I'd like to drop traditional Cable all together & maybe just go with some kind of streaming player for my TV. I found a list of all the free channels on Roku, which I presume means I don't need cable to watch them. But I also notice it doesn't have some of the channels (CBS, Fox, Adult Swim, History, TruTV) that have my favorite shows.

I'd like something that I can use on 2 TVs in the house. Maybe get a Roku with Netflix and/or Hulu?

What would you all recommend?

We use Roku with both Netflix and Hulu Plus. Roku gives you the regular TV stuff, Netflix gives you some decent old stuff (mainly movies), and Hulu Plus gives you a bit of of the newer TV show selections.
There's also Chromecast, but I'm not sure how exactly that one works.

I have a Roku and an Amazon Fire. Get Fire -- especially if you have an Amazon Prime account. And if you don't have one of those, get one. :)

Also, your antenna might give you a lot more stations than you think. A few hundred dollar antenna can often reach a lot of space. And you can put a big antenna in your attic if you don't want a big one sticking out of your yard.

I would recommend getting one service at a time. So get Prime and hang out with it for a while. Watch the shows you like and when you finally get tired of it, try Hulu or Netflix or SlingTV.

It's easy to go cheap these days.

My brother uses Roku at their house, plus an OTA antenna for local network HD content. Works for them, using at least Netflix. The only things they miss are live sports shown on cable channels (college football, for instance), and our radio guys are more fun to listen to anyway.

First, get an HD antenna. That will get local stations (and quite a few more channels). Then, sign up for something such as Netflix or Hulu Plus.

I don't have any first-hand experience with it, but Sling TV seems like it might be interesting.

Other than that, I've been using a homemade antenna that's worked pretty well.

I have 2 Roku 3's. I use them for Netflix, Hulu, etc., without issue.

I tried to use an HD Antenna (tried many), however; none worked well for my location. The closest I got to finding one that worked called for me to purchase the antenna as well as two power boosters (one for the antenna and a second one to get the signal through the entire house from the attic). Once I got that all working, I experienced power booster issues two weeks after installation.

In the end I found out two things:

1) I had to spend a large chunk of change to get a non-cable antenna setup to work in my location and learned there were too many failure points after spending said large amount.

2) It was cheaper (for me) to couple my internet and basic package TV (Comcast) than to pay for internet alone without a TV basic cable package. So I get the same internet package I want and basic cable for a total cheaper than if I just signed-up for the same internet package alone.

One caveat, to ensure #2 stays accurate I have to contact Comcast yearly to ensure they are giving me the best rate each year.

CBS has their own Roku channel. I believe the current episodes are free to watch. Anything older than a few weeks and you have to subscribe to their monthly subscription which is $5.99 +tax

But docbear1975 does offer a free alternative, an HD antenna and view all your local HD content for free. But if you're looking to record broadcasts, that's a different matter.

EDIT: I'm not quite there yet to cut out cable entirely. However, with my Roku and other streaming devices, coupled with Netflix and a few other streaming apps, I'm damn near close.

Hulu was formed by the cooperative efforts of NBC and FOX, with ABC joining later, so almost all the normal, scripted, non-syndicated programming from those three is available for free for a while on Hulu (no sports or full newscasts, though). Of the big broadcast networks, CBS is the lone holdout (though, interestingly, The CW -- which is co-owned by CBS -- does offer its programs on Hulu, as does Showtime, which is CBS-owned). Looking at the networks that offer content on Hulu, it doesn't appear TruTV has anything, and there's only a handful of popular History shows available. Adult Swim, on the other hand, seems to have a lot of its programs on there.

With Netflix, be aware that they do not offer recent episodes from the currently running season of any show (unless you count Netflix originals -- but even there, they put up an entire season at once). In most cases, you have to wait until the new season begins to air (or would have begun, in the case of a canceled/finished show) before the previous season is added.

I know almost nothing about Roku or similar, and I've yet to try Amazon Prime.

Question of my own: is a Roku (for example) necessary if you have a "smart" TV?

Considering that content is divided where you'd need to be using 20+ services to get most of the content that's out there properly, you'll have to carefully select which one holds more of the content you want.

I hesitate to recommend Netflix, or Hulu or anywhere else. If you have particular topics you want to watch, there's good YouTube channels, but that's hardly going to give you TV shows.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: No. If you have an internet-enabled television, then you don't actually need any sort of 3rd party box to get television shows and movies and such. But you'll have to be willing to break the law in some cases. The 3rd party boxes will let you legally get access to what you want to watch. I just recently (this past Christmas) helped my parents upgrade from their old smart tv to a new smart tv plus an Amazon Fire TV; their old setup had a generic thing like a Roku. If you are thinking about getting a box to add to your smart tv, think seriously about getting a Fire TV - it'll consolidate all your non-traditional video sources, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.

Ok, so I'm coming back to this after a lot of thought & I have (what I think are) some final questions regarding Roku...

Do I need a separate Roku player for each device? (I have an HDMI tv in one room, S-Video/RCA in the other)

Does it need to be directly wired to the internet or can it pick up my WiFi signal?

With so many channels, can I make a Favorites list? (One list per tv, if I can run both tvs off the same device)

I have a couple of Roku's. The newer models aren't something I've gotten into, but I can say that the default for the devices is to use WiFi. I have an older 2 model that was the high end version that did take wire as an option, but it really wasn't needed, they just don't need it and WiFi a better fit for this kind of thing. If you were streaming something in 4K then that might be different. I see the version 4 does have an Ethernet port but as far as I know every model has WiFi and that should be listed on the box and product pages for anyone selling them

It is one Roku per tv. They are single task units that wire directly into the screen inputs. They are typically only HDMI, so you may have some research and hoop jumping to do in order to get one to output to an older TV. I have one of the cheaper sticks which is a bit slow, but is pretty easy to move around. In the right scenario one could be shuffled around but if you need something running two places at once you are looking at needing more than one. A couple of Chromcasts could probably work too if you just wanted to beam content over from a phone or tablet, but it sounds like you want more out of them than that would give you.

When it comes to organizing I never really looked into it. I don't have so much that I can't just click a couple of times to get to what I want. I does seem to have some weird habit of moving what I'm using most to the bottom of the stack every once an awhile which has annoyed me in the past.

And when it comes to channels you don't actually have to dig through them all. You select the ones you want from the channel store and it "installs" them to the main menu, so you typically only have to navigate your channels not all of them. That may be what you were wondering.