Ugh. Roku was one of the platforms with fewer ads.
- Roku will be adding more ads to the home screens of its devices and TVs in the near future.
- The ads will be interactive and ‘shoppable’ and will cover a range of industries, including restaurants and cars.
- Roku already has a significant amount of ads on its home screen, and it is unclear if users will be able to change their preferences for the new ads.
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After various trial and error, not to mention irritation, I have determined that this is the way. It’s what I did in the dark ages back in the day (with a Pentium 3 that had enough hardware acceleration to play DVD’s!) and it’s what I do once more. By hook or by crook, one way or another you’re guaranteed to be able to retain complete control over a PC even if that ultimately means you have to install some flavor of Linux on the fucking thing.
You can get a perfectly capable media center PC for very little money if you don’t need it to be able to run AAA games, which in my case I don’t. Even the various nanocomputer boards like one of the beefier Raspberry Pi’s or any of its myriad competitors can do the job these days, fit in a tiny enclosure, make no noise, and consume very little power.
Fuck all the Chromecasts, Fire sticks, Roku boxes, Apple TV’s, and other sundry and bullshit devices of the world.
Nvidia SHIELD is still ok, because it’s Android TV, and you can install custom launchers on Android. Therefore no ads on your home screen.
Granted, Nvidia is letting the SHIELD line twist in the wind, and the most recent model is from 2019, but it’s not outmoded just yet. I’ll still be using mine for a number of years.
The shield is great for the reasons you mention here. I use primal launcher and have a custom home screen experience without annoying ads.
The shield also outputs music over HDMI without resampling, which makes it awesome for my digital music listening, except the app support is lame.
Yeah unfortunately Android TV is neglected versus Roku and Firestick and so on, but most major apps are there, and you can sideload shit.
Inb4 Toyota ads start popping up in your Steam library.
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I’ve been doing this for a decade.
Highly recommend it. The only thing some people don’t like is using a keyboard and mouse on the couch, but there are endless solutions for that.
Actually…that’s the sticking point at my house. I’m ok with mouse keyboard, but my wife and kids are not.
Still trying to find a remote that will suit that use case.
I’ve heard good things about the PS5 Media Remote, which pairs via bluetooth. If my generic bluetooth remote dies that is my replacement plan.
I want to love jellyfin, but the Roku app is a buggy mess.
The Roku app has had a major update recently. Might be worth checking again.
Why would you run Roku on Jellyfin? Wouldn’t that open you to the ads you are trying to avoid?
I’m one of the Jellyfin Roku devs. What bugs are you experiencing?
Not the OP, but I have been getting a bug where I select a show/movie to watch in the roku app, and instead of playing it will exit out to the list of shows/movies menu. These same shows work just fine in the app on a google android TV, or on a computer
Yeah, something is failing in playback and it’s simply falling back to the previous screen. I’d suggest posting this to the troubleshooting forum. I’m sure the support team will be happy to help out!
Step one.
Buy a thing. It is a good thing.
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Oops, now it only works if you pay monthly. Ok maybe they’re doing some upkeep.
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Now there’s ads. You’re paying them money, but they want even more so now you’re the product.
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Haha it broke! My family tech guy says it’s literally impossible to fix without the cheat codes.
Final step. Don’t buy the thing again. Don’t buy anything with “terms may be altered. Pray I do not alter them further.” Probably stick to open source.
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Jesus, I hate that word, “shoppable”. It just sounds dystopian.
it’s not as brutal a construct as the other Sales-Bro trash we see: ‘the ask’, ‘the spend’, etc. It’s too bad that no matter how much we mock the soulless people who parrot that crap, it’s just our dumber friends who won’t learn anyway.
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If someone, let’s say, happened to own a Roku TV and a NAS full of some sort of DRM-free video content ripped from home-video media they legitimately own and have legally format-shifted and backed up, to watch their stuff they’d still have to wade through Roku’s enshittifying home screen to access the appropriate media player.
Anyone jailbreaking these damn things yet?
Thank you Roku, a step forward towards self hosting and self managing of every service
God damn this shit is so fucking annoying. I paid something like $100 last year for the Roku Ultra because it was better than the built-in software on my TV and now I have to see ads? Fuck em, I’ll repurpose a mini PC I have and replace the Roku.
Do you want Plex servers? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET PLEX SERVERS
Not with pihole I wont.
This posted prompted my to set up pihole. My blank space has a big “not connected to the internet,” although all the services work.
Unfortunately, they also disabled accessibility settings, so I can’t remap buttons or add another launcher.
This is my last Google TV. Are there any other options?
“Not connected to the internet” lol. How presumptuous of the designers.
If it’s a Google TV you can always install a custom launcher and even disable the stock launcher via ADB and never be bothered by any of the curated bullshit again
My recommendation is FLauncher
Well time to replace my roku TV with a Goodwill special TV because fuck that shit. Fuck smart tvs in general and what they have become. They used to be neat little editions added on for value on your TV back when Netflix made sense. But now they don’t especially with the ads that automatically get shoved into your face depending on what you are doing that have started to interrupt your viewing experience. It’s not like I’ll be downgrading at all when just using a computer with a TV using Stremio and AllDebrid.
After reading so much about this, I’m definitely going to start reading up on running a Pihole at home
I’d like to ask for suggestions on FAQs or guides that’d help me get started.
TIA!
Your don’t need to run your own pihole anymore, unless your goal is to not share your dns history of course
Controld.com and many others has free dns which blocks ads
I’m going to take a look. Thanks!
Is there a free DNS from Controld.com I can just put in my network settings?
I only saw the paid option. - thx
Yeah just click free dns from the menu
Adguard DNS does that for free : https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
Yep I’m using adguard but heard they have new owners of unknown security accountability
Why won’t anyone make a privacy focused premium streaming box with no ads? I’d pay so much for this thing that will never exist.
IMHO, for a quick out-of-the-box solution, the AppleTV is still the better streaming box.
Performant, tight software experience, large software catalog, proactively asks about blocking tracking data, and no ads all over the place.
It does advertise Apple content but its not too bad.
You can turn that off. If you don’t want the TV app to show new TV+ shows when it’s highlighted in the dock, you can set it to display recently watched content. And recently watched content will be app agnostic.
The feature is a little buried, but it’s a nice experience upgrade that is worth switching over to.
Apple TV is a premium streaming box without ads. The privacy aspect is less clear, but probably better than Samsung, Google and Roku that are all harvesting data.
An open source solution would be better.
The privacy aspect is less clear, but probably better
I love how dividing by an unknown somehow makes a bigger number for you. The bias is leaking.
Apple chargers more and isn’t openly selling data (Samsung) or openly selling ads (Google). The commercial activity provides some insight here, that suggests Apple is better for privacy.
We need a fediverse streaming service.
So you go from owning a multi media entertainment system to owning a online store front where you must buy crap that you don’t need.
This is bait and switch level bullshit
I do see the appeal of non-smart TV’s now. Just getting a device that host your media is a good option.
“commercial display” is the search term you want.
All i need is to find one, preferably affordable obviously.
Just the thought of being able to use it until the hardware fails, instead of when the maufacturer decides to abandon it after 2 years.
I remember the 20 years i lived at home, we owned 3 tv’s and 2 of those were passed on to people who didn’t have the money to upgrade. The last one is still in use today, 15 years later.
While my own tv now requires 2 devices to stay functional one of which i need to rent from my isp, in a way i’m being forced to buy a new tv even though i don’t need one and then everyone wonders why the planet is going to shit.
I’m surprised we aren’t living in a cyberpunk esque landfill bordered city.
All new Google TVs have a “dumb mode” that you can configure at startup.
For anybody who has one, here’s a dns block list specifically for Roku: https://github.com/asimcard/roku-ad-list
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Anyway to roll back firmware on some of these TVs?
Mine was never connected, except once a friend came over and connected it and it updated and now it requires a connection to rename inputs…
It’s never been connected since that day either.
Hate this kind of crap.
Why did they ever connect it? just wanted to watch the world burn?
They didn’t understand how the TV and Shield worked and had wanted to watch some sports thing on their ESPN account.
I guess they thought i was mistaken when I told them they only needed the shield remote for everything and the shield could do it all.
I don’t think so, I searched around but didn’t see anything noteworthy. Maybe a hacker will get bored one day and jailbreak them, but seems like there’s no hope as of right now.
It’s honestly kind of surprising this hasn’t happened yet.
I guess TVs don’t have much processing power or room for it. Or maybe all the drm in them is a nightmare.
