Own a Roku TV or streaming device? You're about to see a lot more ads on your home screen
Own a Roku TV or streaming device? You're about to see a lot more ads on your home screen
…and it’s not just entertainment ads either
Ugh. Roku was one of the platforms with fewer ads.
- Roku will be adding more ads to the home screens of its devices and TVs in the near future.
- The ads will be interactive and 'shoppable' and will cover a range of industries, including restaurants and cars.
- Roku already has a significant amount of ads on its home screen, and it is unclear if users will be able to change their preferences for the new ads.
After all the issues with software updates, ads, and just overall terrible experience of TV operating systems and those little media boxes, I just finally accepted that my life is better using my TV as a dumb screen that's connected to a PC and then using Steam Big Picture for games and Jellyfin for media.
Step one.
Buy a thing. It is a good thing.
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Oops, now it only works if you pay monthly. Ok maybe they're doing some upkeep.
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Now there's ads. You're paying them money, but they want even more so now you're the product.
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Haha it broke! My family tech guy says it's literally impossible to fix without the cheat codes.
Final step. Don't buy the thing again. Don't buy anything with "terms may be altered. Pray I do not alter them further." Probably stick to open source.
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I just recently started using my Samsung TVs as dumb screens because they're slow as shit, but a nice side effect is zero ads.
ONN 4k streaming box for $20 at Walmart.
Install a custom launcher.
Install a button remapper for the remote.
Install SmartTubeNext for YouTube (no ads, SponsorBlock).
Install whatever other apps you need (Plex, etc).FAR better experience. Turn the TV on and it's ready to go in a few seconds, not the ~60-90 seconds it takes the Tizen nonsense to "warm up."
It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better. Can recommend, especially for only $20.
Google is already doing this with their default Android TV launcher. I tolerated their home screen 'recommendations' for a while as they occasionally highlighted something interesting to watch, but one day I switched on the TV and was greeted with a huge advert banner for a fucking watch on the home screen.
At that point I spent a few hours setting up FLauncher on all my ATV devices.
Enshittification strikes again!
Well time to replace my roku TV with a Goodwill special TV because fuck that shit. Fuck smart tvs in general and what they have become. They used to be neat little editions added on for value on your TV back when Netflix made sense. But now they don't especially with the ads that automatically get shoved into your face depending on what you are doing that have started to interrupt your viewing experience. It's not like I'll be downgrading at all when just using a computer with a TV using Stremio and AllDebrid.
They've gotten great at this war of attrition. They know if they make changes incrementally people wouldn't accept all at once then most people won't notice or care. That's why I through that trash and two firesshits out in the garbage where they belonged when they started with "related" ads and app store ads.
So you go from owning a multi media entertainment system to owning a online store front where you must buy crap that you don't need.
This is bait and switch level bullshit
Pi-Hole/AdGuard works to stop these ads, never even have to see them.
For anybody who has one, here's a dns block list specifically for Roku: https://github.com/asimcard/roku-ad-list
my streaming device is a 4th gen Intel i5 computer with Kodi.
I don't think I'll see more ads in the future 😆
I know a lot of people here reeeeeaaaaalllly hate apple, but, having used many different streaming boxes over the years, I’ve never had a better experience than with my Apple TVs. I have a Gen 4 (Apple TV HD) and a Gen 5 (Apple TV 4K first generation), and they both have worked flawlessly and trouble-free since they day I bought them many years ago. I primarily use them for the Plex app (there are very nice Jellyfin, Kodi, and Emby apps too, chill), and sometimes for some other stuff, all of which they do very well, even the older one, and even still after all these years. tvOS updates have, historically, been pretty essentialist— that being, slim and performant. Old Apple TVs still run great.
YES, for those who don’t like Apple and/or who aren’t totally into the who Apple ecosystem, one won’t get all of the benefits (yet will still get about 90% of them) and one might see friction with some of Apple’s “way of doing things” — especially that fucking annoying remote of theirs - but, all things considered, it does what it does extremely well, and it’s far better and more powerful than its competition IMO (for which you do pay a premium I feel is well worth it). and it is especially good at both protecting your privacy (compared to its competitors) and keeping ads far, far away (except when individual apps insert them, i.e. Hulu or Netflix with ads).
I have had Rokus in several TVs I’ve owned, and… yeah, they were, technically, the closest to the great functionality I came to expect rom my ATVs, but, still, nowhere close. On top of that, my Rokus all wanted all my data and sleazily blasted me ads while making it nearly impossible to disable the ability to disconnect my wifi, disable ads or tracking, etc. The whole device/os seemed designed for data mining first, and showing me media second. ew. the only upside was that the Roku Plex app has one or two interesting UX and UI features the tvOS app didn’t due to some weird programming quirks in SwiftUI and tvOS limitations that didn’t exist in whatever development framework that Roku uses.
looks fucking stupid
My Roku TV is basically unusable at this point. Opening Netflix takes about 10 minutes to get to the main menu. Then launching the video is like rolling a D12. Except it lands on a 1 every time and crashes. It also restarts randomly for “updates” in the middle of watching something. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it!
PiHole takes care of that.
They've already been adding them to mine. My home screen inputs got smashed into one (because I don't use any of the home screen apps, I only use the two HDMI inputs) so they could jam a bigger ad on the right, and then make suggested things some of the options. Like the last month or so it's been wanting me to watch super girl or Wonder woman or some dumb shit.
My other personal favorite thing they do is that they load slowly so sometimes I'll go to select an input and the cursor will jump to the wrong place because an ad loaded. Fun!
Anyone ever read the short story "Sales pitch" by Philip K. Dick?
What would one recommend as more of a custom build version of these with a way to connect a convenient remote (smartphone or otherwise)? Alternatively is there a way to sort of jailbreak many of them, or does that just become more cumbersome?
I guess I get to ad more devices to my pfsense Adblock rule
I only use my Roku streaming stick for Youtube and Plex. Should be easy enough to replace with a mini-PC or equivalent, if it really becomes bad enough.
As I have found trying to see if I can sideload or jailbreak or otherwise hack the software of my Samsung TV, I have found plenty of ways to totally disable ads on a Roku or Android TV or anything that runs on Android in general (Chromecast, and firestick also IIRC). Too bad I don't have one of those... 😩
For the approximately 1 second a day I look at the Roku home screen?
