This is one of the many reasons why you should be your own streaming service. 🏴☠️
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Technology
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We had one on our TV the other day. This will absolutely be our last Roku.
In the meantime I immediately installed PiHole, to block all their ads.
This is the way.
They're not "smart" TVs. They're TVs with shitty android spyware boxes attached.
Stop using that garbage. Don't connect it to a network, just use it as a display.
If you need to watch YouTube on your TV go and grab an OSMC (Kodi-based OS for media boxes) media box. You can get a pre-built one for around $100, or install it yourself on a raspberry pi.
These manufacturers depend on you being lazy and accepting their spyware. You will save yourself so much more headache in the long run if you control your own hardware and software.
Trying to navigate through the world without some minimal knowledge of computers means you're going to get taken by every scam like what Roku is pulling.
It's not just the tvs, they're doing it on their streaming sticks too.
Yeah, every product that they sell will do it.
Using something like OSMC (or buying a Vero is you don't want to mess around with the setup) will let you control what runs on your player.
Until you do that, you're paying some random company while also giving root access on a device in your house and letting them waste your time with ads.
All you get out of the deal is avoiding having to learn how to use a new piece of software. A Pyrrhic victory due to the fact that you have to learn to use Roku.
I'd rather spend a few hours learning how to setup Kodi. It's free software, you don't pay for it and it's Free software, you control it with no strings attached.
My big issue with kodi is that i like my media library to be human navigable and named and it does not. Dealbreaker
Kodi doesn't organize your media, you use other applications for that (tinymediamanager, sonarr/radarr, etc).
The default library layout, for Plex/Jellyfin/Kodi is very human navigable, for example TV Shows are in this format:
TV Show Name
|-Season 1
|-Season 2
|-\-S02E01-Episode_Name.mkv
There may be a few extra files in the directories depending on what metadata you're storing and what you're pulling from the Internet, but it is organized and navigable.
aight, I never said that Kodi organises media, if it tried to, I would shoot it on sight.
I organise my media, ebcause it's media I've decided I want to keep and organise accordingly. Kodi has very specific requirements and cracks the shits if you don't give it exactly what it wants. If that fine for you, then that's fine for you. That is not how I roll
how I do roll:
-> \fileserver
--> Sci fi series
---> Babylon 5
----> 1.01 - Midnight on the Firing Line
----> ...
----> 2.01 - Points of Departure
etc etc etc.
I've played with a translation file so Kodi's file scrapers can understand that X is Y and react accordingly, but it's very "my way or the highway" and I don't bow to a machine. When it refuses to even acknowledge the existence of a file (as in just display the file name, not necessary with any metadata) unless it can jam its thumb up there, I'm out.
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I will absolutely be getting rid of mine if I experience this.
I only have my roku tv because I got it dirt cheap ages ago, I don't use it all that often and no good enough reason to replace it, I'm already considering replacing it with a dumb tv and just hooking up my laptop to it. If I ever experience this, it will make the cost of a new dumb tv 1000% worth it.
You can reset your Roku tv and simply not connect it to the internet. It will still work as a dumb tv.
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Basically punishment for people who either don't get their own streaming box/avoid tvs with roku built in.
What? This is reported to be happening on both sticks and tv versions of the rolu app.
It's capitalism... When every CEO, Board Member, and shareholder wants a yacht, it's literally never enough. They even created a term to describe this inevitable deterioration of every company's product: enshittification.
It's not that they all want yachts, they make enough to each buy multiple yachts. It's just that nothing is ever enough. They don't know what success is, so they chase the undefined feeling until they die unfulfilled. Fucking living dead and a cancer on collective humanity
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I never plugged mine into the Internet. I just plugged in an Apple TV, and I’m good to go. No ads, no sweat, no problem.
New devices don't allow that
I got mine three weeks ago from Amazon. How much more new can it get?
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NVidia Shield 2 when?
Apparently Valve might be releasing a shield-like thing. If they do it's an instant buy for me.
Never, apparently. Dunno why Nvidia is dragging their feet on this one
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Go look at the down votes on all your posts and just how universally unpopular your take is - That's called being wrong. That's fine, you can be wrong sometimes, that's okay. It doesn't define you, but stop digging in the wrong direction.
I can pay for music, I often don't on principal. I work to find other ways to contribute to artists as directly as I can (patreon, merch, shows, etc). I'm not alone in that. You had some weird guilt socialized into you that tells you your value is in what you spend and own. Protest at any level is valid. Copyright law is bullshit, DMCA takedowns are bullshit, DRM and digital streaming music that you never actually legally own is all bullshit. Anything you can do to make that broken system nervous or hurt is a great and valuable thing to broader society.
You are unequivocally wrong here, you're the last person to realize that, but you still can realize it here and now today and go forward from here. How about it, take the olive branch, bud?
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