Fox to buy Roku
wsj.com
wsj.com
I have always been unhappy with Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content at all, because it could potentially cut into their service-agnostic architecture. Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware, but way worse when they are actively competing with streaming services.
And now it looks like it has happened -- a large content provider wants to buy the company, and while I hope that they can at least notionally continue to be service-agnostic, the temptation to cheat to favor your own services will always be there an when cost cutting and belt tightening is on the table, that is surely what will happen.
[1] My order for the "Netflix Player by Roku": "CustomerID# 1162 Thank you very much for your Roku order. Your order number is 2472, placed 5/20/2008 at 10:01AM."
I mean, of course they did. If you were running a company and had to choose between a one-time relatively small fee vs a life time of near constant ad driven income per user, which would you choose?
In the end the tradeoff is pretty rough; judging by alternatives, keeping the cost of the stick low requires that they do the ad thing. I say that I would pay more for an ad-free version but I never went out there and bought the nvidia shield for example even though I'm told it's a good experience.
I'm a weird person in that I'm not anti-ads, but I am anti-adTech. Commercials on OTA broadcasts are good times to get up and get a refill, go to the restroom, are just hit the mute button. The days of DVRs were glorious as well as you could just fast forward through the ad breaks. Streaming platforms are the absolute best thing that ever happened to adTech. They cannot be skipped. That guarantees to the ad buyer that they will get their air time which helps adTech push ad buy rates.
The money made from advertising is not to be dismissed. It can be very significant to bottom lines, just ask Vizio* where they make more money on data than they do from the hardware sold used to collect that data.
*https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
The hardware on the top tier devices doesn't seem to keep up. Interacting with it is slower and more laggy than it originally was.
They've tried to keep them unobtrusive, which I appreciate, but the mere existence of ads is disappointing. I almost give the Roku City ads a pass, because frankly that's clever, and mirrors the real world enough that it seems logical to me -- but ads in menus is grating.
CEC has been super flaky with the latest revisions as well, so for the past couple of weeks I've been relegated to using either the Roku remote or my phone instead of my TV's remote.
I'm a big fan of waiting to see before prejudging, but I can't imagine anything gets better post-acquisition, and I was already on my way out the door. I guess I'm buying an Apple TV now? Are there any other recommendations? I haven't kept up with the space at all, so if anyone has suggestions I am super happy to receive them.
The last time I used Apple TV I was disappointed, and since they are a streaming provider themselves I expect this to get worse rather than better. Even very basic UI things like "what block in the UI is the cursor currently selected" are painful, and the navigation flow mirrors the navigation flow of the Apple TV app on Roku, which is already pretty bad -- navigating the a series page from a single episode is a tortuous multi-step process that involves getting the incantations exactly right or being reverted back to the main screen and losing all context.
The moat here is mostly just having widespread and maintained support for streaming services, which is a question of scale; that's why so many "Smart" TVs get stale after a year or so while Roku stays fresh. In 2008 I paid (in 2008 dollars) $99 for the Roku. The price now is much lower but I would probably be willing to pay that amount for a fresh device that is performant and agnostic to streaming services and no ads (including those remote buttons) and has a straightforward UI.
But yes, I would be thrilled to just pay $250-300 for a hardware device that just did quickly did what it was supposed to do and didn't look too ugly in doing it.
I guess I’ll just randomly press the arrow buttons until I notice which box is getting slightly larger.
I have never seen a mergre like this not lead to anything but a money grab. They will no doubt remove things like PlutoTV, which is free, and substitutte it with more subscription apps and more data collection
Furthermore, I'm on a Roku looking for content and the ads highlight content. It's not that different than seeing posters on the way to a movie theater.
But I fear this need means this time is ending, and we'll only be left with crap.
I mean, ok, but that's still a pretty low bar.
I used various Rokus for.. I dunno, must have been at least 10 years. Switched to the Apple TV last year because Roku keeps adding more and more ads to their devices.
The Apple TV is much nicer than any Roku I've used. Performance and reliability are excellent, and ads are minimal. Only for Apple's streaming service, only when that app is selected, and no audio.
The Nvidia shield used to be a decent streaming box?
I'll also echo my general disappointment with the direction of these devices. A decade ago, they were one of the best streaming devices you could buy.
then a couple years back it was "there's a new discover tab, filled with ads! Don't you love it?"
then it was "not enough people are viewing the discover tab, so we're merging the discover tab with the home tab! Don't you love it?"
---
They're still decent hardware for a streaming device (although somewhat dated at this point), but now you have to go out of your way to make the software not shitty.
Removing the stock launcher helps a lot, but requires ADB access. (easy enough, and [insert llm of choice] can both generate a minimal replacement launcher and install it for you for about $10 worth of tokens, so technical users are fine, but I can't really recommend them to non-technical family anymore.)
I always use a custom launcher (Projectivy) on my Google TV devices, lately typically the $20 Onn stick and intercept the Home navigation to open the launcher either using the option built into Projectivy or with a free app from the Play Store/Fdroid.
Takes <5 minutes to setup everything once and then I basically forget the native Google TV launcher exists. Pretty much unbeatable value for a $20 ad-free Jellyfin/Plex/Kodi/Stremio setup. YMMV with different models but I also had no issues remapping the remote buttons from Netflix/etc to my own apps (including the "Free TV" button to launch Stremio which I always enjoy).
Also (somewhat ironically) the best smart TV OS to look for on cheap/subsidized TVs is built-in Google TV. Since they can easily be configured as 100% "dumb" on startup without any ads/nags/etc (it's the first question you're asked). The TV never hits Wifi to update and the remote/menus just do normal TV stuff without any "smart" features. Otherwise, it's luck of the draw how miserable/impossible the manufacturer makes avoiding Wifi/updates.
(Or you could do the same process installing the custom launcher on the TV's built-in Googe TV, but then you're at the mercy of the CPU/RAM the OEM included in BoM some # of years ago and lose the clean seperation between dumb TV/replaceable stick).
$20 Onn stick + $199 "smart" Google TV in dumb mode goes really far these days for a locally hosted setup without ads/annoyances.
shield is still competitive. It has become a little laggy but apparently that can be fixed by swapping out the launcher.
Now you're making it sound even more interesting. What is the name of this device?
Not "just". You left out its role as a bot network exit node.
That's ... not a thing. Those sticks just glom on to free software maintained by other hardworking unpaid devs to steal residential IPs from unsuspecting buyers drawn to the "all-in-one" pitch for their sketchy VPNs and/or botnets. Then, eventually whatever API keys/endpoints they stole for streaming stop working and all you're left with is the botnet part of the deal.
This is like saying the included porn malware you got bundled with uTorrent from the first sponsored link on Google is a price worth paying to access The Pirate Bay and stick it to Netflix, lol.
Why earth would anyone voluntarily advocate for that/defend the malware authors instead of just downloading qBitorrent from Github like a normal person?!
The botnet you bring into your home is only an option people are willing to consider because of how poor the UX has gotten. It's disingenuous to frame this situation as a cavalier abrogation of duty at the sole discretion of the selfish consumer. The malware laiden set top box is a terrible solution, but it being even in the realm of consideration is due to how incredibly terrible set top boxes and streaming platforms have become. In the 2010s torrenting was something of an archaic habit done mostly by those with a strong idealogical bent - gone were the days of everyone installing napster or kazaa to have any access to digitized music that they could actually listen to without a binder of CDs.
Excessive enshittification brought on by the selfish actions of corporations is what is bringing these options back to the table for the mainstream. The consumer should be better and shouldn't bring a malware laden box into their home - but the platforms should also be better and offer reasonable pricing for their value and experience.
It's ultimately utterly destructive, of course. Wish I had a good solution.
- Too many promos of other shows before watching a show. This is often for shows I've already watched and am watching. Apple knows which shows I watch. It shouldn't need to give me promos for shows I've watched or am actively watching. - Poor UX for "Play Next Episode" functionality. If I just finished an episode of a show and I click to watch the next episode, I don't need to see the recap of the previous episode or the intro. - Speaking of intro, when you click to skip, it usually leaves you somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds from the end of the into, not actually after it.
Ideally, this would be designed in two parts: separate the file structure from the metadata discovery mechanism.
I personally want a file structure managed by the OS. Let me make folders and nested subfolders to whatever structure I prefer.
Then make the metadata discovery slightly more manual. Click a media file, click a hypothetical "add metadata" button, and then a simple search box with "is this your movie?" and click apply to import metadata from a search result. easy peasy.
The UI is clearly meant to resemble a typical media app but falls short if the end user prefers, for example, foobar2000's UI.
It seems to be tolerating whatever semi-organized structure I give it until it just faceplants on some specific show and I have to tediously reorganize the directory structure/names and manual refresh until the metadata lines up correctly.
I like that I don't feel I'm about to be rugpulled on Jellyfin and the client is pretty solid for me but the library scanning is pretty aggravating at times.
The thing I'm not OK with about Jellyfin is that the common answer for remote access involves setting up a reverse proxy or a VPN or some other darned thing that I will never be able to talk my mom into configuring her Roku to be able to use.
I have a fairly large library, which Plex never seemed to care about. Jellyfin choked. It took forever to go through it all, and I seem to remember questioning of it was working; it wasn’t clear. Plex on the other hand makes it pretty entertaining to watch covers flip over as the metadata is loaded in to see the progress. Then every app I tried on the AppleTV also seemed to have trouble. The one that worked best had to create its own local cache of everything, which required I spend hours browsing to every screen and waiting before it became reasonably smooth. After that, the layout was still pretty strange. I think it would have worked just as well to point it at a file share. Actually playing videos was hit and miss in every app I tried.
I’m still using Plex. If I need to move to Jellyfin at some point, I feel like I’ll need to build a server with a lot more power than Plex requires. Of course that’s just a theory… a theory that will be expensive to test.
For all the fanfare Jellyfin gets online, I expected it to be better. It made me question how honest the people pushing it are. But maybe they have small libraries or only tested it with 5 movies for the review. I don’t think that’s a real-world experience.
I don't love crapping on open source software, but I had the same experience recently - installed Jellyfin because I wanted to test hardware-accelerated AV1 transcoding, and the whole app experience felt rough compared to Plex. The UI/UX really needs some TLC.
The software is probably fine for what it is. I mostly meant to crap on those pushing it and claiming it’s better than Plex, when, a least for large libraries, it isn’t. It’s important people have the right expectations going in.
Plex has almost a decade of development on Jellyfin, and Plex itself was born as an OS X fork for XBMC, so it got a big head start from open source itself.
To be fair, Jellyfin page doesn't list my NAS as being supported, so I had to "manually" install it (a couple commands and clicks).
Infuse is a better Plex app than Plex is; and it supports Jellyfin and a bunch of other data sources.
It is, IMHO, a platonic ideal of what a “tv-shaped” video player app should be.
not even a mute button. and it makes me earn for the old directtv remote! that's how bad it is. Everything is so unresponsive and odd.
I like that it’s aluminum, doesn’t take batteries, and is bluetooth (or at least doesn’t require line of site). It’s the longest lasting of any remote in my house.
You’re probably thinking of earlier versions that were different.
Roku at least felt non-evil or non-evil adjacent in its notional neutrality.
There is a setting on my Google TV (I think it is 'Disable Personalization' or similar) that gets rid of most of the ad-space and turns the home screen into just a list of apps that I actually have installed.
It is easy to sideload apps like SmartTubeNext, and the Plex client works well, so that covers 100% of my needs.
Roku do Automatic Content Recognition, why do you feel they are non-evil?
As a Google certified Android TV, this means it will do Widevine L1 DRM decoding, give you the 4K streaming quality.
For TV I used to recommend Sony, but now they sold the whole business to China TCL. Will have to wait and see if TCL will enshittify it.
Sure I guess. But those devices objectively suck. the CPU and storage in "smart TVs" are so underpowered that using streaming apps on them is painfully sluggish.
For comparison, I've used the "Chromecast with Google TV" (a $50ish at its release 4k streaming stick that uses the 'Google TV', fka 'Android TV' platform) and a Sony TV on the same platform, released the same year. The Sony UI is a lot more sluggish than the Google stick device. Also tested running an SNES emulator. The Google device can easily do it, the Sony TV can't keep up even on a basic game like Super Mario World.
And then of course, on the other end of the spectrum, the Apple TV exists, which specs-wise can easily play 3D racing games at a fine framerate.
I don't try to do anything like run a console emulator on them though. Just watching streaming channels and YouTube TV.
IDK about the specs on yours, but even things like bloated sizes of apps themselves on disk can become a problem. What happens when the OS and the apps inevitably go up in size such that the 8GB or whatever TCL has decided to give you cannot hold the OS, Netflix, Disney+, and HBO at the same time? They don't just let you stay on old versions anymore, either.
I believe there are TVs that come with AppleTV built-in. I'm not in the market, so I haven't looked, but I suspect they're not the bargain basement Wal-Mart sets.
https://dcurt.is/apple-tv-all-the-way-down
(Since that piece, they've renamed Apple TV+ to also be "Apple TV".)
Except in that case don't you have to give the TVs themselves Internet access? Do you trust any TV with such access nowadays given all the tomfoolery with surveillance that most OEMs do?
I don't think any of the big streaming content providers have native apps on linux and no browser can pass through audio bitstreams to HDMI. Video quality is limited as well.
Having a dedicated streaming box is better in this regard
What if parent already knows the answers to that and the question they really want to ask is … wait for it… the one they actually asked?
If you want to ask a different question go right ahead but cutting off others like this is plain rude.
It does great with local [networked] media and that's all I use it for. There's a million plugins for other things, some dating back to the XBMC days on the OG Xbox 20+ years ago, that others may find utility in... but for regular commercialized streaming I just use a $25 Chromecast and that does the business well-enough.
(LibreElec has a huge advantage to me that most people probably don't care about: My AV receiver sounds brilliant and was once very expensive [~$4,500], but it's rather old and it chokes on HDMI signals higher than 1080i. It is also unable to decode things like Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD.
This would make the receiver a non-starter for post-Blu-Ray film soundtracks, except the Pi4 has two HDMI outputs. It is a no-effort built-in for LibreElec to use one of these outputs for video, while the other one is dedicated to high-res multichannel PCM audio.
In this way: The video system gets whatever video signals it wants, while the audio system is just fed PCM audio and doesn't have to struggle with any of that more-modern business at all. Everything is very happy with this arrangement.)
But yeah, the Siri way (much as I loathe using Siri) is the definite way.
[0] https://community.firecore.com/t/use-siri-to-enable-disable-...
So much for those oft-touted benefits of Apple's policy on gatekeeping third-party apps so it allows them to enforce quality standards.
You do you, but I find that to be a truly niche thing to throw away an entire platform over. It literally does everything else better imho.
For anything from youtube I actually care about watching on a TV, I'll download with yt-dlp and put on my Plex server - it's less friction than dealing with youtube on the TV itself.
We seem to have an economic cycle of enshittification => piracy => people realizing they've over enshittified => goto 10. We were in phase 3 a few years ago, now we're in phase 1 and it's an insane race to the bottom.
Also, I watch Nebula on my Apple TV pretty frequently, and Dropout's available there, too.
1. Personally, I find it incredibly disruptive but I had ADHD so it tends to break my immersion in the media but I understand that I'm an edge case and I'll always need a more complex solution.
- You run Windows because nothing else will let you stream in 4k
- You ignore the absolutely sub-par UI/UX couch experience
And I say this as someone who's been running a media center pc in various forms for decades.
I will conceded that windows is a real advantage though since enshittification has driven other environment applications to become rare or unmaintained. Though I haven't invested real time into seeing what options might be available as unified platform solutions in other envs - like maybe the work Valve put into proton allows you to sneak your way into good media support?
As is their lack of UI discipline.
I own Star Trek: TNG purchased on Apple TV.
The UX for watching an episode is scrolling through a list of the 178 episodes. That's it. That's the only experience. One list, 178 episodes in order.
This is pretty appalling from the company that used to have such a design reputation. One day of effort of one engineer could make it so much better.
It definitely is.
IMO the only advantage of the Nvidia Shield is better HDMI audio passthrough but it has so many other issues. And with more recent versions of the Plex client for tvOS the lack of audio passthrough is much less of an issue than it used to be (PCM conversion used to introduce sync issues). Also the Plex app for Android TV has been getting consistently worse over the years for me. Plus all the ads Android TV added a couple of years ago. Ugh.
Some of the more exotic boxes out there to run CoreELEC have tehcnically better DV support. These might work if you only want a Plex or Kodi client but for general streaming the Apple TV is just better.
Honestly can't wait for Apple to release a new one. Hopefully with audio passthrough of more codecs.
As for Plex I've had way too many issues to list. Networking issues, having to restart the Plex app after the device went to sleep, etc. When I switched to using Plex on the Apple TV all the issues went away.
It should be noted that I have re-pasted and cleaned the dust of my Shield a couple of times since I got it 10 years ago.
Probably one of the big issues here. It's probably still the best Android TV you can get today but that's really sad because the SoC in it came out in 2015 (with some improvements in 2019). It was probably worse than what was in Apple TV at the time and Apple refreshed it two times since then.
Switch 2 is out, no new Shield in sight. And the Shield TV Pro is still $200...
Either touch is a bad input mechanism for controlling your TV, or Apple hasn't figured it out.
Maybe I'll try the remote the other user here mentioned.
https://function101.com/products/button-remote-for-apple-tv?...
The newer Apple Remote has directional buttons, and you can then turn off the touch pad.
Didn't Apple replace that remote with a proper clicky remote like five years ago?
i worked on a roku tv app once upon a time... and their OS couldn't even draw circle primitives. frustrating.
The latest Google TV even has an Ethernet port on it which was a welcome addition. Their approach to the universal remote is also great for simple TV setups even with a soundbar involved s long as you use the ARC hdmi port.
I can’t see any advantages the Apple product has.
A couple of older devices it "just works" on. A newer TV with Android built in requires minor adb commands to disable the return of the default home screen, but it's been working for ~6 months, including a TV software update (which my wife initiated and I was worried might turn things to their default status, but didn't).
Apple TV will be my next device if the above becomes locked out.
WiFi and worsening slowness woes with the Google TV/Chromecast pushed me into buying an Apple TV, and it is the single Apple product that I would glowingly recommend; that's saying something coming from an Apple hater. It is truly a fantastic product.
Again Apple's offering is the worst apart from every other one on the market.
* In the sense that no one can take it away and you can give it to someone else when you want.
At best, you should use services on a temporary basis and never allow yourself to get entrenched. Once you're locked in, you are part of the product to be sold to advertisers. The "install base" that is used as leverage for these sorts of shenanigans.
Amazing they got $22B and tivo must be really kicking itself.
As I recall, it was originally a Netflix product that was spun out due to its potential to cause a conflict of interest in their main business. They didn't want devices like Chromecast and AppleTV to see Netflix as a competitor, and be reluctant to bundle the Netflix streaming app on their devices.
My email search:
"Welcome to the "Roku-tech" mailing list" ... "Tue, Dec 2, 2003, 10:48 AM"
Not sure how I ended up on the mailing list a month before their product was released. There must've been buzz about it for a few months before release.
I guess Wood founded Roku but it was basically semi-defunct when we went to work for Netflix, and then the "spinoff" was basically letting Wood poach his team from Netflix over to his existing company to staff up and sell the first streaming device.
This isn’t a content company that caters to viewers across the political spectrum or purely focuses on entertainment first, this is a company that almost exclusively runs right-leaning political media outlets.
Your Roku already has advertisements and other content nudges on the Home Screen, and now those are going to be very one-sided and potentially politically motivated.
Being a platform, Roku benefits from advertising 3 ways - by running its own ads in some apps and on home screen; by exercising carriage rights on 3p apps that show ads (getting a cut as a platform); and by building and selling audiences for targeting.
For all I know, Fox has zero interest in platforms or technology. But they are fairly sophisticated when it comes to adtech and this is purely an adtech play.
An extensive study [0], showed "Basically, average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interest groups also want it"
They studied actual attitudes about issues, moneyed attitudes, and tracked what got implemented as laws. NONE of the 'thinking, protesting, commenting, of demanding' was effective. MONEY was.
[0] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...
And proportional representation is found in the House of Representatives. We have a bicameral legislature.
This is a just-so-story. No matter how much people care you can always say they don’t care enough when the law doesn’t match what people want - and when the law does match it’s because they cared enough, no matter how much they actually cared.
In practice, the laws don’t match what people want.
But all that aside - the laws already exist to block this acquisition, the only thing that’s missing is enforcement.
How is that proportional, a century of pop growth later?
As if the will of the people is what matters... Only if those people are backed by money does matter. I don't agree with that, but that's the world we live in.
We have antitrust laws in the US but they do us absolutely no good when the government refuses to even consider enforcing them, which seems to be the case in the past few decades.
You mean via executive order? That's not exactly passing a law.
The whole dance is really effective at keeping the administration one or two steps ahead of the judiciary and legislative branch.
It's also more or less true that the Biden administration took more responsibility and initiative in antitrust enforcement:
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-...
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/the-biden-administration...
I'm not surprised they're going this route, and would not be surprised if News becomes a drastically smaller piece of Fox over the coming years.
People in real life are multi-facet not singularly polar. People with agendas and grifters are polar. Polarization is also for those that want to be self-defined by a party.
I also do not support news or other agencies that reject STEMM or use questions to mask direct lying.
FWIW I canceled my SiriusXM like a year ago and it wasn't too hard. Just a web form.
I called them to get it set up, and when I suggested the internet dude on the line kept trying to upsell me TV packages. I was polite at first but eventually I said something like "listen, I don't want your 'Movie Lovers' package. I don't want your 'Sports Fan' package. I don't want your 'Family Entertainment' package. I don't want your 'Comedy Lover' package. I just want internet. I do not want anything but internet. If you pitch more more packages I will still only want internet".
Admittedly a little rude, but the guy did get the point after that and he was perfectly helpful getting everything set up.
Now there is a good reason.
I had been a pretty big Roku fan before that point as I had worked with them back in ~2017 and knew how locked down and sewn up they kept customer data, and only shared it in a very anonymized way. Obviously the situation has degraded in the recent years, and caused me to brick the functionality of a very expensive device.
Seems like it’s impossible to have a smart tv now that actually respects privacy, so back to dumb tvs and connections to pcs?
People usually suggest commercial TV’s but its not clear how to determine which have comparable HDR gamut as consumer units. So it’s hard to figure out exactly what the premium is.
Is a $2,000 dumb/commercial TV equivalent to a $500 consumer TV or a $1600 one?
- Fox PR: https://www.foxcorporation.com/news/corp-press-releases/2026...
- Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fox-buy-roku-...
Ohhh, trust us, we know. You've made 10 trolling comments in the past 30 minutes with a 2 day old acct
The commenter asked a question and it was answered. I don't think your hostile reply was needed.
Seems like you are deeply disturbed by the idea that anyone might have a negative opinion of an infamously deceptive propaganda network. Honestly though that's really more a you problem than anything else.
You should probably take a break, step away from the computer and take a walk outside. It's safe - regardless of what you might see in your bubble I promise there aren't actually mobs of evil scary immigrants out to attack you.
At this point it does seem easier to not have to look up if something is NewsCorp Fox or the parts of Fox that Disney bought because Disney no longer calls them Fox.
I have mostly Frame TVs and a projector. I always loved the Roku experience, it really felt like the best media player software, they just kept improving it, and having all TVs on the ecosystem made it even better. One app for virtual remotes, bluetooth listening, searching with your phone keyboard, etc.
I don't want to go back to the Frame's software. I really like the Backdrops app and so many other features.
But it just seems like this acquisition can only accelerate the ensh*tification of Roku. They already changed the default home screen a few weeks ago to show recommendations, SO MANY ads, etc and you change it in settings.
But as other commentors have mentioned, now we'll probably have Fox News and Truth Social front and center whether we want it or not.
So many apps have DRM that prevent you from running it yourself in any way. Is there another way that lets you run Netflix, Paramount+, HBO, all the majors without any trouble that is as integrated as Roku, or at least anything heading in that direction?
It’s not really a viable option if you wanted to. I have two Frames and they both just keep deteriorating to the point they are pretty useless. I have added an appletv to one of them and it’s vastly improved the UX. Now the only thing I need to do with the Samsung software is the unreasonably slow task of switching inputs.
A dumb TV you can buy for cheap on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist with an Nvidia Shield or a similar streaming device running Android.
I actually regret buying a Nvidia Shield TV. Yes, software support might be there. But what isn't there is the interface (without advertising, the cancer of the world) it came with. Thanks to Google. Thanks to Google, my children are now forced to see inappropriate advertising when the TV gets powered on.
Were they held at gun point by Google? Is there a contractual obligation to not ship their own ads-free launcher instead of randomly switching back to Google's? Are they not the one packaging and distributing the software?
Fun fact, Roku sells security cameras at Walmart, they're technically rebranded Wyze cameras (look just like them, same hardware) with Roku software on them. If you did buy one of those Roku cameras, maybe a good time to switch off to Wyze if you don't like this direction.
That's odd since they've been around for 23 years. I would understand that stance 20 years ago.
Is that even possible? IIRC Wyze cameras are whatever cheap Chinese OEM model thy find and can brand the firmware for. Seems as likely that Roku went to same OEM source.
Meanwhile, Fox lost my respect decades ago. The idea that they could gain network level access to one of my devices cannot be reconciled with my need to feel secure and safe in my own home.
Anyone wanna take the opportunity to share their favorite brands and models of dumb TVs?
If you want more control buy a pc monitor and some speakers or commercial display.
You can find them in your local Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist region.
You have to buy a smart TV and disable the internet + external device like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.
People talk a big game, but really are unprincipled in general.
At least regarding cybertrucks, pretty much no one is buying them. People are principled - Tesla's brand image is in the gutters and it shows, they are continuously losing market share and SpaceX had to bail out Tesla by buying 131 millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks.
Before Roku I spent 2005-2018 on various TiVo systems including whole house with minis and the cable-card system. Was thinking of quitting that for awhile, but the Rovi/Macrovision acquisition was definitely the writing on the wall.
Guess it's time to try an Apple TV as it seems like the only semi-premium option available.
Went to a friend's house and he had a Roku Express player and his was littered with ads and the whole UI was Christmas themed.
Moral of the story is pihole is OP.
I have a Roku TV an dmy setup is simple:
- Disable wifi on Roku TV
- Add Apple TV and connect to router
What do you mean by this? The back button is involved in system UI and apps should be limited in their ability to steal it, but fast forward is an action that makes no sense outside the context of an app
Either that or can't skip ads, ala legal dvd playback
There's no platform with a standardized "fast forward" experience - Apple TV, Google TV, Fire Sticks, whatever are apps running on a device and those apps all implement their own navigation controls.
To be completely cynical about it, if APV hadn't demanded the os support, I think some other party probably would have.
So when they just stop your show to try to sell insurance or whatever, and you try to ffwd through that noise, you get a little caption that informs you that "fast forward is not available during ads".
Bring back dumb TVs
It sucks because its android, but at least its degoogled.
Edit: for a TV, I love my 30 year old Panasonic. Paid $20 for it at the Mormon goodwill. Only 720p, but has the best speakers of any TV I've owned.
It has never connected to the internet, and it never will. My long term concern is that google will eventually put cell modems in their tvs, and then using my next tv as a dumb tv will no longer be an option. For now though, this is your best bet.
Other things I can think about is reliability of the screen (like dead pixels), and your family if not clued in may think you present as "poor".
You can make Tizen much faster by manually uninstalling the Samsung TV Plus app. It runs in the background constantly. "Much faster" is still slow overall, unfortunately.
Google doesn't do scummy screen spying ("ACR", Automatic Content Recognition).
1. Remove the few pre-installed apps except the HDMI inputs you want.
2. Then disconnect wifi.
As long as the device you turn on does HDMI-CEC (which almost everything other than a PC does) it will automatically switch to the input that your device is connected to. If it doesn't, you just have to click on the input you want to switch to.
They haven't been platform agnostic for a while now. Swapping out one streaming owner for another really isn't going to move the needle much.
I would love to have hardware like Roku, but just run a jellyfin client, with no need to even have Internet, just access to my jellyfin server on my local network.
It would need to be family approved as I don't need another project. I am not interested in AppleTV or a Google device (unless it can be 100% degoogled).
Has anyone ever successfully gotten things like CoreELEC/LibreELEC to work well?
I wish jellyfin would just sell some hardware, preloaded with a great jellyfin client. I'd pay a premium for it to help fund software development.
Any recommendations on a voice remote control for a TV-connected PC?
PC also needs to support TV power on/off and input switch via HDMI CEC, as well as a launcher to easily switch between the 2-3 streaming apps we use with our remote control.
AppleTV with Infuse (note that Infuse is neither free as in "beer" nor "speech") is what I use now for Jellyfin and video content. I haven't found a good client for playing music with Jellyfin on AppleTV. Moonfin (libre, available for 10 platforms) is getting there, but still too buggy to daily-drive.
* THIS IS NOT A PAID ADVERTISEMENT *
In ~2015 got an Xbox one, as a media center it was an awesome experience:
Kinect voice control to play/pause and other things way before Google home/Amazon echo ecosystem were mature.
Free OTA channels via TV tuner and well designed OneGuide (with ability to pause and rewind).
And of course all the Netflix and other apps, Plex server etc.
But strategically it seems Microsoft decided they wanted to look more like Playstation, focused on gaming (at that time paid Xbox live subscription vs free Playstation)
And as gaws points out, they seem to recently announce to double down on the gaming stuff.
So when they discontinued OneGuide. I picked Roku since they seem to be focused on the media experience primarily... but unsure how I feel about this acquisition news.
I don’t like the idea of Roku being owned by anyone, let alone Fox.
$22b.
Are there any companies left that are not in the decabillion range?
They certianly have enough to ice the carriers out. I wonder what an HBOMax subscription will cost in a year, I bet a fair bit more.
Sadly there are enough loyal fanatics that I can imagine they will continue to be sold indefinitely.
Do you ever wonder why no one takes you seriously?
On the one hand - you’re happy for the entrepreneurs
On the other, every single thing I hate as a consumer happens because of lack of competition and these acquisitions that old dinosaurs use to prop themselves up
Every single one - I don’t think I’m exaggerating
Not particularly heart broken about Roku at this point, but still bugs me to see
I agree, there seem to be no good options for this. You can use Kodi or whatever, but I want something that supports playing my ... totally legally acquired content... and Netflix/Disney/iPlayer/etc. In a package that's silent and low power.
Doesn't seem to exist unfortunately. I guess the closest is Nvidia Shield. You can apparently still sideload APKs onto that... for now. I'll buy one when they release an update. I'm patient!
That said, Tailscale did not exist when DNLA was popular, and DNLA over Tailscale seems a really promising non-jellyfin avenue.
Ultimately the problem will be lack of hardware decoders and poor interop with Dolby, DTS, etc.
https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-s...
What I am going to do down the line personally is just buy a gaming laptop and use that. Can play games via Steam and watch stuff via Windows apps (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crunchyroll).
Only problem of course is the laptop will be pricier, but if someone was going to buy a tv streaming thing AND a gaming system of some kind, probably cheaper.
I wonder if it would be possible to operate the computer as a whole with PS5 controller :thinking:
The only thing I use but isn’t on there is criterion.
The (relatively) poor quality and difficulty of hooking my laptop up to the TV for criterion eventually pushed me to get one just for that, since there’s no word on if criterion has any plans to release an app for PS
Personally I never bought into Roku because I didn't think they'd last very long.
[0]: https://support.pluto.tv/s/article/PTV-On-which-devices-can-...
The original NVIDIA Shield is more than 10 years old at this point and still sells used for around $100 and people are still paying $200 retail for a new 2019 Pro. Interestingly, that price has basically stayed flat at $200 from 2020 to 2026. You can install Lineage or whatever if you don't care about the DRM. It's exactly what HN people want, and that's how much it costs.
I am looking for options and being able to sideload on a Shield is attractive, but if the experience is no different than a homemade Linux HTPC, I can save the cash.
This is full on Google Play Services certification and more. Ultimately to get the thing that can run/stream Netflix etc the amount of work just isn't viable for the price point people would pay for this.
Also the truth is no investor would touch this on hardware sale income alone, needs some subscription plan at least.
Roku was always a weird one, beloved by people who couldn't stand laggy built in TV interface but doesn't really offer much beyond what TVs come with anyway.
Amazon Fire TV
Apple TV
Smart TV built-ins
Are there any others?
But as written to the letter of the law, no, as this would not create a monopoly. More consolidation yes, but a monopoly technically not.
Like the government saying: "Sorry Fox, you cannot have this one, this one is too good for your dinosaur management."
Since that's a very dangerous government hand meddling, I guess the correct move is to let it happen (to our liking or not).
I mean... gestures widely
Does the market think this sale won't be approved by the current administration for some reason?
Also, look at the five day chart. Shot up from $120 on Friday. Bunch of insiders knew early.
> FOX is acquiring Roku in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at $160.00 per ROKU share. FOX will pay $96.00 in cash and 0.9693 shares of FOX Class A common stock for each Roku Class A and Class B share outstanding immediately prior to the effective time of the merger.
So not a straight $160/share cash, but $96/share cash and some FOX shares. Roku trading below 160 means the fox stock is not considered worth (160-96) by the market.
Powell Memorandum (1971) intensifies, with corporate buy out of all society's core media functions by extremist conservatives radically racing ahead.
I thought Roku took off due to their focus on the streaming platform itself, and being agnostic to the streaming services that could be accessed via that platform. Having one specific content producer buy that platform feels like it destroys or devalues the USP of the platform, at least from the point of view of the consumer/end-user.
Or is this just another step in the relentless enshittification of all services?
Well, it's been 5 years ... time to switch out my Roku for something better ...
One of the great things about Roku is it's minimal expense ... which means I won't think twice to swap out for anything else.
Who is it actually bad for? The consumers. The new religious-linked GOP no longer believes in fairness or holding business accountable for anything, it's "God's will" or something...