Getting Started - Setup & How-to

[Marlifarm]

A couple days ago I perused the Roku pages and discovered there was a way to make taking Roku portable (it advertised a dorm room, etc.).  So I went ahead and ordered the Roku Streaming Stick for my HP Laptop.  I've connected the stick to the port on the side of my laptop, plugged it in for power, but I cannot figure out how to bring it up and then watch it!?!

Can anyone offer advice or describe what I need to do to get this working?  Many thanks!  

[Elbowroomman]

I have a roku account and many roku devises and tvs, can I watch Roku on my lap top

[atc98092]

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@Marlifarm wrote:

A couple days ago I perused the Roku pages and discovered there was a way to make taking Roku portable (it advertised a dorm room, etc.).  So I went ahead and ordered the Roku Streaming Stick for my HP Laptop.  I've connected the stick to the port on the side of my laptop, plugged it in for power, but I cannot figure out how to bring it up and then watch it!?!

Can anyone offer advice or describe what I need to do to get this working?  Many thanks!  

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Your laptop is not a display for external devices. You have to connect the Stick to some sort of TV or other display with HDMI inputs and speakers. The HDMI port on your laptop is an OUTPUT jack, and you risk damage to it and the Roku inserting it there. 

There are rare computers with video in jacks, but I've never seen a laptop with one. Any such computer would be designed for video production work and would not be inexpensive. 

[atc98092]

Can you connect a Roku to your laptop and view it on the laptop screen? No, unless you have a very rare laptop that has a HDMI video input. Almost all computers now have HDMI output jacks, but they don't work as an input for other devices. 

What you can access on your laptop is The Roku Channel. That is available as a web site, and you just use a browser same as any other web page. However, TRC only provides the content that you can get within TRC on a device. That doesn't give you access to any of the other channels you have added to your Roku user account. You can only see them using a Roku device (player or TV).