I thought it’s always been like this? No?
Back when it was only Roku boxes, I don’t recall any ads at all on the home screen. Then when I got a TV with Roku built in, I recall it also being zero ads. That was like 10 years for the Roku TV where it still had no ads on the homescreen of the RokuOS. Then they added that big right banner ad. It was that for a number of years and then they added a row at the top advertising some streaming apps. Then they started this beta program for the new layout and they jacked up the size of the content advertisement space and pushing your stuff further down where your cursor focus defaults at when starting the TV/Roku. The expanding presense of advertisement icons have been pretty rapid.
Roku used to be have no advertisements. Then they started trying to be a digital storefront for movies/tv and that was just a button on the side list menu. Then they started adding advertisements more and more
Sounds like cable tv. No ads to making as much profit as possible
Yep for like 10 years at least
FYI if you already have a Roku, you can block these with a network level ad blocker like Pihole.
Edit: Here’s a list of common Smart TV domains to block.
I was using NextDNS instead of pihole because I wanted my ad blocking to still work when I’m out and about.
Couldn’t stay on the free tier because I make so many DNS requests. Which seemed weird - it’s just the two of us using the network?
Lo and behold, the fucking forgotten Roku attached to a TV was doing a fresh DNS lookup every 30 seconds to try to call home and send telemetry data. It accounted for like 60% of my DNS traffic!
I use a simple WireGuard VPN to use my home DNS when I’m out. This container from linuxserver.io was really easy to set up, and the WireGuard app works great on iOS/Android. You can even have it automatically turn on and off depending on your network.
I tried fancy mesh networks like Tailscale, but it was over-complicated for my setup and kept causing DNS issues. Some people find this works well for them, though.
Either way, you can go full self-hosted this way and save money.
If you already have a Roku you can probably just stop using a Roku.
I’d rather show people how to de-shittify their existing devices than create more e-waste.
What do you recommend instead for $30-40?
One of the Onn streaming devices from Walmart. Picked one up last month to replace an old Fire Stick, and it’s been great. Runs stock (or close enough to it) GoogleTv and it only cost about $40. Downloaded Projectivy Launcher and set it as my default home app, so no more home screen ads. Will probably end up throwing ReVanced on it, too.
And when Google inevitably pisses me off enough, I can unlock the bootloader and try my hand at flashing a custom ROM without any Google Play services.
Yeah like the other guy said. One of the ONN devices with Projectivity Launcher to get rid of ads and organize your apps in a sane manner.
They have been slowing ramping up the enshitification over the last year. It time to add some more features to my Kodi install!
to its smart TV
I don’t feel pity for anyone who bought one of these. You knew what you were purchasing.
I see this as a warning not a call for pity.
ditto.
I have the Projectivity launcher on my Bravia; greatest thing I’ve ever done to my TV. But it’s still a Google TV first, and I doubt they’ll allow launchers for much longer. I feel like my time is limited with the setup I enjoy; and seeing ads get more invasive elsewhere paired with clamping down on VPNs, it just makes me think it’s just gonna get worse
Perhaps the next YV might need to be a hospital or commercial display.
They have ads on the home screen on their streaming boxes too. Maybe not as bad as their TVs, but definitely bad enough. Roku has getting steadily worse for quite a while, but their products have really gone to shit over the last several years.
For those looking for an alternative solution, one option is to buy a cheap Onn streaming box (which runs Google TV), and then side-load an open source launcher onto it. No more ads, but still a nice user experience.
The only wrinkle is that you’ll need to use Adb and hook it into your PC one time and use some terminal commands to get the new launcher to stick around after device restarted. But it’s not too bad.
Google tv is terrible too. Better off buying an apple stream box imo.
<laughs in pihole>
does the UI just render blank squares in that case?
I’ve done this on VIDAA (Hisense) and there’s a placeholder for the homescreen ads that just say “VIDAA”.
I think it hides the big ad area if it can’t get the data, but I haven’t used my Roku outside of the setup in so long I don’t know what the UI would look like.
On my parent’s it doesnt render anything at all. Just shows the wallpaper.
In some cases. There is a blank square on the main menu. The idle screen also normally had an ad. The idle screen looks like a scrolling cartoon panoramic shot of a street, and the ad is a billboard on the side of the street. That billboard simply isn’t there at all if the ad is blocked.
Yes. It’s obnoxious.
I use adguard on my opnsense with several lists… one of them snags it by default. the big blank border of a square is still lame.
This is technically correct, but it’s not new. They’ve had this ad for years.
looks like they shrunk the menu to icons in order to make room for the ad on the same view, not just when you arrow over to the app icons.
Yea I’ve been ignoring that forever. I jsut go to my Jellyfin app at square 1
Mine doesn’t. Because I set it up with no Internet connection, so it’s just a dumb tv now.
It’s why I’ll switch after mine stops working. Terrible UI now.
Roku had the best ui a few years ago, everything i dont contol is just shit now.
Fast and responsive UI, easy for older people to use. Too bad it is getting worse but I still find it more usable than Google TV.
I really really wish general society had brains.
I’m not preaching anything new here, that people who know what a fediverse wouldn’t already know.
That being said, never buy roku anything. This isn’t new. It seems every 3-6 months I read a new headline where roku shits all over their customers.
And I know I know this. And I know you know this. However I also know we collectively are like 3% of society. Walk into any target or walmart or best buy, and you’ll see walls and walls of tv’s. And 90% of them say they have roku built into the menu. Well, WE know not to buy that tv. However, everybody else still buys it, and then complains 2 years later when their tv is bogged down and slow and they need a new tv.
I really wish it were legal to stand in these stores, and anytime someone tries to buy a roku, or roku tv, I could just beat the shit out of them with a tire iron. In my mind that seems like a perfectly justifiable response. But apperently thats “assult” and I would be “deranged” and “psychotic to even think that was ok”.
Pssshhhh…
The TV’s have been problematic, but the devices them selves have been basically cheap and works. With LESS nonsense than the alternatives in that category: firesticks and google devices.
On the other hand, with a Roku you are limited to no vpn, and rare apps you might want (the exception being the nice youtube ad blocker).
Nice YouTube ad blocker on Roku? Please share
Playlet. An invidious front end, it’s in the roku apps.
They are still being enshitiffied… Literally everything is
Mine doesn’t look anything like that. You can turn off those recommendations and set the icons to large.
The ad will be over on the right, but I never even notice it.
And you can still block it if you want with a dns rule.
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Buy one or more NVIDIA Shield Pro 2019 editions for whatever TV (completely disconnected from the internet) you like watching things on.
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Replace the built-in NVIDIA / Google Launcher with a custom one like WOLF or FLauncher completely free of ads.
There are completely ad-free wonderful little alternatives to every ever-enshittifying service out there…
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YouTube- > SmartTube Next -
Subscription Streaming Services- > Plex (or Jellyfin if you’re just doing local and no special devices that need transcoding) -
Twitch-> S0undTV
- Combine that with a NAS of your choice and (optionally) a few pieces of free software setup through a containerized deployment system like docker by following the guidance of Dr. Frankenstein along with an account with Mullvad.
…Any other steps there may or may not be are for you to figure out on your own.
I dont have ads on my Nvidia shield but I never updated it either.
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My pihole blocks Roku ads quite handily.
I ordered the original one, before it was ad subsidized, and they pushed an “updating” adding them to the ad-free device I paid many times the current price for.
After that I considered them a total loss.
I bought an android box specifically because of the obvious enshittification coming from Roku. Default Android TV sucks. Not as bad as Samsungs but still sucks. Projectivity launcher and others good. Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, LG - all leave you at the mercy of these companies wanting to leech all they can from you
