Not a surprise for Roku. The company has been getting progressively worse in the last few years and their enshittification is accelerating. Their recent forced download of an update that requires users to agree to arbitration to even use our TVs was intended to ultimately take control of those TVs completely away from the people who own them.
Right now it’s possible to block Roku’s static ads and presumably the autoplaying ones using a local DNS server like Adblock Home or Pihole, but it’s only a matter of time before Roku blocks everything unless we watch the ads they are trying force down our throats. I’m already in the process of obsoleting all 5 of our Roku devices.
It has taken Roku years to build up enough market share to allow this kind of behavior and it will take years for the market to abandon them. Their executives will claim ignorance as to why users are walking away when it finally hits their bottom line.
Im literally willing to ditch the device and cancel all streaming services because of this. When I turn on my TV I don’t want to be forced to consume ads when I haven’t been provided with anything in return.
I just block all ads at the router level. When looking through the most blocked domains I see a lot from Roku.
Im not very computer savvy and currently only have a tablet and a mac mini from 2008.
If you’re not tech savy, how do you row row row your bot???
Gently down the byte stream
How do you do that?
Install ad block if you have a GL.iNet router or pihole
Get an Nvidia Shield Pro and disconnect your TV from the internet.
When was the last time they even refreshed the hardware? Kinda hard to justify a $200 streaming box that runs Google services on 6 year old mobile hardware.
About 10 years old actually. It’s the TI-83 of streaming boxes at this point: an absolute fucking rip-off. Pretty on-brand for Nvidia though.
Yeah it’s got about the same specs as a $30 Amazon tablet and you’d now be relying on the largest ad company in the world (Google) instead of Roku, so it does seem like a total ripoff at $200
Blame the rest of the market for being shit - Shield pro is still the best box on the market for streaming HD video with HD audio.
My tv is dumb. The roku is the device that connects to the internet.
deleted by creator
Does your Apple TV stream Atmos? TrueHD? I don’t think so…
deleted by creator
For years I was a big fan of Roku. It represented a better value alternative from the big corporations pushing their own agenda like Google, Apple, Samsung, and Amazon. They made products that were intuitive and user oriented and carved out a very nice and stable market share for themselves because of it. Now they’re just leveraging their hardware relationships to transform the software into something terrible.
I used to look for tvs with Roku built in. Now I’ve disabled Roku features from my smart TVS and use a separate streaming device.
How did you disable the Roku OS?
I think it depends on the model, but there should be something in the power settings to change the startup device. I did a factory reset first to clear any network settings or user data, skipped the setup, and set it to startup on the HDMI input.
I think the issue is they hit market saturation and haven’t been able to develop any real revenue streams beyond the sale of devices (which is one time cost while maintenance and development constantly drain them of any profit).
I suspect the increased enshitification is because they need other revenue streams. Just take a look at their stock price and it doesn’t paint a great picture for them.
Shit. I got a Roku TV. That’s one big fucking stick to toss.
Shall I introduce you to the folks over at !selfhosted@lemmy.world?
Step 1. Factory reset.
Step 2. Do not allow it to connect to the Internet.
Step 3. Connect a Linux based computer to it and run everything through the computer.
Instructions unclear. TV now controlled by Nicole the fediverse chick.
You can trust her. She’s from Toronto!
You been getting that noise too?
Seems like everyone’s been getting that noise lately. I’m on my third.
This method will not work on all Roku tvs, some Roku TV brands require you to phone home to activate the TV before you can use it for the first time. Which requires you to not only connect to the internet but also log into a Roku account on it. It’s stupid.
That would instantly result in the TV being returned to the store I purchased it from.
I bought a Samsung TV that wouldn’t let me change the input until I connected it to the internet, I returned that crap within the hour.
Eh, I just started connecting cheap ($30 or so) used Apple TVs to mine. I saw the writing on the wall.
Almost downvoted instinctually as a reaction to the headline. Visceral reaction. I hate this beyond belief.
I have a Roku ultra in my kid’s room.
I do not want her subjected to ads when she turns on the TV.
This is unacceptable to me and I will be replacing all my Rokus immediately.
pirate, or you’ll just be doing the same fucking thing again in two years.
good news: pi’s can do everything a roku does, plus any you install of: retro gaming, libreoffice, web browsing, shit tons of educational software, IDE’s, and teaching her computers.
I have a 200+TB library for my Plex and jellyfin instances. The Roku was just a family friendly launcher and remote. I bought them when you could still disable ads in the secret menus and most of the Roku BS is blocked by a pair of piholes, but I’ve gotten annoyed chasing new urls to blacklist.
It’s DRM for the other app bullshit that becomes a hindrance for going the Kodi route. There really isn’t a good alternative that I’ve found. Linux boxes will limit some services to 720p and jt’s mostly baseball and local news programs that I’ll lose.
For the news, I need to look at something like hdhomerun or something else I can pair with an OTA antenna.
For baseball, not much other than the absolute mess that live streaming sports is. Doable, sure. But a pita and sketchy last I looked into it. My season ticket comes with MLB.tv, but the irony is that I’m “in network” so all my teams games are blacked out for me. I had previously created a VPN tunnel and routed one of my Rokus to a different state to watch it. But it’s not a user friendly experience.
For games, I already have a batocera box running on an old dell thin client with way more power than a pi, and it has Kodi on it. But the UI/UX still sucks.
I just got an HDHomeRun that I use with an antenna and love it. I use Mac and they are one of the only boxes that works on Mac.
They don’t have a native Linux client, but you can use VLC supposedly: https://info.hdhomerun.com/info/linux
You can connect your HDHomeRun with Plex too. It’s really a nice setup. Plex can work like a DVR to record live channels and even has some capability to remove commercials. I’ve started letting NFL games be DVR’d and commercials stripped before watching the game. It’s a much better experience if you can tolerate the delay.
I use an Nividia shield that I’ve had for about 5 years. Have an alternate ad free launcher enabled. Still works really well. I use it mostly with Kodi streaming from SMB, some Jellyfin though I have Jellyfin hosted on a Pi4 so video quality is somewhat lacking. The 4k upscaling still works very well and is somewhat unique among streaming boxes
Cabernet with daddylive plugin, this can emulate hdhomerun on your network, add this to plex/Jellyfin for live tv. https://thedaddy/ . to Check the list and see if these 24/7 channel streams work for you.
I integrated these into plex and are able to watch live tv the way I want. Cabernet is a docker container on my network, ensure you set the ip address to the server vs the docker IP, in the Cabernet web ui settings.If you want to just watch streams off that site, I recommend using brave browser, turn on all the ad block capability and set it to strict and even import the hagezi multi pro blocklist in brave. The amount of pop ups on that site is horrible. But brave smooths them out and streams are fairly reliable. Plenty of sports.
mostly seems like you’ve tested stuff and got your shit together.
but the 720p limit is surprising to me. any idea why this happens?
DRM. They don’t like how open Linux can be so to combat people using it for pirating their content the companies restrict it.
For instance, Netflix is capped at 720p on Linux unless you are on Opera, apparently.
oh, you’re not sailing the high seas. got it.
Get to the endgame. Just strap us to a chair and make us watch your crap ads Clockwork Orange style.
But the eyelid things look like they’re really uncomfortable. Any chance you can just hack into our brains and stream advertising consistently while I’m in a coma?
The Matrix ad campaign
this is the worst, next they’re gonna put ads on cars
Have I got horrible news for you
Stellantis is already doing this on new cars in the US. (Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Maserati, FiAT, etc) Soon as you press the brakes and come to a stop ads play on your infotainment system. Have the car in park? Yep more ads.
Bro they already tried charging you monthly sub for unlocking seat heating functionality… if they are not already here, you can bet they are coming.
You know I only ever get more glad that I didn’t learn to drive and went with cycling instead. It started due to not being able to afford it, now I won’t own their shit and I will be happy.
Just wait, they will find a way to make biking just as shitty
How? There are no electronics in the first place.
I’m sure “smart bikes” will come soon
This is why I disconnected my parents Roku tv from the internet last year, when they started to get updates that wouldn’t download, and freeze the whole tv, i said enough is enough
Roku had the best smart tv ui. I was seriously bummed when the ads started rolling in a few years ago.
I want an open source streaming client, but from what I hear DRM gets in the way of that.
I’ve much preferred Google TV for some time now. The recommendations and live free tv options are essentially built into the UI. Although I do use the Roku app as one of my free streaming options lol.
If this happens on my box I’ll be taking them to small claims court and let you all know how it goes…
Just a heads up that you probably “agreed” to binding arbitration…
Looking around Roku’s site, I found this email address: AdsPR@roku.com
I’m planning on giving them a brief but firm “oh hell no” letter. I wonder how many others will do the same 🤔
I emailed them to let them know I cancelled Disney+ and cited this specific ad and advertisement campaign through Roku as to why I cancelled the service.
Let’s make the companies who advertise this way feel pain.
I only ever tried using a Roku so I could stream my PC to my smart TV, but it turns out there’s MASSIVE latency. Of course I returned it. If I had to deal with that AND ADS, I would have set that shit on fire
Steam Link works well if they’re still around.
At the moment I just have an old laptop and connect it to my TV via hdmi and installed Parsec on both devices. It’s a nice, free method.
In the future though I do want to look into getting a mini PC and doing essentially the same thing except it could be an individual device for the most part.
i have 3 just in case one dies
So glad I ditched Roku. My modified Onn box (with an open source, ad-free launcher) is so much better.
I got to know more about your setup. How much was the device and what software are you running?
Sure. The device I use is an Onn streaming a Android TV box. I think I got the 2023 4k streaming version and it was about $20, from Walmart. You can probably get cheaper models, but I wanted one with an Ethernet port.
Then I installed a couple of alternative launchers from the Play store on device. I also loaded F-Droid as well (though I had to do that directly through an apk). I can’t remember which launcher I went with in the end, but it was either FLauncher or Projectivity. They were both good.
The wrinkle here is that the OS defaults back to the default launcher (which has ads and a lot of clutter on it). But I used a free command line tool called adb to switch the default launcher off.
I’ve been very happy with the new setup. My kids (who use it all the time) occasionally complain that an app will crash while they are watching something, and take them back to the home screen/launcher. But I haven’t run into that, and it’s probably just them accidentally hitting a remote (which I know they accidentally do a lot).
I documented the process and posted them here, in another thread a few months ago.
Additional note: The default YouTube app isn’t very conducive to quick profile switching, which can be annoying. To switch profiles you basically have to go back to the OS level and do it there, then go back into the YouTube app. It’s an Android TV quirk. But I discovered that if you side-load the Amazon Fire version of the YouTube app onto the device, you can switch profiles within that version of the app, and it works just fine.
So glad I blocked my TVs access to the Internet at the router level. Never complainrd about not setting up a network if the network doesn’t work.
Why even connect the tv to your local network?
Casting, using your phone for a remote, so the popup for connecting goes away
What a goofy thing to ask. You know exactly why people use smart TVs on the Internet.
I used Netflix on my TV but after the password sharing and other issues I choose to block network access.
Most of my Internet is done on my computer.
When my girlfriend moved in, she had a big TCL Roku TV its software absolutely sucks. But it would keep a blinking led on ALL THE TIME if it wasn’t connected to wifi.
I put it on my iot network, and I’m considering null routing it.
I actually had a Roku box plugged into it since it had a better experience, but I’m probably going to switch that to a Nvidia shield pro because of this ad bullshit.
