Roku Sky streaming device?

[jinkster]

Has anyone any experience of Roku streaming box?

I am wanting to make the Sky Box wireless (Sky TV dongle) and then transmit the signal to the TV in the Kitchen without drilling wires/ routing cables etc. Would anyone recommend the Roku box? I have seen this for £16.38 inc postage from China on ebay - buy or avoid? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Roku-2-XS-1080P-Wireless...

[clockworks]

How do you get the signal out of the Sky box?

[jinkster]

I believe it is by connecting the Sky box to a router - cable or wirelessly.

[clockworks]

Just reading up on this, and it looks like the Sky wireless dongle is a means of connecting your Sky box to your router. You can then use your Sky box for catch-up services.

I don't think that there's any easy way of getting the output of your Sky box to a remote TV. You need a video sender if you want to do it without wires, and most of those are pretty poor.
If you just want to watch live stuff, a Sky multiroom box probably the best option. You have to pay a monthly sub for this.

[JimbobVFR]

clockworks said:

Just reading up on this, and it looks like the Sky wireless dongle is a means of connecting your Sky box to your router. You can then use your Sky box for catch-up services.

Yep its exactly this. Just a bridge to connect wirelessly if you can't use an ethernet cable. Gives you on demand stuff and catch up TV stuff (iPlayer and soon 4OD)

I have read that at some point sky plan on having a streaming service of sorts, which will allow recorded programs on a plus box to be watched on another box in the house, this does mean multi room would be needed though and this being sky could either never happen or be years away :-)

For using on another telly a simple coax cable and sky magic eye works quite well. This gives you the ability to tune into an analogue channel on the 2nd TV and control from the remote location. Fine if it's only a small TV but the quality isn't brilliant, we have this to a 17" tv in our bedroom and it's fine for that. Alternatively a HDMI splitter and a long cable to the remote TV, possibly with the above mentioned coax cable for control works very well. If the cable run is tricky or longer than 10-15m you can substitute a CAT5 extender for the cable. I have a similar setup (but using a matrix switch so I have PS3,blu-ray and sky HD in another room)

Obviously both the above will only give you the same program in both rooms, to watch different stuff you'd need another box.

[clockworks]

Thanks for confirming that.

I'd like to get my Sky box output over my wired network, but I really can't see a cost-effective way of doing it. HDMI to cat5 is a possibility in the future, but does a Sky HD box send audio over HDMI?

[Rabbo]

clockworks said:

Thanks for confirming that.

I'd like to get my Sky box output over my wired network, but I really can't see a cost-effective way of doing it. HDMI to cat5 is a possibility in the future, but does a Sky HD box send audio over HDMI?

It sends 2 channel but not 5.1 (yet).

[clockworks]

Rabbo said:

It sends 2 channel but not 5.1 (yet).

Thanks