From such heights, it's really becoming very disappointing.
So, yeah, early early days were Netflix bound, but with 1200 channels in 2013 and over 3000 by 2015, Roku was clearly showing more than just Netflix. At that time, sounded like Roku was the open door to distributing content to a group of hungry viewers...
And today? Still tons of "channels"... but instead of the garden of a million flowers, we instead have the top line players offering the most requested media, and so 3000 or 30000 makes little difference. In addition, a quick perusal of https://channelstore.roku.com/ reveals that past the first few "most popular" options, it's a desert out there. Lots of screen savers and public domain streamers, and little else.
So, what are Roku's options? It can promise that all can play with carriage fees reflecting consumption. It can offer it's own content (The Roku Channel) to compete. It can offer an advertising service to allow monetization of channel/media creators. And/Or, it can decide that it owns it's viewers, and instead of being an open gateway, it's a closed wall. And that's where we are: It's not easy to be a slightly-smart pipe, so Roku punted. Open no more.
I'll never get rid of all the Rokus, for hope that they'll come back around. But thinking back, the power of those early days in 2012-2015 when you got a Roku because you wanted to see almost everything without having to get a sketchy box from who knows where and have it pull torrents in the background... well, those were the days, indeed.