I wasn't being snarky.

Sorry, I think I came off sounding snippish and shouldn't have. I had more than a few annoyances yesterday, so I'm sure it was seeping out.

Now for my new annoyance -- the wall I want to hang my TV from. It's a plaster or rockwall wall, and it's exterior (the stairs are on the other side) but I swear to dog this wall doesn't have a single stud in it, and I'm left wondering what's holding up the damned building.

Stud finder gives crazy crazy readings, even on deep scan. (It faults frequently, no matter how slow you're moving it, finds electrical conduit in places that make no sense, finds one side of a stud but then reads the entire wall as empty when trying to find the other side....

And tapping on it, the whole damned thing sounds hollow.

I'm half tempted to take a hammer to it, but that would be unproductive.

Anybody got any thoughts?

Does anyone have any opinions on the Chromecast vs. the Roku streaming stick? Our TV needs are pretty dang simple; we don't have cable, and I realized that for what I spent last year buying episodes we missed from iTunes, we might as well just subscribe to Hulu Plus. My laptop is getting too old to reliably stream, and stretching the HDMI cable across the living room is a hazard for our (read: my) clumsy feet.

Our Blu Ray player streams Netflix and other services, but no Hulu. Bummer. So, we're deciding between the Chromecase or the Roku stick. Any opinions, pro/con?

I just got a Chromecast. I detest that it doesn't use a standard remote. I would have gotten a Roku stick but I wanted HBO Go and Comcast still will not allow authentication through a Roku, for no apparent reason but spite. That is basically the only thing the chromecast can do that the a roku can't near as I can tell.

Basically I vote Roku. It has the best app list and best interface by far, and if you like controlling from your phone yiu can do it with the Roku app but you also have the option of a standard remote. Only caveat is if you have Hbo with Com cast and want HBO Go.

Anybody got any thoughts?

Does the studfinder work properly on other walls? If not, try a different studfinder. If so, I got nothin'.

Studfinders work very poorly on plaster walls. Something about how the plaster is put up.

I hate my plaster walls.

Oh! I meant to add, the one thing that has worked (with about a 50% success rate) for me to find a stud in plaster is the magnet-on-a-string method. Suspend a strong magnet from a string and hold it so the magnet is about a 1/2 cm from the wall. Move it up and down and side to side very slowly. If the magnet gets pulled into the wall, then you are over a nail - the nails that hold the lath onto the stud! You should be able to lift the magnet up and down on the same vertical line and find more nails. Attach a screw anywhere on that vertical and you should be good. If you can find two in a row and measure the distance, then you have a reasonable guess for how far apart the studs are and can mark them all the way across and pray.

If you use a very strong magnet, (I use a little rod made of 5-6 strong rare earth magnets), then you can move pretty quickly; even the magnetic pull from a nail 2 inches under plaster will pull a strong magnet solidly into the wall.

I come across enough shows on Hulu Plus that have the "oh so sad we can only stream this on a computer not a device" flag that I'm pretty devoted to the Mac Mini we have plugged into the TV. It's not a cheap option, but it works for everything.

Yeah, I used to be a big HTPC fan for that reason. And that would clearly work for HBO Go too. But every time I've had an HTPC (usually old Macbooks that I ended up selling eventually), I ran into interface issues - I just don't really like controlling TV from a mouse/keyboard if I can help it, and the media desktop apps all seem to be missing features; Plex Desktop is great for local media, and works fine from a remote, but you couldn't really do Netflix on it so I'd have to open the website and go all mouse/keyboard. XBMC is similar.

I plug my computer into the TV if I must, and control it using the Universal Remote mobile app, but for $45 a Roku can't be beat for the things it can do, which is almost everything streaming (and even a lot of local DLNA playback - my old Roku 2 XS handles 1080p MKVs served by my router just fine, and Plex works great on it too). Since the Chromecast can actually cast Chrome tabs wirelessly (and mirror some Android phones, though not my slightly older model), that covers a lot too; I haven't tested it with "no-device" Hulu shows yet, but I should...

Your router is serving media? What kind do you have?

Asus N113u I think? It's one of the high end Asus routers, but without AC support. Came recommended by LifeHacker. Comes with a DLNA server out of the box for attached external hard drives, and you can also easily add your own optware packages; I have a Transmission client as well for downloading torrents. Lots of other options as well.