Roku

Terry wants to buy a device to cast to his home office TV. Would the Chromecast work or should he buy the FireTV Stick? Leo says that the Chromecast is a great device, but it doesn't stand on its own. He'll have to navigate to what he wants to watch on a phone and then cast to the Chromecast device. Stand-alone devices like Roku and AppleTV can act as their own independent devices. As for FireTV, Leo says it really serves as a portal to sell stuff from Amazon, so he's not much of a fan. Leo says ROKU Ultra is a better choice all the way around and will also stream in 4K.

Jody is having an issue of an annoying hissing sound when he's streaming video through his Roku. Leo says that he thinks it's a decoding error in the Roku. Try using another Roku device and see if the noise is replicated. He can also try different sound settings, but it sounds like that 5-year-old Roku just needs to be replaced. 

Skip has been watching TWiT on YouTube live and sometimes it changes to a different show when watching live on Roku. Leo says that there's something about YouTube live that switches after 15 minutes. And not all live channels do it. Look for settings in YouTube to see if autoplay is turned on. Then turn it off.

Michelle has finally cut the cable and wants to know how to stream her movies and TV shows from the internet. Does she need special equipment? Leo says maybe. If she has a smartTV, then she might not. But Leo recommends getting a streaming device anyway and he recommends the Roku. Streaming services include Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. But there's also new services coming from Disney and many others. How does she pay for them? Leo says she would have to give them a credit card.

Rob can't seem to get Dolby Atmos out of his TV. Leo says that most TVs don't support Dolby Atmos, so he may need to get a new player and receiver that supports it. He'll also have to have enough speakers, including two "up firing" speaks in order to get Atmos at Home. The latest Apple TV just had Atmos at Home enabled. Roku's higher end players also support it. Netflix has a list of streaming devices supporting Atmos here.

Sue's Roku device won't let her log in anymore. Is this because she has DSL? DSL isn't the issue. She's likely using the wrong password. Rich recommends that she try recovering her password. Once she does that, she can change it.

Max wants to know if the Amazon Fire Stick is a good deal. Leo says he's not a fan because it's geared towards marketing Amazon Products. Same goes for Apple and its Apple TV. The Roku, on the other hand, has more channels and isn't trying to sell him anything. He prefers the Roku box over the stick.

Vino recently cut the cable and is streaming YouTube TV, but he's having trouble streaming on his Sony TV on Roku. It turns on by itself. Leo says that it's likely a CEC problem, which has to do with the HDMI settings. It's basically designed to automatically turn on the TV when he turns on his Roku. It doesn't work very well on Sony. So he should go into the settings and turn off BraviaLink. That'll solve it.

Christian recently bought a Lightning to HDMI cable to connect his phone to his Roku, but it doesn't work with Hulu. It only plays the sound, not the picture. Leo says it sounds like it isn't HDCP compliant. Copy Protection is probably what he's running up against. Hulu's site says it doesn't support it. There may be a workaround, though. He should try scrubbing through the timeline. According to the chatroom, 9/10 times it will bring the video back. Another solution is to log out and log back in. But if he has a Roku device, why not just use the Roku app?

John is trying to stream movies using the FilmStruck app and they all end up 16:9. What can he do? Leo says that the Sony TV that John has uses a variety of aspect ratios. One setting is dot for dot or 1-to-1. That will give him the image it was meant to have. But the TV app is overriding that setting. It sounds like it's a shortcoming of John's smart TV. This is why Leo isn't a fan of smart TVs. Leo recommends using a Roku or cast it from his phone so that it won't override the TV aspect ratio settings.