[red-beard]

We've had threads here on the streaming services and cable cutting, but what about the devices.

I picked up 2 of the Roku Express units. They are relatively cheap, support all of the services and are wireless.

But....

They only support WiFi 2.4 GHZ. The cheapest that supports something other than WiFi "G" is the is the "Streaming Stick Plus". At present, even though the WiFi router is only 2 feet from the Roku Express, it only receives a 12-14 Mbps connection. This is not good enough to support proper streaming.

I do not know if the problem is the low bandwidth or not, but Amazon suffers from out of sync audio. There are lots of "fixes" out there, but none see to work. I have de-installed and reinstalled the Amazon application, but it only helps for a short period. NETFLIX does not have any issues.

I tried to find a device to give the Roku a direct RJ-45 connection, but it is too stupid to connect.

I might consider an Amazon Fire Stick...but I do not want anything with voice recognition (Like Alexa, or Google voice). Bad enough the phones seem to be listening, I do not want something DESIGNED to be listening.

Any ideas?

And to be clear, I want a standalone device (no Android PC on a stick).