[Product Feature] ROKU -- Little Box of Amazingness

So we got this new TV, right? It is such a huge step up from our giant boob tube it's not even funny. We love it.

Every week, we watch several TV shows. Thing is, we never catch them when they're on TV. We don't like to plan our lives around TV, and we hate all the commercials, so we have been watching them on Hulu.com whenever we feel like it, and we love it!! But once we got this new TV, we were thinking about how we could make it possible to watch our shows on our new TV. Ben's parents (still feels weird to say my "in-laws") received an AppleTV device from Stephanie, Ben's sister, for Christmas this year. So we looked that up on our beloved Amazon.com to see if it was compatible with Hulu... but it wasn't! After a little research and a visit to Hulu.com itself, we discovered ROKU... starting at $59, the ROKU streams over your highspeed wireless internet onto your TV. No hooking up to your computer required. We subscribed to Hulu Plus for $8 per month so we can watch all episodes, past and current, of our favorite shows like The Office, Modern Family, The Biggest Loser, and Glee on the HuluPlus channel on ROKU! Before, we'd sit on the couch with one of our MacBooks, brand-new TV in the background and watch our shows on the tiny MacBook screen. ANNOYING!

The Little Box of Amazingness itself.

With ROKU, you can simply go to the Hulu Plus channel, go to your queue, and select the episode you want to watch, and it plays in HD on your big screen! O-M-G! After doing it the MacBook way for over a year, this was a welcome change!!

Hulu Plus wasn't the only channel that rocked my socks on ROKU -- they also have Pandora (FREE), Amazon on Demand (which allows you to choose from several hundred FREE movies or rent them right from the screen), several other free movie channels, Facebook Photos (where you can watch facebook pictures on the big screen) and my favorite.... THE GYMBOX!!!!

Okay, this has turned into another feature all of a sudden, but it all goes back to ROKU, the Little Box of Amazingness. (Did I mention it only took 10 minutes to set up and it was SO EASY!!?)

Now, The Gymbox. It's a fitness channel. You subscribe online for $10 per month, or $99 per year, and you get to do HUNDREDS of group-fitness-class-at-the-gym style workouts!!! You can choose from

• cardio dance
• core strength
• pilates
• yoga
• treadmill
• kickboxing
• stretching
• strength training
• SPINNING 
• step
• extreme cardio intervals

That is 11 different types of workouts with REAL trainers that upload NEW workouts EVERY week. For $10 a month!?! I actually bought a Spinning bike (for a sweet $300 on Amazon, check it out HERE!) with some leftover bonus money so I could spin in my living room!

This is an absolutely GENIUS invention. My husband and I did a Step class together in our living room! (He was really good at it, too, better than me! Must be is dancing skills kicking in!) All of the past workouts are archived so you can scroll through and select others you haven't done before. The trainers are great, and there are "beginner" classes which are a little more basic, but also shorter. At 30 minutes, the beginner classes are perfect for mornings before work. The longer advanced classes, at 40 minutes to an hour (usually an hour) are perfect for weekends or weekday mornings when I have more time. 

Click HERE to go there now!

And at $10 per month, it is WAY cheaper than a gym membership and you don't even have to leave your house. That's the best part-- Ben and I have often asked each other this after a morning workout in the living room: "Would we even work out if we didn't work out at home like this?" The answer would be NO! Because the exact amount of time I need to get in a good sweat session in the morning is the exact amount of time I would WASTE driving to the gym. No thanks!

You can even bring your ROKU with you wherever you go. Ours was a deluxe model that came with cables to hook up to any TV with an a/v port (so where your DVD player gets plugged in). We use the HDMI cable, but if you're going on a trip, you might not have access to an HDTV.

Anyway, I love it. Ben loves it. Best money I ever spent!