- Let's talk about hidden gems on your Roku.
I've got a bunch of channels to show you that may
or may not peak your interest.
But more importantly, I'm gonna show you in this video
how you can find your own hidden gems.
So, let's dive in.
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All right, so let's get into some Roku hidden gems.
So, what do I mean by a hidden gem?
Maybe let's talk about that first.
A hidden gem would just be a channel
that you might not think of otherwise.
You know, obviously if I'm looking at my Roku right now,
right up top I've got Netflix, and HBO Max,
and Hulu, YouTube.
These are all apps, channels that yeah, you've heard of,
you know about, you probably have on your own Roku device.
I'm talking about the ones that are a little less obvious.
Now there used to be something on Roku with hidden channels.
Literally, they weren't on the app store.
You had to get a code to download them.
And you could get some interesting results that way,
but Roku did put an end to that a few months ago.
So, we're not talking about those either.
These are simply the apps
that yeah, people aren't necessarily talking about,
but that doesn't mean
that they're not potentially very valuable to you
or entertaining or, you know, time filling,
whatever it is you need out of your Roku apps.
So, in this case, I'm gonna scroll down past a lot of these,
you know, really well known, really popular ones
and get down to the the list that I want to get to today.
Now, as I'm doing that, let me remind you,
I will show you later how I found all these,
where I found all these,
so that you can go hunt down your own hidden gems
and let us know in the comments what you find.
But first let me start here with CNET.
Okay, now CNET may be a channel similar to our own,
so why am I highlighting it?
Well, 'cause it's good stuff, you know?
And why not?
Now there are some caveats that I'll put in there,
as I turn the volume down.
There are some caveats that I'll put in here,
which is that if you're on the CNET app,
in the first couple of categories here,
they've got the latest videos, they've got tech today.
Then you're gonna get in these categories some of the more,
yeah, current things that are going on.
But if you keep scrolling down,
you will get to some categories with out of date videos.
For example, let's see, just Apple.
Okay, so yeah, a lot of Apple heads
out there wanna keep up with the latest news,
but hang on a second.
What's this?
"Top Five Unanswered Questions About Apple TV Plus."
Well, that was like two and a half years ago.
Anyway, so my point being just kind of stick up to the top
with the latest videos, the tech today.
If you want to get some tech news,
then the CNET app is a pretty good way to do that
on a daily basis.
Next up is Now You Know,
and this is gonna fit into a category
with a few of the other apps that we've got here today.
And basically what we have here is,
it's like a YouTube channel turned into a Roku app,
which, you know, is kind of an interesting way to do things.
You may or may not prefer this.
Maybe you just want to go on YouTube and go to that channel.
You can do that on your Roku as well.
But a few of the channels
that we have here today are kind of that sort of idea.
It's like a YouTube channel just lifted
and all the content put in one place.
So, Now You Know is a great example of this.
This is kind of just going
through a lot of different, weird questions.
You know, some science questions, some history stuff,
you know, things of that sort.
Give you five to 10 minute videos on those subjects.
Not bad.
I definitely got sucked into this one.
"What Happened After This Plane's Roof Blew Off
"At 24,000 Feet."
That was pretty interesting.
Hollywood Classics is exactly what it sounds like.
These are old movies, old films
that have hit the public domain,
so anybody can access 'em now.
But now here they are all gathered in one location.
There are a lot of apps along these lines.
I've highlighted one or two before, but I do like this one.
It gives you some pretty good titles here.
Dust is a similar kind of niche network,
and I've highlighted this one a bunch of times.
There's a couple on this list
that I have highlighted before.
Dust, I really, really like.
If you enjoy sci-fi content,
then Dust is right up your alley.
This is really well produced, generally.
Generally really well produced, interesting sci-fi shorts.
They do have some long form content, some full length films.
But over the years, what I've noticed is yeah,
they really concentrate on the short stuff.
So, if you enjoy sci-fi videos,
and you think you might like it in bite size chunks,
like this eight minute video, 11 minutes here,
you know, this is really, really good stuff.
I can't recommend it highly enough if you enjoy sci-fi.
The Lego Channel is one that I will keep highlighting
as long as I can,
just because it's been so valuable in our own house.
I've got a couple of kids, and they love Lego content.
So, when you log into the Lego app,
you can see they've got a lot of different categories
that you can go through,
or you can skip right past that screen
and just get everything here on the home screen.
So, it's got people building Legos, it's got Lego shows,
it's got Lego animation, all sorts of stuff like that.
So, yeah, if your kids love Lego content, here you go.
How about a couple more kid or family friendly apps?
We've got America's Funniest Videos Clips.
There's a couple different versions of this.
You can get the Spanish language version.
You can get the kids version.
You can get the pets version.
But yeah, America's Funniest Videos Clips is
exactly what it sounds like.
You log in here, they'll ask you which version you want,
you know, English or Spanish.
And once you're in there,
yeah, lots and lots of stuff for you to take a look at.
I've watched a bit of AFV now,
and I have yet to run into a commercial, which is nice.
A lot of these things are gonna be commercial supported
because they're free Roku apps,
but not all of them seem to be.
Okay, now we're gonna get into a few channels here
that I wanna highlight, not for the specific channel,
but for the way that you can hunt around for them
and the way that you can find stuff like this.
So, we have one here called Aaron's Animals.
All right, now I clicked on this one just kind of at random.
Like, okay, let's see what they got.
It's kind of animal related skits that this guy does.
You know, again, this is one
of those YouTube channels turned into a Roku channel.
You know, this one obviously is ad supported.
But the point being, yeah, it's a little funny,
it's a little cheesy,
it's, you know, your kids might love it but maybe you don't.
Okay, so what if you don't?
I'm gonna show you how you can get stuff like this.
Okay, so let's go back to our home screen.
And oh, over here on the left,
now I come down to streaming channels.
And once I go to streaming channels,
you'll see if I scroll down just a bit,
there's all these different genres that I can go through.
So, I just went to animals and pets.
Hey, what's in here?
And yeah, there it is.
Aaron's Animals.
There's the America's Funniest Videos Animals, et cetera.
There is so much animal content on Roku, you guys.
It's incredible.
So, if you enjoy animal content,
you can hunt around here for your own hidden gem,
something that you really enjoy.
I'm a StarCraft player,
and that is a picture right out of StarCraft.
So, you know, it kind of grabs my attention, right?
And I love cats, so...
Similarly with these other ones,
okay, so we've got The Crochet Channel and Chess School.
Yeah, we can go in here and take a look at, you know,
what's actually on these channels.
Fine.
But, you know, this is just basically how to with crochet.
This grabbed my attention
because you can't see it right above me,
but I got into cross stitch a few years ago.
I got really into cross stitch,
did a bunch of cross stitching.
And so crocheting, it kind of, you know,
grabbed my attention as, you know,
one of the needle arts, right?
Or there's Chess School.
Okay, so this is basically a guy
who breaks down classic historical chess games
and kind of does chess coaching.
So, if you're really into chess, there's this.
Okay, so maybe you don't really care
about these two channels.
Well, that's okay.
My point here is how I got them or how I found them.
Again, I go to streaming channels,
come down to here to I think it was educational.
And you can find all sorts of stuff there.
You know, obviously you've got Smithsonian Channel,
and Ted Talks, MasterClass, that sort of thing.
But if you keep going down,
this is where you're gonna find a lot of these hidden gems.
You keep scrolling down until you find something
that you are interested in.
If, you know, if you're homeschooling your kids
or if you wanna learn French.
That one definitely grabbed my attention.
Learn the guitar.
You know, you'll see
that a lot of these have pretty low ratings.
And so this is the kind of thing
where you have to hunt through and find,
you know, there's a lot that's hidden,
but what are the gems?
The two that I'm highlighting here
with The Crochet Channel and Chess School,
I'll leave it up to you whether they're gems or not, right?
That's gonna be up to each individual person.
But they're certainly kind of buried in that list,
and you gotta go hunting for them.
So, definitely go hunting and let me know what you find.
But the last one I want to highlight for you is this one,
KIRO 7 Seattle.
This is a local news channel.
You may not have known this,
but there are hundreds of local news stations
that have their own Roku channels, their Roku apps.
And so, you can look around for your own.
You can even search for one.
So, if you have your own local channel
that you wanna look for, you can come in here
and see if they happen to have something.
Let's see if I do my local FOX affiliate, FOX 13.
Memphis.
Yeah.
So yeah, there's one in Memphis.
Okay, that's not mine, but yeah, you can scroll down here.
There's all sorts of, hey, there it is.
FOX 13 News Utah.
Yeah, most of these local channels seem
to have an app like this.
When you go into one of those apps,
it's going to have live feeds, former feeds.
You know, so if you missed the six o'clock news this morning
you can pop in and watch what they aired at six o'clock.
That sort of thing.
Popular clips, all that.
And again, to find that,
I just came over to streaming channels,
went to news and weather.
And yeah, once you're in here,
there's all the kind of the national ones,
the bigger ones, broader ones I should say.
But once you get down here,
yeah, there's a whole bunch of these local stations.
So, there you go.
Some hidden gems.
Hopefully something on that list jumped out
and grabbed your attention,
maybe an app that you could enjoy on your Roku.
But more importantly, I hope you figured out that yeah,
there's a lot of stuff out there.
You just need to go kind of scroll through
and past some of the bigger name stuff
to find those other channels, these hidden channels.
And who knows, maybe you'll find some gems yourself.
So, hit the comments.
Let me know what you find.
Some of the hidden gems that you enjoy,
that you think other Roku viewers would enjoy as well.
On your way down there,
don't forget to give this video a like.
Don't forget to subscribe if you enjoy stuff like this
'cause we do this all the time.
So, thanks for joining me today, everybody,
and I will see you every Friday at 2:00 PM
for the live streams that we do on this channel.
Have fun.
See you there.