Like many people I decided to try out Roku 3 Streaming Player
and drop my Fios tv. One of the first issues that came up was how do I watch local channels with Roku? After days of searching I found nothing but dead ends. Some folks said to add a private Roku channel that streamed some local affiliate channel. Well, it did, and it was bad. Very low quality and the channel wasn’t local enough.
The solution of how to watch local channels with Roku is quite simple!
Living in the Pittsburgh area I really wanted to be able to watch KDKA, WTAE and WPXI. Mostly because I wanted to watch the Mentalist.
Another option was to try PlayOn, which, actually will cost you a subscription fee in order to watch local channels such as WTAE, KDKA and WPXI.
My solution? Well, amazingly enough, I totally forgot that these local channels actually still broadcast over the airwaves. Right! An antenna! I need to buy an antenna. An HD antenna. This sounded expensive to me, also I reminded me of watching tv back in the 80s. Remember having to wrap foil around the antenna in order to pick up your local channels?
As it turned out, it didn’t cost me more than $12 at Walmart. I bought a cheap RCA Digital Flat Antenna ANT1050R HDTV, which plugged right into my flat panel Samsung TV. All I needed to do was tell the tv to autoscan for channels.
BAM, just like magic I was watching my local channels in HD without even needing the Roku. An believe it or not, the HD quality over the air was incredible.
