Dropping Direct TV to go to Roku

If the monitor lacks a tuner you can go to EBay (or similar) and locate one of the many subsidized digital tuners distributed for the analog to digital forced march conversion, or you can go to WalMart and buy one (yes, many still have them for sale).

And if you have a DVR (or other device) with a digital tuner, you most likely can use it as a front end for the monitor in conjunction with Roku.

Good luck.
With services like NetFlix available for less than $10 a month and free services like freemoviesonline, hulu, and others, not to mention the proliferation of off-air sources with the many .1-2 stations featuring content, dumping cable or satellite is not a bad choice at all!

I plan to this very soon myself and was thinking it made sense to get an OTA HD antenna. Any thoughts on this? The main reason would be to watch local live sporting events.

As for the other avenues, I assume they would require a PC capable of delivering a signal over HDMI. I've tried this on my laptop and the results are pretty poor. How do I improve this? My laptop is a cheap model w/ no specific video/tv card features. If the answer is a better video card, any details would be appreciated.

JustaSheep23, most laptops that have an HDMI port should be able to output to a TV acceptably. If you have an early model unfortunately the only option to improve the performance is to get a new laptop/computer - those videocards are not able to be upgraded.

Okay, I figured if I get serious about streaming, I would upgrade to a decent media centered PC.

Any advice on an OTA antenna?

You can go to this site for an antenna recommendation.

I would first try an inexpensive powered antenna like this, be sure to get it at a local electronics store with a good return policy. Depending on the distance from your house to the transmitter you may need a higher powered roof antenna to get any or all of the available channels.

If you have any issues start a new thread, good luck!

If you had been watching Cable or Satellite and then switched to an over the air antenna, you will need to go into the TV menu and change it from Cable to the Antenna setting to get it to receive off of an antenna.

There is no such thing as an HD or Digital antenna. This is just marketing to get you to buy a new antenna. Any old UHF or All Channel antenna will work wonderfully with over the air signals.

Here is a very good site to find the TV Channels in your area and what kind of antenna you will need to get the signal.
http://www.tvfool.com/

I discontinued our Cable TV last year, but they never did come out and turn it off. Saved about $40 a month too.

You can't hook up a Roku to a DVR (without substantial intervention) and I'm not sure you would need to since the Roku will save and resume viewed items. You can hook up an OTA to a DVR and we do this to record local HD channels.