This is technically correct, but it’s not new. They’ve had this ad for years.
looks like they shrunk the menu to icons in order to make room for the ad on the same view, not just when you arrow over to the app icons.
Roku is another prime example of enshitification.
Now I have all my “smart” TVs disconnected, and I hooked up some inexpensive Android TV boxes (with a couple minor modifications). No more ads!
Roku is another prime example of enshitification
Agreed, but are there any realistic alternatives in the android space to firestick and roku?
I’m also curious what you ended up with
People love to hate Apple, and that’s fine (Tim Cook sucks ass), but the AppleTV is honestly the best streamer and you can’t change my mind.
Zero ads on the Home Screen, and even the first gen 4K box that came out 8 years ago is still fast as hell and getting updates.
I know this because I had one in my closet and just took it out the other day when setting up a TV in my bedroom. It downloaded updates and is now rocking and rolling again.
My family knows me as the anti-apple IT Guy. So, it shocked everyone when I brought home a Best Buy open box Apple TV 4K (saved me $20US).
Honestly, this is my first Apple purchase since my ipod and I have to admit: it’s good.
Roku has lost their way and my 3 Roku Ultra devices are all dying for reasons unknown (freezing, random reboots, spinning endlessly when trying to open an app). I’m just so done with them (and Nvidia) for my streaming hardware business.
I wonder how much of the anti-apple stuff comes from the extremity of the person’s views. I have always preferred PC/windows due to familiarity with it, but I’ve used iphones for 12 or 13 years, and by extension, some of apple’s services (like icloud). They’ve been pretty great this whole time. And, as a normie, I’ve been happy with what I’ve heard and seen about their stability, general lack of ads, and security/protection of customer data. I doubt there’s many others on the Fediverse with similar views due to the nature of this place, but anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that it seems like some of the dissent toward apple is inherent to their position relative to the opinion holder.
I definitely think it’s “linux brain” that exists around here to a degree. You can see it on any given thread that talks about…well…anything technical. “Just download Linux!” they’ll say. And I say this as someone who LIKES Linux. I have it on two of my pcs (and I have a Mac and iPhone/iPad, etc. as well). It’s great. But there’s a zealotry around here around it.
That said, it’s not hard to dislike Apple right now. I’m pretty mad at them for cozying up to trump all the time. I’m glad Cook will not be leading Apple soon (though I wish he’d just leave outright. He’ll still be at the company). But it’s hard to deny the hardware is great and the software is generally good and generally works well.
But Lemmy is certainly a niche population of nerds. And that’s fine! It’s great! But a lot of those nerds seem to love the “console wars”-type mentality of “MY thing is the best and anything else is bad.”
I really appreciate your response and I agree completely. Linux seems awesome (I’ve played with Mint a little bit, and have heard a lot about Bazzite and Kinoite, and I do plan on moving over when I have the time/energy/motivation. It does seem significantly better than the commercial offerings once one gets past the (often exaggerated) learning curve.
Would you mind expanding on the Apple stuff? I haven’t looked into them as a company since they told the courts to fuck off during the Snowden trial or something like that. I’m realizing that I’m not an Apple fanboy, but I also don’t have the data pool to really form an opinion one way or another.
We really need to figure out an open source TV OS or something. I want a Linux based OS for a small PC explicitly to stream Plex or other streaming services. I think I read that licensing for the transcoding or something was the hang up.
There are solutions aiming to help with that like LibreELEC (basically a minimal backing OS for Kodi). But unfortunately any Linux-based streaming solution will have issues with DRM connecting to Netflix, Prime, etc. There are sidesteps around that too but starts to get more and more challenging for the average user
Great, I got rid of Amazon fire stick after they stuck ads in movies and got a Roku.
Now I’ll have to switch again or start pirating. Another loss for civilization
Used a fire TV stick for a long time but multiple factors made me finally switch to an Nvidia shield.
Worked great for a year and then an OS updated made the home screen 60% ads, especially those that started to play with sound when I was on them for like 2 milliseconds. Installed projectify on it and now I only see what I want to see.
It is always disturbing to me how much ads I see when I am using someone else’s system, because I banned everything at home.
I built Kyu Launcher so you can get Roku experience on your Android TV.
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Buy one or more NVIDIA Shield Pro 2019 editions for whatever TV (and make sure whatever brand TV you use is itself completely disconnected from the internet) you like watching things on.
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Replace the built-in NVIDIA / Google Launcher with a custom one like WOLF or FLauncher completely free of ads.
There are completely ad-free wonderful little alternatives to every ever-enshittifying service out there…
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YouTube- > SmartTube Next -
Subscription Streaming Services- > Plex (or Jellyfin if you’re just doing local and no special devices that need transcoding) -
Twitch-> S0undTV
- Combine that with a NAS of your choice and (optionally) a few pieces of free software setup through a containerized deployment system like docker by following the guidance of Dr. Frankenstein along with an account with Mullvad.
…Any other steps there may or may not be are for you to figure out on your own.
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The easiest way to avoid ads is use an android streamer (I use the Google tv streamer) and install projectivity launcher. You get the cleanest UI that’s fully customizable with only what you want to see. I also installed a button remapper app to change the netflix button on my remote to open Plex. It’s a very easy stress-free experience using my tv
I really really wish general society had brains.
I’m not preaching anything new here, that people who know what a fediverse wouldn’t already know.
That being said, never buy roku anything. This isn’t new. It seems every 3-6 months I read a new headline where roku shits all over their customers.
And I know I know this. And I know you know this. However I also know we collectively are like 3% of society. Walk into any target or walmart or best buy, and you’ll see walls and walls of tv’s. And 90% of them say they have roku built into the menu. Well, WE know not to buy that tv. However, everybody else still buys it, and then complains 2 years later when their tv is bogged down and slow and they need a new tv.
I really wish it were legal to stand in these stores, and anytime someone tries to buy a roku, or roku tv, I could just beat the shit out of them with a tire iron. In my mind that seems like a perfectly justifiable response. But apperently thats “assult” and I would be “deranged” and “psychotic to even think that was ok”.
Pssshhhh…
They are still being enshitiffied… Literally everything is
Are they ads for thing to pirate…?
Mine doesn’t. Because I set it up with no Internet connection, so it’s just a dumb tv now.
They have been slowing ramping up the enshitification over the last year. It time to add some more features to my Kodi install!
I don’t have a Roku. I own a non-smart TV connected to a mini PC. But for folks that don’t want to go through that setup, wouldn’t using an adblock DNS block it?
TCL TVs (whose OS is just Roku, and I imagine Roku is the same situation) blink the front LED as an Error when there’s no network connection or it can’t hit whatever servers it has configured for FW update check. It can get stuck on partial firmware updates when it can’t cokplete every check it wants to make. The LED has a diffuser on it so it’s a significant negative impact.
I can’t even tape that LED because that’s also where the IR sensor is. My next step is to disassemble the thing and snip snip.
I don’t use any smart features, just HDMI input like you. Finding a Dumb TV has been a challenge.
I did a factory reset on my TCL roku tv and use a third party streaming box. Blinking red light on the TV went away after the factory reset for me.
Don’t worry, the next model they release probably won’t allow you to do that.
Just did this. Appreciate the tip. I had to select In Store Demo, which made it a Dumb TV. Its perfect.
Edit: store demo isn’t required and has more limited settings. Just resetting and not connecting to anything makes it a dumb TV with no Roku OS on it. Inout selection, picture controls, sound controls, and that’d about it.
Cannot thank you enough. Dumbt TVs for life.
Ooh, definitely gonna try this first. I actually assumed that factory reset would use the 1y old firmware that introduced the problem, but it could well roll back to the 6y original.
TCL makes Google TV models which explicitly allow you to set them up without Wi-Fi so only HDMI and antenna work. You should buy one of those next time.
Oh good to know. Much appreciated. Thisnines still going strong after 6.5y, great panels honestly. If LED neutering failed I was only going to look for other brands because of this thing so this is super good news
I just did a factory reset per another reply and I selected to set up as Store Demo, which makes it a dumb TV :)
How do you do that, and do you get full control of picture settings?
After reset i was given the 2 options of home or store. BTW Store did not have a setting to disable standby LED, so I reset again with Home, and lucky I did because that has slightly more settings, including that one.
You have full control of picture settings, yes. Also picture profiles (Movie, Vivid etc). Full color brightness contrast adjustment. HDR detection.
I had no Ethernet connected and never connected to wifi. There is no Roku OS. It’s a TCL OS with fewer settings. I could custom name the inputs and I personally made my HTPC inlut be startup. The main menu does have a static Roku Ad in Home mode. When starting instead on an input, input can be changed with the side drawer flyout menu, so I never have to see that main menu ad (not that it’s intrusive, there’s not really enough menu items to require a full screen anyway).
Nothing is bugging me to connect or do anything, and I couldn’t be happier. Wish I knew about this sooner.
If you haven’t done so yet, you should set the clear motion/action smoothing setting to custom with de-judder and de-blur set to 0, and turn off the noise reduction stuff.
The blur and AI generated look those features cause on their default settings is even worse than home screen ads for me.
So I have Denoise settings, I will disable per your recc.
But I don’t have motion/blur (I don’t remember having it in the Roku OS either so my 6.5yo TV may just not have had that)
I have a Game Mode that seems to increase response time at the cost of picture quality, which I have disabled.
laughs in a Linux Raspi, hooked up to a dumb projector, sitting behind a pihole and streaming from an in-house Jellyfin media server
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Are there any TVs nowadays that don’t advertise to you? I bought a Hisense about 6 years ago because it supposedly didn’t advertise. 2 years into getting the TV it advertises now. Any suggestions for a TV that just lets me watch?
Every time somebody brings this up, there’s the same obvious answer. The only real option is to have an external streaming device and to disable or completely ignore the built-in operating system.
Finally got sick of the FireTV so I plugged a mini PC into a dumb TV. It’s kinda sad to have to use a keyboard instead of a controller, but it was a minor tradeoff for a much better experience.
Honestly this is what I would do if I didn’t have a partner to worry about. They wouldn’t like that but yeah, it’s the cleanest way, if not odd.
It’s certainly odd but my wife doesn’t mind it because she just makes me operate it 😅
