less and are not as frequent.

The subscription channels we have -- Acorn, Great Courses, Netflix -- are all commercial-free, which makes it much more enjoyable to watch a tv series episode. Amazon is also commercial-free, whether you are watching free Prime shows or paying to watch one of their non-free offerings. (I am never willing to pay, but my daughter sometimes pays for a movie or tv series year that she really wants. These are all pay-to-watch for a specific period of time.)

The biggest problem we have with Roku is finding specific things. Having a search feature helps a lot. Our Roku 3 has a voice search which is very useful when it works. Having to type in a search can be a pain. There is so much content on streaming channels that it really helps to have a Roku with a useable type of search option on it. For example, I can do a voice search on "Maigret" and Roku will come up with a list of clickable links to everything that has Maigret in it. Without a search option, you can spend a lot of time fruitlessly looking for a tv series you want to continue watching but can't remember which channel it was on.

As I mentioned, I think all of the subscription channels have a free trial option. You typically have to put in a credit card to start the free trial, but you have the option of cancelling it before your card starts being automatically charged. You can also add channels via Roku.com which can be convenient. That website will give you some basic information about the channel, but it's a good idea to also Google the channel to find out what customers say about it. That is how I learned to steer clear of Sling. Sling may get better down the road, but it has too many complaints for me to even want to try a free trial on it (because there have been complaints about difficulty dropping it). That is the only subscription channel I have been interested in that had a lot of complaints, though. Acorn, Netflix and Amazon all get good customer feedback.

nativetexan

also try MHz television. i used to get it with comcast. sorry t yping with cat in lap. anyway, i subscribe with them and watch on my computer. Montalbano, maigret, lots of others. Scandanavian, etc. love them all.

Prism99

Ohhh! May have to give the MHz channel a shot too. $8/month isn't bad. Had not known about this one.
http://watch.mhzchoice.com/?gclid=EA...SAAEgKcIPD_BwE

If you hit "browse" on the above link, it shows their offerings. I am seeing several foreign detective series we haven't encountered on other channels.

Jingle

Too complicated for me. I will stick with our cable company's expanded basic. There are lots of channels, if nothing we want to watch we put in a DVD.

Prism99

We had our cable company's all-singing all-dancing package just so we could get a few channels that we really watched a lot. Those channels were not offered in the more basic packages. We were finally driven to Roku by the cost of our cable. We save about $100 per month by using Roku. The only thing we miss (husband misses, actually; I don't) are the international tennis tournaments. The monthly cost for the sports channel that has these is relatively high, so we haven't added it. Might later, though. There is literally nothing else that we miss.

There is a learning curve. That is one of the reasons we waited so long to change. However, if you take it step-by-step it's not too bad. It did take us several months to get completelyt used to it. Now we're both very comfortable and feel that we are finally getting value for what we are paying out.

klswift

There are hundreds of channels available. Go to the Roku channel and just start scrolling. Many are free and some are a subscription. I currently have Acorn for $5 a month and if I ever get caught up on all the programs, I may add BritBox. Another source is to google the shows and see if they list in their descriptions what channels they are available on. I see you are here in So Cal, try calling the embassy at ask the folks there or, if you are in the LA area, go to one of the expat restaurants and ask them. They probably have the available channels on their tvs in the bar area.

klswift

I'm sorry you have had a bad experience with Slingtv. I have it and I am thrilled! I have the comb orange and blue package because that lets me have all the local channels. Where we are we can not get anything via antennae. I have both packages, all the local and DVR for both tvs and it costs $45 a month. That is less than 1/3 of what cable cost. And I can tweak the My tv option so I only have to skim thru certain channels if I want.