How to Watch Live TV and Local Channels on Roku & Roku TV

It’s not difficult to watch live TV on a Roku or Roku TV, including regional channels that you once received with cable TV. On a Roku or Roku TV, you get all of your greatest alternatives for local channels and live TV.

How to Watch Live TV and Local Channels on Roku & Roku TV

Watching live TV on a Roku is pretty simple these days, even if you’re just looking for local channels that you used to watch on cable. Many businesses are now entering the streaming market, and they’re all promising to provide you the most value for your money. What is the best method to set yourself up with free live TV and local channels for life and where can you discover the free excellent stuff? I’m going to go through all of your greatest alternatives for watching live TV and local channels on a Roku or Roku TV in this article.

I’ll demonstrate how to acquire free access to live local networks like CBS, ABC, or Fox so you can watch primetime programming, regional news, and live sporting events. I’ll discuss several affordable methods to get networks like ESPN, CNN, Fox News, AMC, and free ad-supported choices. These advices are all entirely lawful. The majority of these are immediately available for usage on your Roku, and you should be able to utilize them for many years to come.

Just a heads up, my first tip is gonna require some extra equipment. Everything you’re about to see here comes from my own how-to guides and hands-on reviews on my website, cord-cutting report com. You can sign up for my monthly newsletter that covers tech and streaming in the link below. If this video helps you out and you’re gonna buy a Roku or TV antenna, please consider using the links below as a way to support the channel. I’ll get a small commission at no cost to you, and it will help me keep making more reviews and more videos like this one. And be sure to hit the like and subscribe button for more videos like this one in the future.

Let’s start with over-the-air channels. There’s a simple one-two punch that can add a lot of local live TV channels such as CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and even PBS to your Roku. Buying a TV antenna makes a lot of sense, especially if you just got rid of cable TV or an expensive satellite subscription like DirecTV. With a TV antenna, you can get free local stations and a lot of sub-channels that you didn’t get before. Adding these channels to your Roku is pretty simple. You just need either a separate TV tuner or DVR to watch free over-the-air TV channels on your Roku. Pick up an inexpensive DVR like a Tablo Duo, and you’ll be able to stream these channels to every streaming device, tablet, and smartphone in your house, and you can record whatever you want to.

Setting up a Tablo Dual Lite is easy because you’re connecting just a few things into the back. Plug in the hard drive to the USB port, connect the TV antenna to the jack, there’s a power adapter you need to plug in, and you can either plug in an ethernet cord from your router or you can use Wi-Fi. I used an app from my Android smartphone to complete the setup process, but if you don’t have a smartphone handy, just hop on a PC to finish up with a channel scan. During the setup process, you’ll also need to download the Tablo app to your Roku, and that’s it. I now have about 60 channels, major networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox, and I have an attractive channel guide.

Ways to record anything from professional sports to the most popular TV shows on broadcast networks. As far as TV antennas go, I use the ClearStream Eclipse. You can check out my in-depth review of the best indoor TV antennas at the end of this video. My top pick for an outdoor TV antenna is the Top TV 400 antenna. DirecTV has a free tool you can use to figure out what kind of TV antenna you need. I’ll leave a link to that below. Just type in your zip code, and you’ll see where all broadcast towers are in your area. For a list of channels that you should be able to obtain, click the ‘View Channels’ option.

If you own a Roku TV, then you don’t need a Tablo, unless you want to record shows. You can plug the TV antenna directly into the back of your television and scan for channels under settings. Most Roku TVs have a built-in channel guide, including the TCL model that I have here. For more on the Tablo, watch my video on the best mother DVRs. In that video, I also cover HDHomeRun tuners, which is another inexpensive option that I like a lot.

**Hey, let’s talk about Pluto TV, an ad-supported television. Pluto TV is pretty much the leader in the realm of free live television that’s streamed online instead of through a cable cord or satellite feed. Pluto has 250 live TV channels and a massive on-demand library of movies and older TV shows that once appeared on Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Investigation Discovery. So, what’s the catch? Yeah, you still have to watch commercials, just like with traditional TV, and no, you can’t skip through the commercials either. The other thing is, you’re not getting traditional cable channels like NBC, ESPN, or HGTV. But hey, it’s free, and there’s some really good stuff on there. So, get off the couch and use your commercial time wisely. I’m not gonna tell you what to do with the minute and a half actually, I don’t wanna know.

Who Doty V is a decent way to catch up on news. Go check out CBSN. It’s CBS’s first all-digital channel with actual live anchors and dedicated reporting all over the country. There’s also a CBSN app that you can use on Roku as well that will give you the same thing. But Pluto TV has its own news section with a bunch of different channels. While we’re on the subject of news, the news on the app has pretty much every live local TV newscast that you’ll need. It’s a huge resource, and you can just add it directly from the Roku channel store. There are a couple competitors to Pluto TV. You can find Stir and Zumo that offer similar services. And if you dig around on Stir and Zumo, you can find some gems that might appeal to you. But I’ll let you handle that independently. As far as I’m concerned, Pluto TV has the best lineup of live TV channels and a huge movie library that’s worth digging through.

Before I talk about a couple of cable TV replacements, I’m gonna give you one more option for free local channels. Locast.org is a nonprofit that live streams local ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS to computers and most major streaming devices. All you have to do is be in Locast coverage area. It’s a quick way to add local live TV to your Roku or Roku TV. may I use Locast to access 22 local channels. You can easily add to the three dozen channels on your TV depending on where you live. Locast requires you to create a profile to use its service, but it’s free. You should expect to get hit up for a donation while watching because it is a nonprofit.

This one is for people who are sick of paying 150 to 200 bucks a month for cable but still want to watch CNN, Fox News, or ESPN live on a Roku. There are a few dozen live TV streaming providers that provide a vast channel selection to take the place of your cable TV service. But if you’re watching this video, I’m going to assume that you just want the cheapest options out there for watching cable TV channels. For a more comprehensive look at streaming live TV channels, you can check out my other video on the best live TV streaming services. Here are two picks you can consider right now.

**One of the most affordable solutions available for watching live television channels is Sling TV. You may select a basic package with Sling. Sling Orange costs $30 a month and offers a little over 30 channels, including ESPN, AMC, and AAA. Sling Blue, the other main package, contains around 47 channels. Regional NBC sports networks, FX, FS1, and both National Geographic channels are available on Sling Blue. In some locations, the Sling Blue bundle also includes regional Fox and NBC. Sling, however, advises use their service in tandem to a TV antenna.

You should be aware that ESPN is only available on Sling Orange. So you’ll need to combine the Orange and Blue bundles if you want ESPN and NFL Network on Sling Blue. At 45 dollars a month, jointly. With Sling TV, you can now choose between 50 hours of cloud DVR or 10 hours, which will last you through a few TV shows. DVR space for an extra five dollars a month. Sling TV is built on the premise of ranked smaller bundles so budget-minded people have more control over cost and channels are added to their subscription.

Sling offers a lot of add-on bundles for sports, entertainment, and more niche channels such as international sports. I’ll leave a link below so you can peruse the Sling TV channel lineup or sign up for a free 7-day trial. If you’re not a sports fan whatsoever, Philo has 59 live TV channels. Any History Channel, Discovery, HGTV, Travel Channel, Paramount Network, all the Hallmark channels, and it’s $20 a month. There is unlimited cloud DVR and a huge on-demand library of movies and TV shows. In case you missed it, there are no sports and no local channels. It’s the least expensive method to watch Live PD on A&E or The Walking Dead on AMC.

**Here’s a neat hack for activating TV apps on a Roku that no one ever really talks about. If you’re paying for a live TV service such as Philo or Sling TV, you can use your subscription to sign in to a lot of apps that you see on your streaming device. The TV Everywhere applications that each streaming provider supports are listed on their respective help pages. So if you want to sign into the AMC app and you’re subscribed to Philo, just choose Philo as your TV provider instead of Comcast, DIRECTV, or whatever you were subscribing to before. Sometimes these apps are worth signing into, not so much for the on-demand content but because they carry extra live streams of their channels that you won’t get within your live TV subscription.

**So now that I’ve shared with you a few ways to watch live…”

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