Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Roku, League of Legends, and Me

Over the weekend, I joined the 21st century and picked myself up a Roku 2XD from Best Buy.  It's a small interent streaming appliance.  Up until now, I never really had a need for one.  That was before I read about Riot making a special League of Legends LCS channel.  It works pretty well, with a lot of previous matches being on there for viewing too.


I've watched LoL on my TV before, by connecting my tablet to it and that worked ok.  It was a bit finicky though, so I was on the lookout for a better solution.  I basically showed my browser screen on the TV.  The Roku does not have an official Twitch channel, but there is an unofficial version.  You just add the channel, https://owner.roku.com/add/TwitchTV, and voila, it works pretty great.

Besides watching League of Legends on there, I've also been using its Amazon Instant Video channel.  We have Amazon prime, so we get a lot of videos for free.  We also tend to purchase them for my kinds to watch on their Kindle Fire's.  They are all available through the Roku too, so we can watch them on the tablets or on whatever TV the Roku is attached too.

I'm a little worried that the kids will hog the Roku, so there is a chance we might need a second on.  Luckily the Roku 2XD is pretty cheap at $60 (compared to the $100 Roku 3).  I even took the Roku to the farthest reaches of the house away from the wireless access point and the streaming still seemed to work great.  Overall, I am quite pleased with my purchase.