"Awful": Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen | Hacker News Reader

"Awful": Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen

arstechnica.com

88 pointsLinuxBender52 comments

Roku has been gradually and constantly adding tiny little annoyances, like adding things to my home screen and changing the wallpaper. Nothing that's been a deal breaker, but the disrespect for my preferences shows, and eventually it'll be something like this that pops up. At which point I guess I'm going back to Apple TV. I want one for a tailscale exit node anyway.

Yup, and meanwhile the performance has dropped dramatically. I had 4 Roku's in the house. I've replaced all of them at this point. They're pure trash.

I replaced 2 of them with Apple TV's, 1 ONN 4k and 1 unbranded Android based media streamer.

My biggest problem with Apple TV for the longest time was the horrible remotes. The card thin, touch sensitive remote is the worst product Apple has ever made. The new remote is a huge step up, especially if you turn off the dpad touch feature.

Roku is dead to me.

> The card thin, touch sensitive remote is the worst product Apple has ever made.

What about the original iMac puck mouse? Or the eMate?

But that remote is up there all right. Or should I say, down there.

I switched from the Roku ecosystem to Nvidia Shield about a year ago because of Roku’s increasingly user hostile ad and tracking decisions and have been pretty happy with it. Android TV gives me enough control with a custom launcher that I can prevent ads.

The Nvidia Shield is the best thing I've ever bought. I love it. I hope Nvidia make a new one, because i'd buy it immediately.

I have my Roku-based TCL setup to immediately switch to my streaming device on boot. It’s a little slow to load, but I’m hoping this will bypass whatever Roku ads might have shown.

Check if your device and TV support CEC. The device may be able to just start the TV and switch the output.

I’ve tried custom launchers but never found anything as good as the Nvidia Shield interface before Google fucked it over with ads.

I really can't recommend this launcher enough:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.pro...

https://github.com/spocky/miproja1/releases/

That would be a good enough reason to drop Roku if they start doing this.

I know Roku doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record but I’ve owned them relatively trouble free since at least 2010, having refreshed them all once or twice since.

Way back when Apple and Amazon were fighting Roku was the only one that had both on it.

I prefer all my TVs stay dumb, so I just plug a Roku box or stick into them. No more having to get a new TV because the Netflix app stopped working or whatever.

I hate the Amazon Stick UI and don’t want to pay 3x the cost for an Apple box- but I absolutely will eject from Roku completely if they start doing this stuff.

The Roku of 2010 was not primarily deriving its earnings from ads and selling subscriptions to people, though. Apparently just selling devices / licensing an OS was not a growth industry.

If that's not enough, I'm sure there will be more desperate software updates...

Roku is pretty much the worst. They started out admirably, but completely sold out and turned into spyware a while ago now.

Just buy an Apple TV and move on

Apple TV definitely offers the best “streaming portal” experience. But it’s still kind of janky. For one thing, different streaming apps implement playback controls totally differently - why did Apple not impose a standard interface?? And for another thing, the remote control is just senselessly terrible.

There isn't a device out there with a single unified player UI: the behavior of Netflix, Max, and Prime are all different on every device I've owned. Apple TV is probably as consistent as it's going to get, which is not very. I wasn't a fan of the touchpad remotes, but afaik they got rid of them, the only touchpad left is the iPod-like shuttle control now.

I have three Apple TVs and use multiple streaming services on them. Trying to enable/disable subtitles or perform some other similar basic function without accidentally scrubbing or closing the video is a gamble each time. I think my kids think I'm incompetent.

Apple, just like Microsoft, were known for they great UI 25 years ago. Today, this is no longer the case.

Apple do have a standard player, but streaming services reinvent their own.

If you own a smart TV that runs RokuOS that may not be an option. Just turning your TV on will serve you an ad.

Absolutely disgusting behavior on their part.

If this happens to me then all my Rokus are going in the trash.

Same. And it’ll be the first time I see it, no second chances here.

I’ve already unplugged all my Alexa devices, they are going in the trash soon. Roku will be soon to follow if I see a single ad.

Is AdGuard Home a solution for this, will a Roku still work with DNS ad blocking?

Some TV boxes now have hardcoded dns to prevent this

Over :53 can be blocked/re-routed to your recursive DNS server by your router.. although that's more than many user's ability, sure.

Seems unlikely it's DoH[0] (:443) since that would be.. hard coding an IP or a DNS lookup loop (turtles.. all the way down). But it's possible in combination with :53 above (you'd need to recursive-block the common DoH domains https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query https://mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com https://dns.google/dns-query but possibly also some device-specific IPs.. dns.roku.com?)

DoT[1] (:853) could also be used (1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9)... guess it's worth watching traffic/blocking that port (if that's your concern).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_HTTPS

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_TLS

I utilize pfSense to hijack all outgoing port 53 connections and just re-route them to the local DNS server.

From there, I allow AdGuard DNS out over port 953.

I then use pfBlockerNG with a few block-lists to block DoH and known DNS over 443 servers.

Overall works fairly well, I've had an issue or two when a device cant talk to 1.1.1.1 directly....

That can be blocked on your outgoing firewall, or if it's standard DNS on 53 use a NAT rule to force it to your DNS server.

Does DNS blocking work with Apps (e.g. YouTube android) using Certificate pinning?

Certificate pinning prevents MITM. It doesn't prevent blocking.

What could prevent blocking is if the device uses DoH for DNS.

I recently bought a new "smart" TV --- but only after confirming that my selected model could be operated in "dumb" mode without any network connection.

Roku just validated my purchase choice.

From all of them I’ve used, ironically enough, Roku TVs are probably the best for operating without a network connection and don’t have any unremovable networked apps that pollute the screen. They just get much worse once you connect them, but they’re also easy to factory reset.

I bought a Hisense QLED model and run it in "store mode" so it acts like nothing more than a dumb display. A connected PC provides the "smarts" that I can control.

The Vero 4 and Vero V by the OSMC team are amazing: https://osmc.tv

They do a terrible job of marketing themselves though, so quite underrated.

Don't all the XBMC/Kodi-likes suffer from having poor support for mainstream content providers. I've looked a few times over the years, and add-ons for Netflix, YouTube, iPlayer, etc. were slow and terrible for discovery. If you knew the exact name of what you wanted to watch they were just about ok, but beyond that they just didn't fit the paradigm of something that was designed for browsing static libraries of content.

Isn't the whole premise of Roku that it does this well with cheap hardware?

When companies do something this unlikable, it’s often telltale sign they have nothing else to offer.

Even in their IPO Prospectus they listed advertising as their primary product

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kodi

That's funny. My ten year old Raspberry Pi 2 has none of this crap and won't just magically be different one day because I own it.

So...what is the current state of the art for people who want to defend against endless ads, have a minimally invasive install relative to the users' current setup, have to tweak every device in, and not have to do more than say quarterly maintenance?

Every time I visit a non-technical friend's home I am absolutely horrified by what their tech experience has become. Browsing, oh my goodness. What a dumpster fire.

What system can I build for them that I can drop off with say 30 mins or less of setup to get going that isnt going to generate callbacks?

I'm thinking pihole (as DNS, with the user's home router tweaked to point clients there). Maybe running on a pi or a fanless pc. But perhaps there is something else?

Browser extensions are too complicated for very untechnical folks so maybe pass on those, although I am partial to privacybadger, ublock and of course a pw manager.

In my experience, browser extensions are more one-and-done than network-level ad blocking like pi-hole. I can’t think of any time I’ve had to override a UBO rule but many popular pi-hole blocklists have a fair number of false positives.

Apple gear if you can afford it.

Else: some conglomeration of raspberry pi dns server filters, and other miscellanea that a friendly nerd administers for you until he gets tired.

just firefox and ublock origin goes a long way to un-shittifying browsing.

ublock origin full automatically update itself and needs essentially no human interaction.

In the context of watching TV?

Ideally the context of common devices across the board, eg tv, phone/tablet, laptop.

Not sure about these ads, but a Pi home prevents the ads appearing on the home screen alongside the channel listings.

No one wants to be a dump pipe.

Thats why people are going yarr again

This is what happens when consumer protection government offices get trimmed down to save money. Everyone else got the Trump memo much earlier and already finished making their products a bit more user hostile... Roku is just late to the party.

I saw the ad last night. Took a millisecond for me to hit "down" on my remote and get to what I want. It wasn't full screen, there was no need to find the "close" button. The ad showed above the normal Roku grid and was easily bypassed. Roku already has ads in their UI, I don't understand the outrage.

Its because its the next step in the boil the frog process. They will train you on that and then a few months later it will force play for 5 sec. Then a few months later full ad. Etc. etc.

I understand the analogy, but right now the Roku pot is the coolest. I'm also sitting in a Google and Amazon pot and the temperatures in those pots is much higher.

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