Roku burned through a lot of goodwill with their customers during the HBO Max holdout.
Once Apple got Amazon prime streaming roku lost their only differentiating feature. The ads really annoyed me to the extent that I don’t care if they fail.
For me if I'm paying for something I don't want ads. If you charge me and then also double dip with ads I'll try to find something else that doesn't.
YouTube ads help fund content creators. Roku ads are being displayed on a stand alone device that I already paid $100 for.
Hit Home 5 times. Hit Up, Right, Down, Left, Up. You're now on a secret settings screen. I don't know what its purpose is, internal development? Channel development? Set Image Service to "Dev" Set Home Screen Ad Banner URL to "Demo2" Do a Reset/Refresh of cached settings. Go to main Settings/System and reboot for good measure.
When you get back to the Roku home screen you shouldn't see changing ads anymore, just a static black and white Apple AirPlay image.
I feel that this is being too generous to YouTube considering things like these:
"YouTube will run ads on some creator videos, but it won’t give them any of the revenue" [1]
"YouTube Will Now Show Ads On All Videos Even If Creators Don’t Want Them" [2]
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21573937/youtube-ads-cre...
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/11/18/youtube...
For the first headline, this has to do with channels that are too small to be in the partner program. Youtube still is service provided for free, allowing anyone to upload and share unlimited videos. It's ridiculous to think Youtube shouldn't be allowed to monetize said videos and recoup some money. But also each individual channel here probably makes a few pennies and is not worth it for them to setup a whole contract for.
The latter headline is about a recent issue where some creators force-disable all ads on their channel and instead insert their own sponsor ads in the video. This causes two issues, 1. premium members who pay to not get ads still end up getting them and 2. Youtube basically doesn't get a single penny from that channel. In such cases, I think it's also entirely fair for Youtube to make some money from a video being watched by millions and costing bandwidth.
No they're not. Discrediting creators do not disprove anything stated in the headlines.
> But also each individual channel here probably makes a few pennies and is not worth it for them to setup a whole contract for.
So if YouTube is gathering every penny made by small (or in other words, most) creators, maybe it isn't fair to pretend that YouTube profiting is for some greater good while bashing competitors for doing the same.
> The latter headline is about a recent issue where some creators force-disable all ads on their channel and instead insert their own sponsor ads in the video.
That's an "issue" YouTube would rather people talk about. In reality, it is irrelevant as it applies to every single video uploaded to YouTube. It just serves to unfairly discredit creators. And before you ask, yes, there are people who made the conscious decision of not monetizing their videos that were impacted by YouTube's new policy[1].
[1]: https://larryjordan.com/articles/youtube-filmmakers-presumed...
They are perfectly justified in making money off of any video on their platform. It's honestly astonishing to me that you think it's acceptable for a creator to be able to rake in thousands from their video, hosted entirely for free, while also blocking Youtube from making a single penny from the video to pay for the cost of operation.
Please don’t dictate what I think. That’s not at all what I actually wrote.
Second, if anyone is operating at a loss, it’s the small creators. YouTube, operated by one of richest company on this planet, is the one profiting both directly and indirectly from those creators’ work. I also can’t understand how anyone can claim small creators “only makes a few pennies” while “raking in thousands” at the same time.
Then please explain because either you agree that Youtube should be allowed to override the "no ads" checkbox for creators that run in-video ads, or you disagree with it. I don't really see a middle ground here.
> I also can’t understand how anyone can claim small creators “only makes a few pennies” while “raking in thousands” at the same time.
It's simple; as with literally everything else Google does, scale. A few pennies, multiplied by millions of small creators, adds up very quickly.
But if they had to setup Creator deals with each of those millions of creators with 1-2 videos, then the economics would simply not work out. It's the same reason they have piss poor customer support on their free products. Those products only work because they have billions of users, but providing customer support to that many people doesn't work financially.
I still use an Nvidia Shield for Plex though. The ATV is great for streaming platforms, but lacks HDMI audio passthrough which is essential for watching hi quality BluRay rips on a home theater.
ARC/eARC is about the TV sending audio from HDMI devices to another HDMI port where your receiver/soundbar is connected.
HDMI audio passthrough is a feature that allows apps to send any raw encoded audio signal "as is" via the HDMI port (eg: Dolby, DTS, etc) to your receiver that will do the decoding.
The ATV does not support DTS or TrueHD, hence to output audio with those codecs, it needs to be decoded and converted on the fly to a supported format like PCM. Unfortunately this produces all sort of issues (sync, volume, etc).
Nonsense. A raspberry pi costs far less and is, arguably, just as capable.
The problem isn't hardware capability, it's the ecosystem on top of it. Pi doesn't have a robust tv platform and app market system that is built around a remote control. Sure, you can run plex on it but even plex has long abandoned its streaming app platform and decided to roll its own TV service instead... Part of me wishes that Plex would have stuck with it but i guess they realized the Streaming TV problem isn't a software or hardware problem to begin with...
The parent comment stated that the $100 doesn't cover the cost of the hardware. I disagree.
I do think it is perhaps a more reasonable statement to say $100 doesn't cover the cost of the hardware and the software platform on top of it.
I don't think it's right to shove ads down customer's throat on a product that they've paid money for. Whether that's money to buy the hardware and the software platform or whether that's money paid to the subscriptions; in both cases advertisements are the wrong solution to revenue. If software costs money then make that cost up front. Sell the software. Sell updates to the software. Sell a subscription for the software. But don't put ads on it!
Last I checked, there wasn't any player capable of doing HDR10 HEVC either, but maybe that has changed.
I like the rpi but I don't think its as capable as people are making it out to be.
Software services (i.e. updating iOS/Roku's OS) require on-going maintenance. Apple makes this by charging developers who in turn typically charge the consumers. Roku doesn't do this and hence why it can be hostile to the consumer. It's model is generally to use an ad model instead.
Now people know why there is a (arguably high) tax on subscriptions derived from iOS.
It’s like Visa, restaurants will charge all customers including cash paying ones more too. So the Visa card holder, isn’t incentivized not to use it.
None of the commercial streaming device options are great, but I think my next one will be an Apple TV.
You bought a TV and expected it to not have its features changed. That sounds like a very reasonable expectation.
All roku had to do was build some quality hardware and a decent streaming UI. The only thing that would take money to maintain from a server perspective should be the update servers and software servers.
I saw them as one of the few dedicated streaming devices (next to Shield) for being "provider neutral" - that is, not apple and not Google.
I paid $400 for a huge TCL TV. It probably cost $100 just to move it around the globe. There is no money for development or the platform/service in that price.
We're spoiled..
>...Container shipping rates from China to the United States have scaled fresh highs above $20,000 per 40-foot box as rising retailer orders ahead of the peak U.S. shopping season add strain to global supply chains.
https://www.reuters.com/business/china-us-container-shipping...
People are going to buy the hardware that has the content they want. I feel like the big three are squeezing Roku out.
Should legislation be written to require content and hardware platforms be separate? That Apple TV should have to be available for Shield and Roku, and that Youtube TV be allowed on Apple and Roku?
There are literally thousands of platforms and devices, all with little bespoke niggles. Who's going to pay for that?
Roku also takes a cut for every transaction that goes via its platform. If I end up subscribing to HBO via roku, Roku takes a cut too.
On a related note, is it just me that's flummoxed by the lack of Ad disclosures for the Roku ads? I can't seem to find it - and having worked ij tech ads , I find this troubling and concerning.
Stop this. I have multiple Rokus. The % of time I spend on their menu looking at the ads is like 0.0001% of my total time using Roku. In fact, I didn't even notice any ads for months until someone on Reddit complained about it.
I am looking at the prices of rokus, and my guess is they are losing money on the hardware.
And yes, we should have a completely free (as in speech) device. But if you actually offered it and priced it accordingly, most people would not buy it.
It's dumb but it's what we consumers have voiced with our money.
But then... I bought the ad version, not for price but because it had the pretty colors and I don't like using cases on kindles anymore.
Well, if you DO pay for the product, you are STILL the product.