Roku has patented a way to ensure I will never own one of their devices, and I’ll do my best to ensure no family or friends do either.
I e already begun. At least 5 people around me will never buy Roku again. Fortunately, they’re tech smart, so it was easy to explain and didn’t actually require convincing.
I replaced all of mine with Nvidia shield and Walmart onn streaming pucks. It’s a better experience in every way (once projectivy is installed) and costs less too.
No Roku products. Gotcha.
Roku was such an easy recommendation for a long time… Non-complex UI, long support for updates, not owned by google or amazon… Far cheaper than LG and Samsung… (Not that Samsung’s UI is anywhere near as easy as roku)
But now I guess thats done. Unless an alternate firmware exists or this doesn’t hit older TVs I guess I’ll be looking for a new TV… Which is a shame because my current 4 year old roku TV is more than capable.
Just disconnect your TV ftom the internet right now
Right, and then not watch YouTube or Netflix or anything on my… TV… Good plan!
I’ve had my Roku disconnected from the Internet for a while now. I used to use an Amazon Fire stick, and currently use a Google chromecast
If only there was a way to provide a video stream to the TV without the internet! We’d be saved!
You know, this a good thing. Now nobody else can do it, so I just need to never buy a Roku.
Remember when Netflix started showing ads on a paid plan, and everybody was saying they’ll quit.
“Haha! Look how Netflix will be thrown into the hole with Blockbuster, so nobody will follow.”
So, where are we today? Everybody starts doing it, and Netflix is better than it was then.
Yeah, you’ll have to forgive me for not being so sure Roku will eat too much shit over this, and that more companies will not follow.
I see Samsung’s boner from here.
I fully do not expect Roku to face any consequences except more sales, sadly.
I think it’s because people (some) are all talk. We bitch about corporate greed and stuff like this, but when it comes down to it, when you need a new electronic device and one’s half the cost, which one do people buy?
The one with ads and that’s made by slave wage third world workers, or the one that’s twice as expensive?
As a whole, we tend to be garbage and materialistic…
I won’t be buying Roku either.
Yes, that’s what I’ve learned.
Everything is just about lowest cost and least effort.
Like Twitter, nobody I knew left, despite it being free to do so. Same for Facebook, Reddit, WhatsApp, etc. Each scandal nobody seems to do anything.
I expected people to so watching ad supported Netflix, but it has seen huge growth and is their highest profit source.
I’m disappointed because I know I’m going to get ads everywhere no matter what now, and it’s on every electronic device, which need “secure boot” and whatever else so you can’t circumvent the ads. .
As a whole, we tend to be garbage and materialistic…
This might be one way to see it. I think a lot of people WANT to resist, but resistance costs a lot of mental and sometimes tangible energy. If you can smooth out a lifestyle that naturally excludes stupid brands like Roku, great.
But there’s a point when you want to participate in the rest of society, and people will break down for that. I do my best to avoid walmart, amazon, and other abusive tech companies, and educate others to do the same.
But someone still gifted my mom-in-law one of those stupid “alexa” spheres that I immediately put on its own V-LAN, and the family wanted a TV so they brought home a TCL/Roku because it’s what they could afford. (It was a good value at the time, years ago.) PiHole showed me exactly why it was so cheap.
Companies know after all the stresses you already encounter in your adult life, you’re gonna run out of bandwidth and cave eventually, because you’re human, and the path of least resistance becomes more tantalizing. That’s why they bombard you relentlessly, and evil tech is the most immediately accessible and familiar.
Agreed.
Others won’t follow because patents.
Patents can be licensed …
How many game developers licenced mini games during loading screen patent?
I remember the first time I learned about patent licensing….
☹️
Roku just invented a way for me to never ever give them any of my money.
This is like really horrific but if I’m being honest, it’s not going to happen. I think LG did a patent where you had to shout the brand being displayed on ads to skip an ad— and they never did that. This is probably a good thing so that other companies can’t use it for a few hundred years
There’s a big difference though. Making people yell is not the same as an ad being shown similar to a screen saver. Hard to believe but most people will just not care and those who do won’t care enough to do much about it. There’s a reason ads have become to main stream and normal they’re yielding results the companies want.
A great example of how the mass majority of people not caring is look at the reaction to password sharing. Sure many people made a stink yet every single on of the platforms saw growth.
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It was Sony, which really surprised me. This definitely sounds like an LG thing.
So, any recs. on good dumb tvs?
I’m upgrading to a projector soon, but also would love a few screens with actual buttons on the device incase of the inevitable remote loss.
I’m personally thinking of just plugging a decently capable little media PC into the display, using KDE’s “big screen” interface with KDE Connect as a remote. I’m pretty sure I could train my family on that…
Roku is so scummy.
This is my thought:
Good enough laptops are about $200, and Linux is free.
Then there are fairly good projectors for like $80 or less that have hdmi, av, rgb, etc. with an led bulb.
So, grand total about $300 for a massive screen and zero ads.
Then there are fairly good projectors for like $80 or less
Um. You and I have a very different idea of “fairly good”. The only good projector I’ve used (at work, not my own) cost $12,000. It’s overkill for a home theatre, but not by a wide margin.
If you want a projector as bright as a TV you could buy for 20 bucks at a goodwill store, you need to spend quite a bit of money on it… especially if you also want decent black levels and of course significantly larger than a cheap LCD (otherwise why get a projector).
You also forgot sound. Good speakers aren’t cheap either. And you definitely don’t want the sound coming from the projector itself. Or from your laptop speakers.
Unless you’re trying to achieve 4K on a projector, you definitely don’t need a $12k model.
Similarly, sound is dependent on the user. I’ve used many projectors that had decent speakers. Yes, speakers can be expensive, but not outlandish unless you’re going for an audiophile set, but then you’re going to drop money either way because most TVs don’t have movie theatre level speakers.
I’m just interested in having a big enough picture without paying a fortune or having unskippable ads while I play Horizon: Forbidden West.
An $80 projector works just fine for me.
I’m not trying to build a theatre or anything here.
“dumb TV” is really just a commercial display. Usually the image isn’t as good as a consumer display unless you really want to spend some money. For a decent display that won’t wreck your bank account take a look at NEC displays. I have some in the field that are over 10 years old and used daily. Some even have compute modules you can add if you want your PC built into the display.
All I found in a cursory search were commercial displays. But I’ll keep looking.
I’ve got a 30"? VISIO that’s over 13 years old and doing just fine. I’d love to get another something of that quality; planned obsolescence sucks.
Haven’t bought a TV in 12 years, out of curiosity - if you’re not using the smart features of the TV would not connecting it to the network not be the best solution?
For my current use, (mostly screen sharing) I think it has to be connected.
Also, I think most smart tvs require regular updates or they “won’t work”.
It’s worth a shot though, I’ll have to look into it.
Roku is really just trying to sabotage their reputation at this point, it seems.
This is burying the lead. It’s not just about showing ads. It is tracking everything you on your TV, whether or not it a roku service
Lmao they already do that. That’s not new. They’ve been snooping on your signals for a while. My parent’s TV sometimes shows a pop-up after watching certain things on antenna/satellite
Wtf that’s got to be illegal??
I’m really hoping they patent this and lock it away so no one can do it…
I ain’t holding my breath though
Isn’t there a Black Mirror episode of this
1 step closer to “Drink Verification Can” becoming a reality
So they break HDMI compliance in other words.
I wonder if it can be detected by the streaming apps. Some of them are really anal about ensuring you can’t record or whatever, and don’t work if it doesn’t get all the HDMI security stuff just right. I’ve had issues with bad cables and my portable projector(Anker) has to side load an alt version of Netflix because they couldn’t/wouldn’t get the device to pass Netflix “certification”.
I’m guessing this means new partnerships and money changing hands, or nobody on a Roku can watch Netflix anymore, or they put these ads at a higher level that bypasses whatever security/DRM Netflix uses. Probably the last one, but if Netflix thinks they will lost money to this they’ll probably just pull their certification anyway.
I wonder if it can be detected by the streaming apps. Some of them are really anal about ensuring you can’t record or whatever, and don’t work if it doesn’t get all the HDMI security stuff just right.
If I’m understanding what Roku has done, this has nothing to do with HDMI (HDCP) security. Roku is inserting the ads after the signals has left the HDMI subsystem, and before an image is displayed on the screen. They can do this because the Roku is inside the TV.
How about no?
I am on board for this.
Patent it and no one else can do it.
Then if you do get or have a Roku TV, just don’t add the wifi to your TV. (I know this won’t work for the sticks, but for the cheap TV, just don’t add that to the wifi)
I know that defeats the point of a smart TV but its a lot cheaper than other screens.
Companies can use it without much trouble. They just need to licence it
True. Good point.
I was thinking more along the lines that most companies won’t license something unless they absolutely have to. I should have said not ALL the other company’s will do it.
