Set Top Streaming Box for Classic Cinema

December 15, 2014 3:55 PM

I'm looking for a device to give my elderly parents for the holidays to help them reduce their TV costs. I expect to have to buy them a few subscriptions too. They aren't technophobes (in fact my step-mom is a very quick study) but the interface has to be at least a little bit intuitive, and most importantly, I need to get her as much "classic cinema" as I can.

She's pretty addicted to Turner Movie Classics, but nothing has that channel. Can anyone point me to a good solution that would have as many old movies as possible? Like, 1950s and earlier? I've mostly looked at Amazon Fire, Chromecast and Roku, but nothing helps us much in this area. Have we missed something, or are we out of luck? Any advice much appreciated.

posted by Fenriss to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

I believe Warner Archive works with Roku and iOS/AppleTV devices.
posted by destructive cactus at 4:11 PM on December 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

As of right now, Fandor has 1,430* films of all shapes and sizes that were published before 1950. The service works on Chromecast / Roku / AppleTV / ect.

*Disclaimer - I currently work for Fandor. Me-mail me for a discount on the subscription.
posted by justalisteningman at 5:23 PM on December 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

I gave my mom (b. 1941) a Roku last year and set it up with access to my Netflix streaming account. She LOVES it for the old movies. She is anything but a technophile, but past the initial setup, she's had surprisingly few problems with the device or Netflix's interface.
posted by hollisimo at 5:50 PM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I got my mom whatever the cheapest roku was at the time a while back. There are several "classic movie" type channels, in addition to what was mentioned above. Roku has access to a lot of stuff that seemingly doesn't show up elsewhere, when it comes to things that aren't just generic netflix type streaming services like Amazon prime or whatever. At least, that's how it's seemed to me.
posted by emptythought at 7:24 PM on December 15, 2014

Not an online solution, very low tech. At this time of year you can usually find boxes of movies and old TV shows in DVD format. Google 50 movie DVD. All sorts; musicals, westerns, horror, classics... For less than the cost of a single subscription you can give them 200 or 300 things to watch.
posted by Gungho at 7:39 AM on December 16, 2014

Roku + Netflix is the go-to choice for streaming. It's got a lot of headroom, the Roku service has a lot of channels of different kinds of streaming content. You can add channels remotely for them via the web interface, and if you spend a bit more time there's a bunch of unofficial channels with even more content, some of dubious licensing. Beyond that there's an excellent Plex client for Roku and you could set up a Plex server for them if they have a desktop computer that's generally turned on. (Or if the network is fast enough, remotely.) Plex is mostly great for unlicensed downloaded video, so that may or may not be of interest.
posted by Nelson at 12:21 PM on December 16, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you all so much! I think we're zeroing in on our best solution now.

How did anyone ever live without AskMeFi? <3
posted by Fenriss at 1:52 PM on December 17, 2014