Roku Express / Express Plus Review - $29 Roku Streaming Box / The + works with old TVs!

[, Music, ], hey everybody, its Lawnside, but and we're taking a look today at the Roku Express Plus. This is on the low end of the Roku streaming product line. They'Ve got about half a dozen products at this point. This one is significant because it lets you hook it up to an old CRT television. So if you have an old tube television or know somebody that does they can get streaming media now on that TV with these connectors Roku has always had the ability to do this on one of their products. Right now, the Express plus is the one that has that. Otherwise, it's identical to the regular Express which cost $ 29. This one cost $ 39 to get that RCA connectivity. It'S not that much less expensive than the stick that we looked at from Roku. A couple of months ago, which ranges between 40 and 50 dollars - and I think that one is the better buy if you're in that price range and you don't need the old-style connectivity, because the stick is a lot faster in its interface and how it pulls up. Media then this does once the media gets playing it's fine, which is why, if you are just looking for something cheap and easy, the $ 29 non plus Express might be worth looking at, but otherwise I would probably recommend the stick over this and you'll see that As we start getting into how it operates in just a second now, I do want to mention, though, in the interest of full disclosure. This came in free of charge from Roku. However, all the opinions you're about to hear are my own. Nobody is paying for this review and no one is reviewing this content before it is posted all right. So let's take a look at the hardware now. This is the Express Plus that we're looking at today, and the only difference between the Express plus and the Express is this connector right here, which is what you use to hook up your RCA cables to your non HD TV. So if you are looking for the cheapest Roku, you can find, you only need the Express if you are hooking it up to a television that has an HDMI port. A video support on this is 1080p at 30 frames per second or 720p. It doesn't support any of the higher end stuff, like 4k or 60 frames per second content, but again 30 bucks you're not going to get a lot for the money here, but it's certainly sufficient for doing YouTube and Netflix and other things just at 30 frames per. Second, USB power is what powers it, so you could try to hook it up to your TV's USB port if it has one that will likely give you enough juice, otherwise they have an AC adapter in the box to get you up and running now. This doesn't to be visible on the front of your television because it has an IR receiving port here for the remote in the front. So, unlike other Roku's, that rely on radio frequency for their remotes, this remote on the low-end version is infrared. So this will have to be visible to you sitting on the couch and to your remote. The remote itself looks pretty simple: it's about what we've seen from other mid bit to low rate to low-end Roku devices. You'Ve got some of your services hard-coded on the front, so you can get the Amazon and Netflix and sling and Vudu with a single button push. There is no headphone jack on this one, although there is one on the higher-end boxes and that's kind of a nice feature on those, because you can listen privately. If you want there's a way to do it through the Roku app which I'll explain in a few minutes, so you do have some capability for private listening with this. But it's not as good as the higher-end models are, so that's the remote there and that's pretty much it now. If you have a hard time keeping this thing in place, because my wires are moving it around a little bit, they do give you some double-sided tape to tape it down. If you need to I'll show you that in my unboxing video, which you can find down below in the video description, so let's boot this up and see how it performs all right. So here we are on the main screen of our Roku Express and one of the nice things about Roku's you'll, see that Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and YouTube and Google Play and HBO Go, are all happy and together on this front screen here and that's one Of the reasons why I like Roku is that they don't have their own content distribution platform that competes with these other services, so they get most of the platforms out there on a single device. Because, right now, if you bought an Amazon box, you can't get Google content on it. If you bought a Google box, you can't get the Amazon content on it. This one has everything but apples. That'S always a good thing to have a good choice of platforms to watch your content on one of the things about this box, though, is a little slower than the stick is, and that's primarily because this is the entry-level device now Netflix here is loading up a Little faster because I had loaded it up previously and it does have some memory on there to allow you to very quickly jump back and forth. If you have the apps loaded already, but other apps do load up a little slower when they are being loaded for the first time. So if I go over here to YouTube, which I haven't loaded up in a little while you'll see that it takes a minute for that screen to come up here, so it goes to black. It goes to YouTube and you got to wait for YouTube to load up and then do all the the screen formatting. So it is not the fastest experience. Other Roku boxes are a lot quicker than this one, but once the video starts playing, it's usually pretty quick here. So it's not too bad when you get into a video, because, obviously, once the video plays it plays back at full speed, or at least the 30 frames per second, that it's capable of playing back so you're good to go there. I did notice that on YouTube it doesn't play a video beyond 720p, so Netflix does do 1080p, but YouTube here really stays at a 720p resolution. As you can see there on the stats for nerds that I've loaded up in their app there, but Netflix performance is decent. It certainly feels about. You know good enough to watch Netflix on on your television again without the higher end 4k or 60 frames per second content. But you can see here it's streaming up a Netflix video relatively quickly here and you can get into it and enjoy your favorite content without too many issues it doesn't have AC Wireless built in so it uses just the 2.4 gigahertz Wireless. My suggestion would be to make sure that wherever you set it up, your wireless has a good signal just so that you don't get any buffering or anything like that. One of the advantages of having a device it has to kind of sit in front of your TV is, you might end up getting a better wireless signal as a result, now the Roku app that runs on the iPhone and Android platforms also works on this low-end Device which was very nice to see so you can do the voice search with it. You can also plug in headphones and do private listening as well. The one issue is private. Listening on this low-end device is that it doesn't do the audio syncing as well as the higher-end devices do so, although it works, it doesn't work as well, because the voice will not really be lining up with the video. Unfortunately, you can see how the mobile app works in a video I have link down below in my extra channel. Another thing that this one has that the other devices also have at the higher price points is a universal search. So I can go here and look for episodes of Stargate, for example, and what it will do is go out to all the services that it that support the search feature, and let me know where I can watch these episodes. So, for example, here a season 9 of Stargate is available on all these services and it will take me right into those apps directly to watch them in this case. I have to buy them, but if they had free streaming versions of that episode as well, I could see them that way too. So, although you do have to contend with the loading times on this thing, you will be able to do the universal search like you. Can do on other Roku devices which might make this a pretty useful device for hooking up to a secondary TV. So now it's the moment you've been waiting for, and that is how does it look on an old CRT TV? I found the oldest one. I'Ve got in the closet, and here we go, it is up and running. One of the things that I had to do, though, is just change the screen type to a four by three standard away from widescreen, so it's kind of getting squished when it was in that widescreen mode. So I will just go back to that four by three there and leave it there. But what you really get here is the full interface, as you saw it on the HD television. So I can go into YouTube here and load up my YouTube videos and watch them on this old television. I am shooting through my iPhone just because my main camera here doesn't seem to like the CRT TV there's a bit of a synchronization issue going on here, but wait for YouTube to load up. I can go into my history here and just browse the interface and you pretty much get the same app just on a much lower resolution screen. So if you ever wanted to see what it might be like to watch YouTube 20 years ago, you can't you can do it on here. So look what i found 'll take a look at my video and it'll pop up and start playing here now. What'S what it's doing here? Is it is letterboxing it of course, because I did shoot the video at 16 by 9 resolution, so it does what you would expect it to do, which is give you the letterboxing there top and bottom. So that is how that works. One thing I'm going to do real quick, though, is load up Star Trek. The Next Generation, which is a four by three show in Netflix, let's see if it plays at full screen and there you go. You'Ve got this content now streaming over the Internet to our old CRT TV in full-screen mode, because this is a four by three show. So if we were on an HD television, we would see those bars on the left and the right versus the top and the bottom on here, because again, we've got a square television. We get the square image and looking at it on this TV, it actually looks pretty good, because this is the remastered Star Trek. The Next Generation that dark line that just kind of came in. That'S the result of my camera synchronization, I'm not seeing that as I'm watching the television with my eyes here. So it should look just fine on your TV. It actually looks pretty darn good. So if you're looking for a way to get old cut or new content onto your old television, I think the Express plus is a good way to do it to my eyes, at least on this lousy television. It looks good as a DVD player might so. I think you really will be able to get a lot of that streaming. Content delivered to those old TVs that you have in your life or in the life of your loved ones pretty easily and at twenty nine bucks. It'S not a bad deal for a streaming device. If you really don't want to spend all that much money, I do prefer the stick to this one, just because it does the private listening synchronization with the phone better. You can tuck it behind the television. It'S a little faster than this one is, but if you are really looking for something that's really inexpensive, you really can't get much better than twenty nine bucks for a very functional streaming device that supports many of the major online services. This is LAN siphon thanks for watching this channel is brought to you by my patreon supporters. If you want to help the channel you can, by contributing as little as a dollar a month head over to LAN TV, slash, patreon, to learn more and don't forget to subscribe visit. Lan TV, slash s,