Own a Roku TV or streaming device? You're about to see a lot more ads on your home screen

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 582 points – Own a Roku TV or streaming device? You're about to see a lot more ads on your home screen
techradar.com

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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PiHole Domain regex blacklist:
(ads|logs|cloudservices).roku.com$

And there it is, folks.

I added the Roku and Samsung TV servers to my blocklist months ago, (maybe even years ago, at this point?) My three smart TVs are the most blocked devices on my network, by far. It’s not even close. Here are today’s stats from my pihole:

For reference, my phone (my most used device) is number four on that list. My three smart TVs (two Rokus and a Samsung) are numbers 1, 2, and 3. I haven’t even watched TV today. These blocked requests are simply from the TVs idling. Smart TVs are hilariously, mind-bogglingly invasive, and you should block them ASAP.

Why did you black out your private IP addresses?

Old habits. Just as a general rule, I black out most IPs, even when private. I used to deal with a lot of horribly insecure devices at work, with default passwords that couldn’t be changed, no port security (so anyone who found the wrong Ethernet port could connect to the network,) etc…

So anyone on the network could fuck things up if they were on the wrong wifi and tried to reconfigure something they shouldn’t be touching. It was only an issue a few times, since the vast majority of people using said network were other techs who knew what they were doing. But there were a few times that someone screenshotted something, it got passed around to all the managers, and someone who didn’t know what they were doing got curious and went digging when they saw the IPs.

It was never anything catastrophic since the network wasn’t even connected to the internet, and we had backups of any important settings. But it was just a practice that we all eventually picked up, to prevent random employees from sniffing around. Because it always sucked to come into work the next morning, and discover that a particular piece of gear wasn’t working properly because someone decided to tick a stray checkbox or change a polling rate.

I, for one, appreciate that someone called @PM_Your_Nudes_Please understands the value of good OPSEC. You go ahead and fiercely guard any electronic data you might happen to have, neighbor.

What does it look like on your tv after blocking the ads

Not the guy you replied to, but my LG webos TV worked just fine after I added a whole bunch of domains to my pihole blacklist. Got rid of A LOT of crap from the "homepage". Made it a hell of a lot cleaner and overall more usable. There are compiled lists of domains per brand and per region. Just find one that fits your bill.

I use past tense because last week I finally created a kodi box and took the TV offline entirely. Now it's even better.

Step one.

Buy a thing. It is a good thing.

  1. Oops, now it only works if you pay monthly. Ok maybe they're doing some upkeep.

  2. Now there's ads. You're paying them money, but they want even more so now you're the product.

  3. 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.

Me after getting those dumbass Canary cameras that cost $200 a piece then they completely wrecked the free tier then started giving them away for free to get more subscribers.

Wyze cams with wz_mini_hacks firmware offline in a VLAN with Frigate and Home assistant from here on out!

For those with Roku TVs or any of their products, I found that a PiHole blocks the ads on the home screen so far. Hoping I could pick up an ONN box in the future so I can just not deal with this shit lol.

A pihole is a whole "home" adware/malware/spyware blocker. It runs on a raspberry Pi but can also run on a physical/virtual install of several different Linux distributions. Not only can it block ads on your computer but can also block ads on technology that you can't (easily) block ads on ("Smart" TV / stock cellphone / IoT devices / etc). In addition, with some easy to instal additional (free) software you can block ads even when not at "home"!

Pihole also has a docker distribution, so it’ll also run easily on “appliance” NAS solutions with minimal effort

Thank you for the explanation. I felt very out of the loop on this whole thread. I'll look into pihole.

NO problem.

Any issues, let me know :-)

Not sure if the PiHole team is on Lemmy yet.

Yeah, DNS blocking is quite effective for not just ads, but also telemetry on Roku.

Personally, I use nextdns until I can can a good pihole setup going.

You can comfortably run pihole, unbound, and a VPN like wireguard on a pi zero or zero 2. You can find entire zero 2 kits for under $35 if you're patient

Very true. Mostly just haven't had the time. Also want to set up a little home server to play around with Proxmox and move Jellyfin off my main PC.

I use roku...I might have to try a pihole...or switch to something else. Damn shame just about everything gets ruined by greed.

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.

They're out to stomp pressure on er, maximize value proposition from your "pain points" with their ad-sponsored boots. (Uggs maybe idk)

Anyone jailbreaking these damn things yet?

Rokus are not worth the effort. Nvidia literally publishes dev roms for the shield tv boxes.

I love the RF remote, the functionality, and the responsiveness.

Are the dev roms fully compatible with Netflix & Co.? I'm running a shield and the one thing that kept me from rooting it was compatibility with hardware DRM. Have since cancelled all my subscriptions after they locked my family out and tried to hike the prices, but I'm still following the developments out of interest.

I'm not sure, actually. If they do have DRM issues, I imagine it would be precisely the same issue as (and therefor would have the same workarounds as) any other custom android rom... which probably involves some shady APKs & instructions from XDA forums.

Thank you Roku, a step forward towards self hosting and self managing of every service

How are you going to self-host streaming hardware? A HTPC for every TV in the house along with a mouse and keyboard?

I was already thinking of upgrading my old Roku to a $20 Onn (Walmart brand) Google TV box (which I'm told is hackable), but this will only accelerate that decision.

yes they are. you can put lineage and degoogle these

I have one of these on every TV in my house and they're great!

Small SBCs and keyboard/remote combos. That's what we do.

Use Android TV with an alternate launcher like FLaunchee

No need for HTPC, just a small USB device with HDMI output and DLNA support. You use your phone as a DLNA controller, a server running Jellyfin as DLNA provider, and the device attached to the TV as DLNA renderer. And sometimes TVs have DLNA support built-in (my Toshiba does).

On Android there's an amazing app called BubbleUPnP that can source media from a wide variety of places, make playlists, and cast to DLNA devices as well as proprietary protocols like Chromecast.

It works but it isn't family friendly.

Jellyfin supports DLNA too, if you have a DLNA rendering device on the network it will just appear in the cast menu. Or if you want something that works with a remote directly on the TV you can install Kodi. There's really no point nowadays in getting tied up into proprietary stuff.

Yes, this is what the people want! More ads! Skip the content, just show ads 24/7! That will definitely keep people from pirating out of sheer frustration.

And dont forget about that ad space on the remote control too.

I just recently started using my Samsung TVs as dumb screens because they're slow as shit, but a nice side effect is zero ads.

ONN 4k streaming box for $20 at Walmart.
Install a custom launcher.
Install a button remapper for the remote.
Install SmartTubeNext for YouTube (no ads, SponsorBlock).
Install whatever other apps you need (Plex, etc).

FAR better experience. Turn the TV on and it's ready to go in a few seconds, not the ~60-90 seconds it takes the Tizen nonsense to "warm up."

It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better. Can recommend, especially for only $20.

(Plex, etc)

Just get started on the move to Jellyfin now.

Seriously, people, use some pattern recognition here. Plex is already on its way down the enshitification pipeline, you'll be sick of it in a couple years too, just like Roku. Why wait?

Jellyfin is definitely on my radar, and I'd love to make the switch. One thing that's important to me and my family, however, is the library sharing between accounts. To my knowledge, Jellyfin doesn't support this.

Just picked up the Onn box and did all that. Also installed RetroArch and so far the SNES era stuff all plays good with my bluetooth controller though there is a slight input lag or i just need to adjust lol.

Bluetooth does have latency issues, but setting your TV to Game mode (if available) will provide extremely noticeable improvement.

Ah at the moment its connected to a 144hz portabble monitor via usbc.

Any guides/links on setting up my Onn box like that? It’s been great for the $20 but removing ads and deeper customization sounds amazing

Directly from the play store, you can install alternative launchers. Some people like FLauncher; I did not. I went with Projectivy. Highly customizable, very clean.

You can also grab a button re-mapper there. I went with tvQuickActions Pro - it's paid, but quite powerful.

For SmartTubeNext, I followed this guide.

SmartTubeNext might be the greatest thing about AndroidTV just for the sponsor block. It's so amazing.

Your comment inspired me, so I picked one up today for my Roku TV, and I had it running in under an hour! We really don't know how many ads we'd been seeing until we stop seeing them. I already had a PiHole on my network, but getting SmartTube running is so nice.

I'm glad you're having a better time with it! Honestly, if you watch any amount of YouTube on your TV, it's well worth the $20 just for SmartTubeNext. Such a massive improvement to skip all the sponsor, promotion, intro, etc segments.

Can these ads be blocked with pi-hole?

I block logs.roku.com and cloudservices.roku.com on my pihole without impacting any functionality.

Is there a good resource to learn how to install that kind of a system for a person who's tech knowledge ends at one semesters worth of C++?

Yes setting up a Pi-Hole should be pretty doable for someone like you. I can't recomend a specific tutorial off the top of my head, but there should be plenty to find.

You mainly need a pi running raspbian or a pc running some debian based distro.

Yea my Adblock Home (pihole alternative) blocks the ads on my Roku home screen. Now it’s just a big blank box.

I do wonder how long it's going to take for these device manufacturers to get wise and start hard coding their own host file on these devices with the addresses they use.

Then we switch from DNS and look to good old firewall blocks.

Update to say device is 'offline' unless it can reach these IPs? Local NAT to direct the traffic to a basic ping box.

Game keeps being played until someone quits.

Yes.

What domain list(s) are you using? Mine are still showing up with pihole. I do think some are being blocked, but not all.

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.

Nvidia shield is what I got instead of Roku and holy shit it's so much better. It can be flashed with another OS as well.

Do you want Plex servers? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET PLEX SERVERS

This is the way. I've only used it for backed up movies so far but Jellyfin is SNAPPY.

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.

Hey, nice, I get to build an HTPC again and check out the latest streaming shit for Linux.

I'm not even being ironic. Tired of this corporate hellscape and finding joy in returning to the kind of hobbyist tech I grew up on.

corposhit used to at least be worth paying for with all it's flaws but they're shitting it up so bad it's increasingly not even worth it in the slightest

Yep. There was a little while there where things coulda maybe been fine but the greedy psychopaths decided they wanted to fuck it up.

I do see the appeal of non-smart TV's now. Just getting a device that host your media is a good option.

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.

Every smart TV is a dumb TV too. Mine has some smart stuff, I think, but I have never used it, and it has never been online.

I'm looking into getting a projector and just hooking it up to my pc for media. I don't watch all he time anyways, it's mostly for movie/game night.

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

Google is already doing this with their default Android TV launcher. I tolerated their home screen 'recommendations' for a while as they occasionally highlighted something interesting to watch, but one day I switched on the TV and was greeted with a huge advert banner for a fucking watch on the home screen.

At that point I spent a few hours setting up FLauncher on all my ATV devices.

I did the exact same thing. Also blocked androidtv updates in case Google starts pulling shit regarding custom launchers.

It's gross how ads are being crammed in every little nook of our lives. Not like the ShieldTv was a cheap device either.

Pretty sad to see Roku going down the same road. Guess forcing a third of the screen devoted to ads just wasn't enough.

I prefer projectivy launcher. It's got a few more features and feels a little more polished.

That's the reason I've been using Roku. I couldn't stand all the suggestions and ads on my Google TV. If Roku does that, too, then there's nothing good to distinguish them.

I like that I can install custom apps on Google TV, but Roku beats them in UI IMO.

This launcher looks super cool, does anyone bychance know if it works on FireTVs? I was ok with the FireTV launcher up until they made it autoplay ads with sound everytime you turn the damn thing on.

Same! I recently found this "feature" can be disabled in the preferences, along with a bunch of creepy tracking options.

I can't speak from experience as I don't own any Amazon devices, but I have read reports that it seems to work fine with the FireTV variant of Android.

The dev has only tested it against Chromecast with Google TV, with that said I'm using it on a Shield TV and a Shield Pro and it runs fine on both.

Not with pihole I wont.

No, but 1/3 of your screen will be empty real estate.

I'd rather have blank space than ads.

Of course. I did the same thing until my OCD got the better of me and I got an AndroidTV device with a custom launcher, as well as an AppleTV4K. I love having no ads and no blank spaces now.

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?

From what I gather, making your own little "media PC" connected to a "dumb TV" or never-connected "smart PC" can give you a similar if not better experience!

KDE has a big TV style desktop environment they've made for TVs now, and you can use KDE connect to use any phone as a remote control.

Completely open source! Wee!

“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

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.

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.

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.

It still clutters on OS upgrades.

Can you elaborate? Mine has remained set to show “up next” for several OS upgrades. That feature has never switches itself off.

Hmmm, maybe I need to dig in settings. When Apple Arcade became a thing I found new apps on the Home Screen. I still think it's the only streaming box outside of a shield that is appropriately powered amass doesn't serve ads. And unlike the shield, Apple tv has a clear future.

Ahh. Yeah, when Apple adds a new app to an OS, they love to throw that thing right in the dock so you can see it. I usually end up moving a lot of those things out and I put my preferred apps in that dock.

I thought you meant it was changing your preferences for “settings > apps > tv > homescreen” after you installed OS updates. Sorry, I was confused.

Mainly because the major streaming services wouldn't allow their platforms to run on it.

I don't use major streaming services. I just want something that runs NewPipe and Jellyfin. Lol

Until then, a Raspberry Pi or SFF PC will do the job just fine. They even work with remotes if you get an IR receiver for them.

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Is there any way to repurpose an old android phone into an android TV? Sometimes like Linage OS but TV focused. Even older Android phones can be considerably more powerful than any current streaming box. Add on privacy and you've got the perfect solution. It also would save on e-waste.

I'm not sure, but the easiest solution is an old laptop or a mini-PC.

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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

That (and PiHole) will only work as long as Roku doesn't start using DoH.

Using DoH is fine (good), hardcoding a specific server less so.

Well, you know they're gonna use it to circumvent ad blocking. If they want to play nice they can simply keep doing what they're doing now and use whatever DNS server they're told by DHCP.

Not using DoH is simply a leak of data, every client should use it. If they use it maliciously is a different topic but yeah I wouldn’t say its unlikely.

Do you mean leaking on the LAN or on the Internet? Because the former is a whole different kettle of fish.

Normally, LAN clienta should work with the router and let it organize these things. It's best for example to just let the router advertise itself as DNS and proxy the requests via DoH/DoT, you get a central place where you set the resolver, you can filter ads, you can do caching etc. The router can also intercept (clear) DNS traffic and secure/cache it as needed.

By default devices should expect their requests to go over the internet where DoH is very important. Over LAN much less so ofc.

The Department of Holes!?? Gosh... I knew PiHole's time was limited but it's too soon 😥

I don't mind if it's an ad for a new tv show or movie or streaming platform. But if it's shopping stuff I'll need to find a new tv.

I just shuffled some hardware around and got an old Roku that I thought was dead going again. One of the ads that appeared on the homescreen was "Cancel THIS! the Rosanne Barr Special" so if that's the kind of movie ads you're looking for you'll love Roku!

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.

DNS blocking at the router never fails.

Rumor has it Roku hard coded Google DNS nameservers on some devices so along with pihole, you have to block direct access now. FYI

I had a pihole that worked until an update. Had to block Google nameservers to restore blocking.

Similar to what Google does with some Chromebook devices. They don't respect router DNS settings. So if I wanted to block YouTube on my kids machines I had to create a black hole on my router to send all requests from 8.8.8.8 and then and only then would the Chromebook use my adguard DNS.

I expect you can seal this off with pfblockerng.

The big issue is that they might start putting a checkpoint in place wherein the application (roku device) will not proceed unless it gets an expected response token from a call to an ad service. At that point we're at their mercy.

They could even run under their own VPN and hook up the ads on their side... Ugh...

They could even run under their own VPN and hook up the ads on their side... Ugh...

I've always wondered why Google doesn't provide that to its ad clients. Companies send their traffic to Google, Google puts the ads in, mixes it all up in one pot, sends it to the user in a way DNS filtering can't block without also blocking the content.

At that point we're at their mercy.

Or maybe at that point you'll begin to realize that you might not need all of this stuff, and that happyness comes from other sources. But that is just my personal approach, by all means do whatever you like.

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Pi-Hole/AdGuard works to stop these ads, never even have to see them.

So how about a Raspberry pie with jellyfin connected to your TV?

Not connected, but works fine as a media server. Less issues with Plex than Jellyfin in its current state.

They've gotten great at this war of attrition. They know if they make changes incrementally people wouldn't accept all at once then most people won't notice or care. That's why I through that trash and two firesshits out in the garbage where they belonged when they started with "related" ads and app store ads.

my streaming device is a 4th gen Intel i5 computer with Kodi.

I don't think I'll see more ads in the future 😆

I've been doing some research for the last few days on setting up a home server/NAS. If anyone's going to ruin my entertainment, it's going to be ME

You are still likely going to want some sort of streaming device though. I have an old computer of mine running unraid with Plex in a docker container and still use a chromecast in apps only mode to stream to my TV.

Oh yeah, I already have a Chromecast. I know this is a post about Roku specifically, but it was just another example of enshittification getting me to finally set up my own system. It was honestly the HBO Max disaster that got me started.

Good to know about App Only Mode, though! So far the Chromecast interface doesn't bother me, but it's good to know there's a ripcord I can pull if it gets worse (unless they take that away).

As long as they don't remove the option to startup on input #1, I'm good 👍

I have the remote with two shortcut buttons, so I can map them to my favorite apps and never see the homescreen. It's actually pretty nice!

How do you map the custom buttons? I've literally never used mine

You have to have the remote with the 1 and 2 buttons. Then just press and hold them and it should give you the option to assign an action like launching an app.

Oh I think mine is too old. Mine just had like a plus quadrant, power button and then there pre-programmed buttons that I've literally never used.

It's ok I don't actually think the customizable remote comes with any TV or box. You have buy it after market from their site.

I know a lot of people here reeeeeaaaaalllly hate apple, but, having used many different streaming boxes over the years, I’ve never had a better experience than with my Apple TVs. I have a Gen 4 (Apple TV HD) and a Gen 5 (Apple TV 4K first generation), and they both have worked flawlessly and trouble-free since they day I bought them many years ago. I primarily use them for the Plex app (there are very nice Jellyfin, Kodi, and Emby apps too, chill), and sometimes for some other stuff, all of which they do very well, even the older one, and even still after all these years. tvOS updates have, historically, been pretty essentialist— that being, slim and performant. Old Apple TVs still run great.

YES, for those who don’t like Apple and/or who aren’t totally into the who Apple ecosystem, one won’t get all of the benefits (yet will still get about 90% of them) and one might see friction with some of Apple’s “way of doing things” — especially that fucking annoying remote of theirs - but, all things considered, it does what it does extremely well, and it’s far better and more powerful than its competition IMO (for which you do pay a premium I feel is well worth it). and it is especially good at both protecting your privacy (compared to its competitors) and keeping ads far, far away (except when individual apps insert them, i.e. Hulu or Netflix with ads).

I have had Rokus in several TVs I’ve owned, and… yeah, they were, technically, the closest to the great functionality I came to expect rom my ATVs, but, still, nowhere close. On top of that, my Rokus all wanted all my data and sleazily blasted me ads while making it nearly impossible to disable the ability to disconnect my wifi, disable ads or tracking, etc. The whole device/os seemed designed for data mining first, and showing me media second. ew. the only upside was that the Roku Plex app has one or two interesting UX and UI features the tvOS app didn’t due to some weird programming quirks in SwiftUI and tvOS limitations that didn’t exist in whatever development framework that Roku uses.

I came here to say something similar. I love my AppleTV. Works like a charm and has a no-nonsense interface if you enable the grid Home Screen. No ads. Runs great. It’s perfect.

Even for Apple haters, it’s a pretty decent device. Even for people who hate Apple stuff, you don’t have to have other Apple devices to make great use of an Apple TV. You do have to create an iCloud account in order to sign into it, but you can always use an iTunes account for that purpose.it’s just for the purpose of downloading apps and so forth. No other Apple device or service is required. It really does work great on its own and isolated from any other service or device. However, it does work excellently in concert with other Apple devices, if that is your thing.

Do you need any other Apple devices to make good use of an Apple TV?

No! Shockingly, this is the one Apple device, even aside from the iPhone, that you really don’t need another Apple device for it to be at nearly it’s maximum usefulness. Yes, more Apple devices do make it more useful, but on its own, it’s at nearly 100% of its usefulness. It does want you to have an iCloud account and register for that, but it doesn’t need to go further than that. All of the regular apps like Hulu or prime video or Netflix or whatever work normally on Apple TV, but they work in an Apple TV sort of way. For the most part, it’s actually much better than another platforms, but it is in Apple TV sort of way. It does take a little getting used to.you can always go into an Apple Store and try it out if that is convenient for you.

AppleTV would be my recommendation for people that want a clean interface with no ads and they don't want to or can't modify an android TV box to a custom launcher. It's just about a perfect experience right out of the box. It's a shame about the shitty remote though.

For people willing to get their hands dirty, androidtv having SmartTubeNext is a killer tool for YouTube and for me gives it the edge.

Just buy one of the 4K’s and it comes with the power button and better remote. Also, the remote isn’t bad if you turn off the swiping and just use the 4-way as a D-pad. You still get its great circular scrolling too.

Wild idea - if you’re concerned about ads, maybe don’t buy the streaming box or TV that puts permanent ads on its remotes.

Is there some sort of FOSS DIY thing you can make (or buy) that would function like a Roku/Chromecast stick for any TV with a USB port?

Er I guess a raspberry pi or similar micro computer could do it quite easily.

I just saw enough ads trying to read the damn story

Firefox with uBlock Origin!

I actually have that on my phone but there was still 7-8 ads

Interesting, I didn't see any (aside from links to other articles on the same site).

Oh i see now, it didn't open in an external browser

Ahhh! What app are you using? I use Thunder which uses Custom Tabs which basically means it uses your default default browser but without leaving the app.

My Roku TV is basically unusable at this point. Opening Netflix takes about 10 minutes to get to the main menu. Then launching the video is like rolling a D12. Except it lands on a 1 every time and crashes. It also restarts randomly for “updates” in the middle of watching something. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it!

Bruh, it sounds like your Roku TV is just broken in general.

Yeah, that sucks. That will definitely drive me elsewhere.

Like a modified Android TV or Apple TV or something

Highly recommend Apple TV. My only issue is the insane amount of YouTube ads. Feels like more ads than content some days.

They've already been adding them to mine. My home screen inputs got smashed into one (because I don't use any of the home screen apps, I only use the two HDMI inputs) so they could jam a bigger ad on the right, and then make suggested things some of the options. Like the last month or so it's been wanting me to watch super girl or Wonder woman or some dumb shit.

My other personal favorite thing they do is that they load slowly so sometimes I'll go to select an input and the cursor will jump to the wrong place because an ad loaded. Fun!

What would one recommend as more of a custom build version of these with a way to connect a convenient remote (smartphone or otherwise)? Alternatively is there a way to sort of jailbreak many of them, or does that just become more cumbersome?

Anyone ever read the short story "Sales pitch" by Philip K. Dick?

I guess I get to ad more devices to my pfsense Adblock rule

I only use my Roku streaming stick for Youtube and Plex. Should be easy enough to replace with a mini-PC or equivalent, if it really becomes bad enough.

As I have found trying to see if I can sideload or jailbreak or otherwise hack the software of my Samsung TV, I have found plenty of ways to totally disable ads on a Roku or Android TV or anything that runs on Android in general (Chromecast, and firestick also IIRC). Too bad I don't have one of those... 😩