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.
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.
My vizio tv auto plays shows, ads, and light music if you leave it idling too long after you turn it on. Moving the remote down just once disables it till the next time your on home screen.
They’re working hard to make sure piracy provides the best experience.
It’s approaching 1984 levels of BS control.
Sorry to inform you, but we are already in the Brave New World.
Ugh I wanna be in Brand New Animal
I seem to be lacking in Soma and orgies.
Ah crap. That means I’m an Epsilon.
This is already my experience but still use a Roku to access Plex. Looks like I’ll need to get something else or figure out if i can block them with Ad Guard Home
I use pi hole and the experience is not entirely smooth. I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this but my pi hole blocks ads but every few weeks Roku has an update and it locks up the entire operating system and I’m stuck in a loop of trying to get my update so I can return to normal. I for the hell of it disabled pi hole for 5 minutes and it wound up working but not until I dropped pi hole. So it’s as if it every so often decides to hold the operating system hostage if I don’t drop pi hole for updates. Makes me think they likely get all the telemetry they are trying to collect for selling data. I like not watching ads 90 percent of the time but it pisses me off that they are likely still spying on me by forcing me to communicate with their servers every now and then.
I can’t recall having that issue but I stopped using pi-hole because it was blocking certain functionalities on some websites. It required a more hands on approach than I wanted to dedicate at the time.
My brother in Christ, please just connect another device to your TV and disconnect your TV from the internet. No one should be using the built-in software for exactly this reason.
Interesting, I use PiHole as well and have no issues with any of my Roku devices. I wonder if you have more restrictive blocking or some particular rule that I don’t. What lists are you using in PiHole?
The only reason I still use my roku is because it has sound leveling capabilities that is much better than anything else I have. I use my PC for just about everything but recently Sling stopped working on the PC or at least the DVR is directing me to download some app? Also Paramount doesn’t handle 60fps content (sports) on the PC very well, it stutters a lot.
Windows has sound leveling but I haven’t had much luck with it when its really needed. My receiver is old and has only rudimentary sound leveling.
Ughhh just unsubscibe
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.
Removed by mod
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.
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
Removed by mod
DRM. They don’t like how open Linux can be so to combat people using it for pirating their content the companies restrict it.
For instance, Netflix is capped at 720p on Linux unless you are on Opera, apparently.
This kind of garbage is why I’ve never connected my tcl tv with bulit in roku to the internet.
What’s the best alternative? I have a fire cube, and I’m getting sick of it. Apple TV? Is there a FOSS solution that’s close to the same quality interface?
I have a Raspberry Pi 500 running PiOS that works well like a computer to just play things in browser. No ads or anything of course. But also no casting from a phone or anything
The best is unironically to pirate and use something like Kodi on a SBC that can run libreElec.
TL; DR - No. But actually maybe, depending on what you’re looking for and what you can put up with.
Are you looking to access streaming services? Or are you okay with self-hosting?
The FOSS solutions that support streaming services are pretty janky IMO because they don’t have support from the service, so you’re probably better off hooking up a laptop running Linux and access stuff in a browser. I had Netflix working through Kodi on a Raspberry Pi, for example, but like I said, it was super janky. Maybe it’s better now, idk, but check out OpenELEC and Kodi. You’ll need some hardware to run it on.
If you can self-host your videos, Jellyfin is pretty great, and I think there are a couple more options. You’ll need to get the content yourself though and connect it to the TV somehow (e.g. the Jellyfin app if you have a smart TV).
Some good options already listed. But here’s another.
Hey an Android TV box (Onn brand or similar) and install an open source launcher on it, like Projectivity. You have to use adb to disable the default launcher after the new launcher is installed, otherwise it keeps defaulting back to the default one. But once don’t it’s smooth sailing. You have a dedicated streaming device with a remote control and a nice UI with zero ads on the home screen.
Won’t hurt my feelings to throw their shit tv right in the trash.
If you force Ads then I will replace your equipment. The only reason I use Roku is to avoid the Ads built into “smart TVs”
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.
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.
Roku had the best smart tv ui. I was seriously bummed when the ads started rolling in a few years ago.
I want an open source streaming client, but from what I hear DRM gets in the way of that.
Honestly i dont even care about non intrusive ads. I dont like it but i can live with those ads on the side bar telling me about some movie coming out, but this auto video bullshit that takes over my screen is fucking awful. That’s the line for me
I’ve much preferred Google TV for some time now. The recommendations and live free tv options are essentially built into the UI. Although I do use the Roku app as one of my free streaming options lol.
- 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.
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.
Was roku recently acquired by an investment firm?
Uh huh, but collecting Blurays is just silly I’ve been told.
