Religious Broadcaster on Roku

2014 was a year of many changes for my family. I have accepted a pastorate in Anthony, New Mexico and am learning to lead and pastor a church again. Your prayers are gratefully requested and received. My relationship to streaming of Radio has also been altered a little too. In Houston, my previous town, we had Infinity cable and a pretty good net speed for streaming. In Anthony, we could not get Infinity's relative Time Warner cable due to the fact we live on a more non residential street. We also had Century link available in the community. They had a good price, but they do “cap” or limit the amount of data you can use monthly. If you go over the limit, they charge a bit more. Finally my son found a provider called Megaweb that allowed for a flat fee all you can get net service. The speed is not that great, but fine for radio streaming. Video streaming can be a little rough at times. This system consist of a small antenna that communicates with an internet node on a local water tower. This is a set up used in a lot of rural situations. We have managed to use a small Belkin router to supply this signal to a Roku, home computer, several phones, tablet, and two church computers. With this in mind I have managed to put up a few Of Faith and Radio blogs this year.

Lately I have come to believe a ROKU is still a great option for streaming radio and video. In the early days of streaming radio and video you had to have a computer handy. My computer is a great place to work but its not to great to watch movies and that puts speakers in a fixed place to listen to radio. Later, internet radios arrived. I could at least listen to a fairly large amount of stations in the comfort of the bed room or where ever I wanted to set it up. This is when I started writing this blog mainly in regards faith and radio streaming. You can still pick up a good amount of teaching and music stations on an internet radio. If you look at previous blog post I have given you many stations to listen to. I also have found some stations have moved into streaming, others have changed the way they stream and some may have simply gone dark. (Old radio phrase for going off the air.) Stand alone internet radios are still available. Most are portable. All must use a wifi signal.

A good while ago I purchased my one and only Roku and discovered a cheap streamer for Radio and some good video. A person of faith needs to understand that one has pretty good access to a variety of programming with this small box. This is the kinda of device that you can watch movies from subscription services like Netflix or see movies with ads for free. The box can access adult material but you can control what channels you put on the box. I think its safe for family use, should be monitored with teens and a little to much for kids. The Roku is a favorite of “cord cutters” who chose not to use satellite or cable tv. A lot of these folks just have internet and broadcast television.

I have become a fan of this little box. (Most are 60 dollars or cheaper if you get the stick version) As a believer I have access to several free music services like Pandora. I can program some of those stations to play non stop Christian music. I am listening to my Petra station on Pandora as I write this. Many Christian radio stations have there own Roku channels. Klove, KLTY, AirOne and few others come to mind. A huge amount of videos make there broadcast and podcast available too. Some also use the device to stream services live to shut ins or displaced members. Also the Roku has several good internet broadcasting channels that allow a consumer to listen to a numerous amount of Christian teaching and music. Tune In and IheartRadio come to mind, but there are plenty more. Like any internet connected device, the gate keeper needs to be responsible for watch channels they have on there system.

In the history of streaming the first adopters have been faith based. Faith based groups are less profit driven and willing to use new media to reach audiences. Lately I have been looking at various religious television broadcasters on the Roku scene. I have shied away from some religious Television broadcaster in the past because in the old days most Television broadcaster where highly Charismatic and “Seed based” guys like Oral Roberts. Now there where exceptions like Billy Graham or local churches who have fine local broadcast. Graham does have a small Roku channel. As I explored the the system I found the most impressive religious Roku channel is run by CBN, They offer news, a lot of talk and the CBN show with Pat Robertson. They also offer several music channels and a lot of material in a on demand setting. TBN also stream all of their stations. When multi-casting came to broadcast TV the TBN folks responded by creating a host of channels in addition to the TBN channel. They have channels in Arabic, Spanish, Russian and a few other channels. They also have a pretty good youth channel called JUCE. They also offer a pretty huge section of on demand stuff from their website. GOD TV also has a channel. It has their various live streams available. This religious broadcaster took off in Europe and is quite charismatic, but is a great place to view the growth of charismatics around the world. Day Star also has a channel and has its feed available. I have also found two fairly conservative stations. One is the His Channel. While most of the others I have listed have a terrestrial television network behind them, His Channel does not. They are into end times prophecy a lot. They also play great ministries from the Calvary Chapel spectrum, and other conservative bible teachers. They simply try to get their signal on lots of devices. They do on demand programming and a live feed like a television station. The station that I think is most appealing to me as a Southern Baptist and all that entails is the NRB channel. This station started on Directv many years ago, apparently has some affiliates on broadcast television and a Roku channel. If you have a favorite ministry that uses television you can probably find it on the web or on a Roku. With this Roku you can sit comfortably and allow the Lord to speak to you.