Roku is no longer a neutral platform after today’s Roku OS 9.1 update | Hacker News Reader

Roku is no longer a neutral platform after today’s Roku OS 9.1 update

techcrunch.com

106 pointse1ven73 comments

Wow. TechCrunch is hijacking the back button on mobile in a really bad way. After opening the link I see 5+ entries in my browser history, meaning I have to use the back button really a lot to go back to HN!

What a great way to make me feel I shouldn’t have agreed to the the Oath screen ...

And when you scroll down to the end of the page you will be redirected to some other page and you cannot scroll up back to origin.

What is wrong with you web developers? Have you ever used a mouse-wheel before??

I have no clue why so many sites break the scroll wheel, break the back button, break default functionality that you'd otherwise get for free.

I've successfully pushed back against requirements to do this, and I've unsuccessfully pushed back. I've tried to not do this kind of thing in my own work whenever possible. Usually it's very easy to do so, because it's the default behavior that you get for free.

It a/b tests well for some metric they love

Yes, being forced to hit back button 5 times equals 4 additonal page views :)

Even more if those are auto forwarding you faster than you can hit it

Most computer users are not terribly computer literate. A friend who I'd consider pretty tech savvy (can build his own PC's) just discovered clicking in the mouse wheel opens a new page.

Web Developers know most people wont be affected if they break some functions.

I'm seeing more and more sites with infinite scroll, and I hate it every time, but I haven't seen one yet where you cant scroll back up.

It feels incredible distracting when another article appears out of nowhere when you have just finished reading one.

The URL changing on scroll is really confusing. I've often tried to link a techcrunch article, only to realize I linked the wrong one...

Incidentally javascript is completely unnecessary to read the article: https://0x0.st/zZIt.png

I strongly recommend blocking all javascript, including first party javascript, by default. You'll probably be surprised how many websites won't require you to whitelist anything.

I hate TC in this regard, so much so that I don't read it anymore and I'm afraid to click their links. If you scroll too much, the page you were reading disappears, you see completely different content. The back button doesn't work. Overall it's really confusing and gives me anxiety because I don't know if what I'm reading is what I came here for.

I use those GDRP screens for a little moment of mindfulness now to consider, whether I really want to read the article behind it. The answer has turned out to be almost always no and I don’t think I’ve missed much.

I have to use it twice. That's still pretty bad.

I use kindle to read HN, except for JS stuff (voting) everything works & so does 90% of linked articles.

Article Mode on Kindle makes the reading experience pleasant, but doesn't work for sites like Techcrunch using nasty Javascripts.

Press and hold

It's not just mobile.

I just bought a Roku for my elderly in-laws; I was expecting the experience to be awful but instead it was very nearly everything I could hope for from an embedded device. If these changes mean they get pointed to free content first (above what the thing already did!) I'm going to have to say this is a good change.

They're going to be watching live TV on Sling for the most part. We're going to add on an AirTV so they can get PBS in the Sling interface as well. They already watch Netflix on their Vizio TV, and hopefully we can get them to turn off the TV's internet connection with the Rokus.

Now that all TVs are "smart" the ones with built-in Roku are just about the only ones I find tolerable. Pretty fast booting, especially from "sleep", compared to the rest, and the interface isn't garbage. The remotes are pleasantly simple and normal. You can use your phone as a remote if you lose it. You can "upgrade" older TVs to have the same interface with one of their cheaper stick products. Pretty nice. Like the poor (frugal) person's Apple TV, and not as big a compromise in experience as one might think. I kinda like them better, in fact.

I sold my Apple TV and replaced it with a Roku Premiere +. I found the Apple TV to be a usability nightmare.

Roku’s interface is slow and ad ridden compared to the Apple TV.

I have three Roku TVs and like them. But, I have two ATV 4Ks (free because of the DirecTVNow promotion) - one attached to our main TV.

But Roku is the only non-Apple tv platform that I can stand.

Get a pi hole. Totally eliminates the ad problem.

I have not found my Roku's interface to be any slower than the Apple TV it replaced.

I posted this to another reply, but the CEO of Roku basically said that they purposefully use very low end hardware to keep the build of materials cost down - especially for TV manufacturers. I don’t have a text link, but he said it during an interview on the Recode podcast. https://www.recode.net/2018/9/13/17852908/roku-anthony-wood-...

Get them to join PBS Passport, as well! (:

https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/12000012972-...

Disclaimer: I work for a PBS member station.

Yep, they're going to do that too, but they want the antenna because they're mostly set in their ways and want to watch live TV. Netflix was a huge step forward for them.

Any chance for an Xbox one app by PBS? Paying member of passport but this would really increase my watching. It's weird that there is a pbs kids app but not the full pbs app on Xbox one.

Unfortunately I don’t have any deep insight on big PBS’s plans in that respect. I do know some major changes are coming to their OTT apps, but PBS has been tight lipped about it.

KIDS is funny, they are basically a (well staffed) separate entity and often test the waters of new/potential technologies for the whole org.

Fun fact: pbskids.org is a static site! I can’t remember what generator they use, but apparently the codebase is a bit of a beast with all the interactive games.

I can say that any sort of auto play previews are immensely annoying. I watch more Prime than Netflix now, and that autoplay preview is high on the list of why.

Free content is similarly irrating because it's loaded with commercials that you can't even fast forward through.

If you use Firefox, the "Netflix Tweaks" plugin is quite nice and stops the autoplay.

I think they're referring to Roku. The Roku Netflix app is notorious for its aggressive autoplay. Like, you are browsing the list of episodes for some show, and they will autoplay whichever one is currently highlighted in the list, even as you move selection around. It's infuriating.

I bought my dad a Roku TV. He hates the login process and it seems to randomly sign him out from his cable provider.

Every time I go home I have to re sign him in.

While I don’t have to do that with Netflix, the discoversbilty of any videos that aren’t recommended is awful.

I have kind of enjoyed Roku, but I've wished to install adblock on it, and perhaps an alternative Netflix interface that doesn't have any kind of autoplay.

Is this currently possible? Someone must have already figured out how to truly own their own device, haven't they?

<< adblock >>

PiHole works well for this: https://pi-hole.net

This is on my PiHole blacklist:

austin.logs.roku.com

captive.roku.com

scribe.logs.roku.com

(^|\.)logs\.roku\.com$

(^|\.)sw\.roku\.com$

Thanks for this!

The only way to stop Netflix's insane autoplay feature is to stop subscribing to Netflix.

Not sure if it's me, but it seems like just about every UI- and service-change that Netflix has made in recent years seems intended to make me unsubscribe.

It's designed to improve 'interaction'... ie, glue you to the screen.

It isn't (only) you. I unsubbed from Netflix due to intolerable UI, Autoplay, and rapidly shrinking catalog.

It's configurable in the web version. More of a TV-with-closed-software problem.

Autoplay clips/preview not the autoplay of next episodes that can be controlled by the website settings.

No. Previews can not be disabled and I have disabled "next episode"-autoplay for my user profile.

It'd be too weird if this was the other way around for a non-Dutch public, so I will assume you made an error formulating that sentence.

Serious question: why does everyone seem to strongly hate the auto-play feature? I kind of like it. Ditto for YouTube.

For YouTube, a number of reasons:

1) The recommendation algorithm provides entirely negative value for my use case:

1a) I have a very small set of videos I regularly enjoy watching, from a select group of channels. Recommendations tend to direct towards videos I have no interest in at best, or, more frequently, are actively irritating.

1b) In the rare case the algorithm happens on a video I might enjoy, it is almost always something I have already watched. I don't know if it entirely fails to take view history into account while recommending or if it's simply a matter of my small target interests, but either way, I do not remember the last time I intentionally followed a recommendation.

2) I often leave a video on either in the background or on a second monitor. When enabled, YouTube autoplays regardless of if the window is focused, meaning the obnoxious recommendations break my workflow by forcing me to locate and stop the video.

3) YouTube fails to normalize audio. Therefore videos autoplayed after a quiet video have the tendency to blast out my eardrums.

I also find autoplay a rather exploitative way of increasing viewer retention in general - it abuses the psyche and addictive nature of the internet for the sake of profits.

I can't speak for others but I totally don't mind auto play video on Netflix, I mind the auto play sound that comes with it. I don't want to listen to the audio for something I haven't selected in the first place but the fact that the selected clips tend to be loud makes it worse. When I'm in a group, it gets much worse: we often want to stop and discuss items as we scroll through and/or not start playback immediately when we select something. The auto play sound severely interferes with either of these normal social behaviors.

Edit: I just realized you probably meant next-episode auto play. I'm actually fine with that on Netflix, hate it on YouTube. The reason being that YouTube chooses stuff I don't want to watch fairly often while Netflix just continues a series I usually do want to watch.

Everyone? Do you have a single fact to back that up...

Look into PiHole. That is what I have, some ads still get through, but for the most part, ads are blocked across the network.

Just for the Roku itself or are ads in "channels" blocked as well?

I only rarely watch anything on TV but the girlfriend complains quite a bit about all of the (often repetitive) ads on Hulu -- and I'm pretty sure we even pay for it.

Deploying Pi-Hole has been on my to-do list for a while but if it can block ads on Hulu I'd move it up to the top of the list!

Hulu is a mixed bag, that's not going to stop with Pi-Hole.

If you're using the "live tv" on versions of the app that support it, you will see ads, you may see replacement ads on "recorded" tv as well, which are often replaced in blocks by hulu's injected ads. Some can be skipped, others can not.

If you have "live tv" you may lose access to those shows you would have access to for the regular streaming, still available on platforms not supported by the current apps with live tv (android tv in particular).

If you have streaming only, there are two tiers for that as well. The lower tier has ads. The higher "ad free" tier still has some (fewer) ads on some networks.

Hulu also has third party network options and "value add" options, which is annoying as well.

I mention all of this, because my GF is a reality tv junkie and the only reason I even have Hulu + TV at all... I've gone back to my seedbox, nas and kodi.

>I've gone back to my seedbox, nas and kodi.

I use a good digital tuner (HDHomeRun) hooked up to my rusty old 1950's rooftop antenna usually using KODI as front end, it's awesome and satisfies my live TV need which is very minimal. I couple that with real-debrid which offers plentiful and reliable supply of cached 4K (actually high bit rate) torrents and it's a much better experience than any of the alternative, crappy, ad-laiden streaming services I've paid for. Once KODI has seamlessly integrated voice control it will be in a league of it's own. I'm not sure how services like real-debrid can work out such great licensing terms to allow their offer of such affordable, ad-free and limitless content catalogs but I assume it's a very technical, economy-of- built-for-scale redundant kubermnetes based on-demand cloud container architecture benifit that wouldn't interest me anyways so I'm not even gonna try and understand it ;-)

I've looked into real debrid but got more complicated than I had time for the couple times I looked. I should probably check again.

A couple of tips if you try again: I don't understand the real-debrid "points" system and didn't really care to disect it, just payed for premium service directly through their website and that's been sufficient.

Multiple devices are allowed but it's IP siloed and if connecting from multiple IP's simultaneously, cannot confirm but redditors report that will get your account banned rather promptly although obvious workarounds like a VPN etc exist, never tried.

There's been a lot of work done that add new interface, host/account/stream handeling features to various addons recently. Just tried a recent version of 'Gaia' and was pleasently surprised.

Most newer addons use URLResolver for a central config source and include links from their interface to do the device authorization for rd.

I prefer speed and simplicity so I disable every host/provider except rd and set max sources to single digits.

Content discovery is relatively non existent using most addons (a perk IMO, there's no shortage of places to discover content without inserting an ad server into the TV's interface)

Flashing LibreELEC on to cheap ARM (android TV Boxes) devices makes for a cheap, stable, simple client device.

A Fire Stick/TV or similar might allow for easy voice search but I'm too stubborn in my love of FOSS (I secretly enjoy configuration nightmares) to try it ;-)

There's a plethora of similar premium hosts and services (using rd and premiumize is a popular suggestion) but rd is enough for our needs so far.

Look on the 'Addons4Kodi' subreddit to see what the kids are using nowadays

> the girlfriend complains quite a bit about all of the (often repetitive) ads on Hulu -- and I'm pretty sure we even pay for it.

Hulu Plus has two offerings, an ad supported one for $5.99/mo, and an ad-free one for $11.99/mo. I subscribe to the ad-free one, and if you watch more than a couple hours of Hulu a month I think it's worth it (but I can't stand watching commercials, so maybe other people find then less onerous).

I pay for the ad-free, live-streaming Hulu and there's still ads. My movie was interrupted with an ad for an erectile dysfunction pill, drove me crazy.

Maybe there's a bug in the live streaming setup that Hulu offers then? I just pay for ad-free Hulu, and I haven't seen an ad from them since a week after they announced that plan (I didn't head about it immediately, but I upgraded as soon as I did). I've watched in a browser, the on the Roku, and on an Amazon Fire TV.

The more expensive Hulu subscription is not 100% ad-free, some of their content contracts don't permit them to show the content ad-free.

Everything, including apps. Although, recently YouTube has been bad for me. Earlier i would almost never see ads on YouTube. I just pay Hulu more, so I've not tested that.

I just broke down to pay the $x/month for ad-free youtube. I watch a lot of streams with regular updates (Tim Pool, Keto Connect, etc). I get far more value from YouTube than I do from Hulu... that's just me though.

I gave up on most internet radio stations - not because they run ads, but they often only have one ad, which they run over and over and over and over ... It drives one mad.

I'm not sure about an alternative UI, but for ad-blocking could you use Pi-hole?

I think TC is overreacting and being sensationalistic here. We should treasure Roku especially today when every platform is blocking every other platform, they are place of sanity.

At least I do.

Especially when all the new "exclusive" to the Roku Channel features are either actually already available for other channels to take advantage of or will be shortly.

I pretty much ignore the Roku search as it has too much PPV content. If I care about what's on the Roku channel I'll just navigate to it.

What they really need to do is get rid of the high friction signup process for new channels. Why should I have to go to an external website when Roku should have all the identifying information third parties would need?

> What they really need to do is get rid of the high friction signup process for new channels. Why should I have to go to an external website when Roku should have all the identifying information third parties would need?

Are you referring to the friction of inputting the code on the service provider's website? If so, I think that is a much better solution than having to input the password generated by my password manager.

Even if Roku wanted to serve as some form of identity provider, you'd still have to go through some small bit of friction to associate your Roku account with the service provider. Given that we are talking about security and access to saved credit cards in some cases, I think a small amount of friction is warranted. The short codes are an excellent balance of convenience and friction.

Because they actually care about security and potential data leaks... or do you want all your billing data accidentally going to a fart app developer your kid clicked on?

I literally gave up on Funimation because every time I had to login, and looked at my password manager's randomly generated password, I died a little inside, since they didn't use the typical "just enter those couple of digits from the website and you're good to go", which is a nice compromise.

Dunno if it changed, it was a while ago.

Blame the channel creators. I'm surprised Netflix still doesn't have the option to input a code on a website. Amazon, Showtime, and numerous other channels support this feature.

> I pretty much ignore the Roku search as it has too much PPV content.

The search can be pretty iffy, but it's faster than searching in each app, and sometimes it catches things is fringe apps I wouldn't have thought to install. (although, those usually have terrible interstitial ads -- TV shows have built in slots for commercials, use them please, people!)

Roku has never been neutral. The CEO said himself that he doesn’t see Roku as a hardware company. Roku has always made money by advertising. From the ad that takes up half the home screen to the hardcoded short cut buttons that go to the highest bidder.

https://www.recode.net/2018/9/13/17852908/roku-anthony-wood-...

Roku previously sold content but then it was transitioned to FandangoNow.

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