this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025

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1100

“Awful”: Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Disconnect from network
Factory reset
Use HDMI to plug into a device that actually respects your privacy and does what you want (Jellyfin, Plex, Pihole for even more goodness, and simply run other streaming services via privacy enhanced browser)
Enjoy life without enshittified asshole OS no one asked for by going back to a time that was better.

EDIT: I haven't tested this as of yet, but it seems like a decent option for converting and old PC (or if you have a RaspPi) into a media platform with comparable functionality: https://arcadian.cloud/pi/2023/04/27/easily-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-smart-tv/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Libreelec on raspberry pi 4 (Kodi) works for me but it really needs a new YouTube app. That's the only issue really

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago

This kind of garbage is why I've never connected my tcl tv with bulit in roku to the internet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Anyone successfully installed LineageOS on Nvidia Shield or Onn devices? I ran the Konstakang AndroidTV build of Lineage on a Raspberry Pi 4 a couple years ago, and it was nice in how uncluttered and non-spywarey it was, but I ended up buying a Shield because hardware decoding never worked well and the frame rate drops were unbearable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

I was just looking into this and saw this comment. I'm just using Xubuntu on an old laptop at the moment but this sort of thing is what I really want to go for so I might test it out when I get more time.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Watching Roku steadily decline from a trusted brand has been something. For a time, they were the alternative to the other bigger more Ad driven companies. I’ve owned 2 and used to enjoy them overall. Now, they’ve slowly become just as bad or worse than their competitors in some regards. When history looks back on streaming boxes as a failed delivery method, Roku might just get to be the example in the forefront.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago

Was roku recently acquired by an investment firm?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 12 hours ago

Uh huh, but collecting Blurays is just silly I've been told.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Get to the endgame. Just strap us to a chair and make us watch your crap ads Clockwork Orange style.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

But the eyelid things look like they're really uncomfortable. Any chance you can just hack into our brains and stream advertising consistently while I'm in a coma?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

The Matrix ad campaign

[–] [email protected] 8 points 20 hours ago

Roku box: Bye, bitch!

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have a Roku ultra in my kid's room.

I do not want her subjected to ads when she turns on the TV.

This is unacceptable to me and I will be replacing all my Rokus immediately.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

pirate, or you'll just be doing the same fucking thing again in two years.

good news: pi's can do everything a roku does, plus any you install of: retro gaming, libreoffice, web browsing, shit tons of educational software, IDE's, and teaching her computers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (6 children)

I have a 200+TB library for my Plex and jellyfin instances. The Roku was just a family friendly launcher and remote. I bought them when you could still disable ads in the secret menus and most of the Roku BS is blocked by a pair of piholes, but I've gotten annoyed chasing new urls to blacklist.

It's DRM for the other app bullshit that becomes a hindrance for going the Kodi route. There really isn't a good alternative that I've found. Linux boxes will limit some services to 720p and jt's mostly baseball and local news programs that I'll lose.

For the news, I need to look at something like hdhomerun or something else I can pair with an OTA antenna.

For baseball, not much other than the absolute mess that live streaming sports is. Doable, sure. But a pita and sketchy last I looked into it. My season ticket comes with MLB.tv, but the irony is that I'm "in network" so all my teams games are blacked out for me. I had previously created a VPN tunnel and routed one of my Rokus to a different state to watch it. But it's not a user friendly experience.

For games, I already have a batocera box running on an old dell thin client with way more power than a pi, and it has Kodi on it. But the UI/UX still sucks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I use an Nividia shield that I've had for about 5 years. Have an alternate ad free launcher enabled. Still works really well. I use it mostly with Kodi streaming from SMB, some Jellyfin though I have Jellyfin hosted on a Pi4 so video quality is somewhat lacking. The 4k upscaling still works very well and is somewhat unique among streaming boxes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Cabernet with daddylive plugin, this can emulate hdhomerun on your network, add this to plex/Jellyfin for live tv. https://thedaddy/ . to Check the list and see if these 24/7 channel streams work for you.
I integrated these into plex and are able to watch live tv the way I want. Cabernet is a docker container on my network, ensure you set the ip address to the server vs the docker IP, in the Cabernet web ui settings.

If you want to just watch streams off that site, I recommend using brave browser, turn on all the ad block capability and set it to strict and even import the hagezi multi pro blocklist in brave. The amount of pop ups on that site is horrible. But brave smooths them out and streams are fairly reliable. Plenty of sports.

Cabernet Daddylive

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I just got an HDHomeRun that I use with an antenna and love it. I use Mac and they are one of the only boxes that works on Mac.

They don’t have a native Linux client, but you can use VLC supposedly: https://info.hdhomerun.com/info/linux

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

You can connect your HDHomeRun with Plex too. It’s really a nice setup. Plex can work like a DVR to record live channels and even has some capability to remove commercials. I’ve started letting NFL games be DVR’d and commercials stripped before watching the game. It’s a much better experience if you can tolerate the delay.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 22 hours ago

Aaargh matey!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Roku is the one that bricked peoples TVs unless they agreed to their new terms of service.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bought a Roku back in 2020 or 2021 because the Apple TV was more expensive.

Now I know why.

For what it is worth, I have Roku set up as a REGEX in my Pi-hole so for the most part, any of this nonsense is completely blocked on my Roku.

Needless to say, I shouldn’t have to do this shit with a device I paid for and mainly use for Plex streaming.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

I know it's being lazy. But if you have the regex you could post, I'd appreciate it.

I had this happen to me just a few days ago. Within the hour I bought an Nvidia shield and came up with a plan to install the projectivy launcher and button remapper.

I'm mostly happy, it's much more snappy but it's missing a couple apps I used on the Roku (WGN and Marquee Sports). At least I can use my own pictures for the background and screensavers.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 day ago (20 children)

Can i pleace find a decent TV without smart-capabilitys? I just want HDMI thats it

[–] CancerMancer 24 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Don't give your TV wifi access, use a separate device to watch stuff (Chromecast, FireTV, Android box, etc..)

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[–] candyman337 11 points 1 day ago (17 children)

Reasons I turn off WiFi on any TV I buy and use a streaming box

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (6 children)

So glad I blocked my TVs access to the Internet at the router level. Never complainrd about not setting up a network if the network doesn't work.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If this happens on my box I'll be taking them to small claims court and let you all know how it goes...

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I think this happened to me last night with an ad for Moana 2 playing automatically. I just assumed I accidentally hit a button. I was on the home screen but it enlarged and played in the basically the top quarter of the screen. I hit Close and it closed.

Also, the Netflix app is absolute garbage on the TCL Roku TVs. Constantly freezes and crashes, sometimes while not even try to rewind or pause/resume. It just decides its had enough and causes the TV to restart lol.