First of all,why pay Dish or Direct TV between $120 and $200 a month for your home Television watching packages? The Roku is one of the most amazing small gadgets ever invented. The same technology has been in incorporated into most smart TV’s. If you do not have a smart TV, you can order a Roku streaming device for about $25 from Amazon or Walmart. With this device and home internet service you are able to get services like Sling which provides over eighty changes for as little as $60 which includes ESPN, Fox News, CNN, and many of the more popular channels you have been watching on the cable systems and paying through the nose. You need to have good internet service so your TV is not interrupted. I pay less than $50 for a 12bmp internet service and it supports two TV’s, two tablets, and a desktop without interruption. Some of the local channels appear on a smart TV but not all of the ones you might like. The Roku will run Netflix and Prime Video if you subscribe to them.
To get all of the local channels in you area, you will need an outdoor antenna, it does not have to be a big antenna that looks like the aerial for a TV or Radio station. The have them on Amazon for as little as $40 that will get channels within a 50 mile radius. Do not believe it when they say they get channels for 100 to 120 miles. Most low cost antennas will get about forty channels which would include ABC, Fox, NBC, and ABC, Grit, and a lot of other channels. There are usually about five or ten Spanish speaking channels in there, a movie channel, weather channels, mysteries, Court TV, and marketing channels.
Now you have the full range of channels, the network channels, the local channels , and others that you have not heard of until adding the channels with your new antenna. You can order a Roku Streaming Stick which attaches to the back of your TV rather than a standard Roku that attaches to the front of the TV. Some people prefer the streaming stick because it is not visible.
Of course if you want to spend more money on a big antenna that sets on top of your house, you can, but storms and wind make take your antenna down and make it a more expensive way to get local channels.
Our monthly cost for TV aside from the cost of the internet which we had already, is $60 Sling, $12 a month Netflix, and $139 a year Amazon Prime. If you want more sports than Sling initially offers for $10 or $15 for additional package items can be added on Sling. So, if we compute it on a monthly basis $60 Sling, $12 Netflix, $12 Amazon, that would be $84. We were paying $130 a month for basically the same channels to Dish before we made the conversion to Roku and also got a smart TV which has the Roku built in.
Good luck, we have been off Dish for three years now and no regrets.