Uh huh, but collecting Blurays is just silly I’ve been told.
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.
Get to the endgame. Just strap us to a chair and make us watch your crap ads Clockwork Orange style.
Roku box: Bye, bitch!
- 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/
Aaargh matey!
This kind of garbage is why I’ve never connected my tcl tv with bulit in roku to the internet.
Ughhh just unsubscibe
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.
Libreelec on raspberry pi 4 (Kodi) works for me but it really needs a new YouTube app. That’s the only issue really
So this is the Moana garbage?
I have a pihole blocking most of it, but these were playing.
There’s surely a way to jailbreak these things.
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.
I seem to be lacking in Soma and orgies.
Ah crap. That means I’m an Epsilon.
Ugh I wanna be in Brand New Animal
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.
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?
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.
Not a surprise for Roku. The company has been getting progressively worse in the last few years and their enshittification is accelerating. Their recent forced download of an update that requires users to agree to arbitration to even use our TVs was intended to ultimately take control of those TVs completely away from the people who own them.
Right now it’s possible to block Roku’s static ads and presumably the autoplaying ones using a local DNS server like Adblock Home or Pihole, but it’s only a matter of time before Roku blocks everything unless we watch the ads they are trying force down our throats. I’m already in the process of obsoleting all 5 of our Roku devices.
It has taken Roku years to build up enough market share to allow this kind of behavior and it will take years for the market to abandon them. Their executives will claim ignorance as to why users are walking away when it finally hits their bottom line.
Roku is bad, I have one older Roku ““smart”” tv that I just block from accessing the internet entirely, and use a shield with a custom launcher instead.
Oh please do tell more
So, I use regex to block all Roku domains on my network via pihole:
(ads|logs|cloudservices|image|images|web|prod.mobile|wwwimg|captive|customer-feedbacks|amoeba|amoeba2|sr|giga.sb|cs).roku(.admeasurement)*.com$Then, possibly overkill due to the above, I used OpnSense firewall rules to block all traffic from my Roku tv. I think I just got fed up with seeing Roku spam in my pihole, as the above regex seems to completely “break” Roku.
After that, I set up FLauncher (following the method #2 instructions on the gitlab page) on my shield. This makes it so I only see the Roku launcher for a few seconds while the shield starts up, and then I’m dropped straight into flauncher. I chose flauncher because it’s very simple and barebones, so you might want to explore other options if you want more advanced features. I don’t really need those features since I’m usually using an app anyway.
Note that I did all of that after the tv was configured and set up, YMMV if it’s a brand new tv as it may need to call home to do the initial set up.
Shoutout to the PiHole team!
Why is your Roku TV even on the Wi-Fi if you just block its internet?
They have models that blink the large white LED light until it’s connected to WiFi. Annoying as hell.
You can fix that in 3 seconds with a piece of electrical tape.
Yeah, I suppose. I don’t use the rock UI, it goes straight into the Apple TV when powered on so I don’t really care that much.
You using an OTA tuner with some HD Homerun app or anything? Boooo needing Roku’s interface for antenna TV (on Roku smart TVs) cuz Apple didn’t solve for that (why would they I guess, $treamers as they are)
It didn’t look like there was any fantastic super easy OTA solution for Apple TV. Fine for us but maybe not the elderly. IDK
It does until it doesn’t. Did you look at the OP?
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that - mine does do this, and the LED is right in the bottom middle, and it’s super bright.
Sounds like a job for some black tape.
It probably doesn’t need to be - but it was required to set up. Before I had my shield, I allowed local connections for local streaming, but you are correct, it’s probably no longer necessary.
Had no idea FLauncher existed. Thank you so much
Depending on the model there’s also a dev menu that disables some phoning home/connectivity shit
Thanks! I have nothing brand new as I am le poor :)
Is there any point in getting anything above the bottom tier Shield? Just trying to use it to replace my chromecast/stream tv and youtube
I haven’t really compared the specs of between them recently, but I have the Pro, and the main decider for me at the time was that it was $50 more and has Ethernet. That being said, I added a USB Ethernet adapter to an Onn device and it works, though the first one I tried didn’t work. It was worth the $50 at the time not to deal with that for the Shield.
I have been using an onn 4k streaming box, which runs Google TV. They’re $20. It’s pretty easy to disable the default launcher and have it boot to Flauncher. Then you can side load smart tube for an ad free YouTube experience asking with Plex, stremio, or whatever else you want to stream.
Same. I think it’s also possible to flash them with LineageOS, but swapping out the launcher and using adb to remove anything superfluous is all I’ve done so far.
I’ve got a couple of those that I bought shortly after the LTT video, but I’m still using my Roku because I still haven’t gotten around to jailbreaking and configuring them.
Do it. It’s very easy, and then you can ditch the Roku. There’s even an ADB app you can load to remove unwanted apps on-device.
Get an AppleTV.
Lemmy especially sleeps on the Apple TV more than most communities. It’s a solid box that has no ads and no privacy issues. Plex, Jellyfin, etc… all installable. With apples track record on previous versions of the Apple TV, software updates and support for about a decade
I assume being Apple that it’s not possible to sideload apps not supported on the app store? In particular I’d like to use some kind of a SmartTube or other youtube app that is ad free
You can use sideloadly but IIRC you need a Mac for it to work. My YouTube workflow is a YouTube-dl wrapper that pipes into jellyfin for the small handful of things I still watch from YT, so I’m less familiar with live YouTube interfaces to know which ones are out there.
Ahahahaha that’s awesome
That is correct.
But which do you want? Privacy or convenience? No one makes a streaming device that does both.
Nvidia has destroyed the stock Shield TV experience with ads, but it’s easy to install custom launchers like Projectivy. The underlying system is still a privacy nightmare, but I don’t care that Nvidia knows what TV shows I watch.
I mean, I do care, just not enough to use something like Kodi as my primary TV interface. Maybe if I used any ad supported services I’d feel differently, but I don’t, so meh.
That’s not Nvidia, that’s Google.
Yes, Google is an inextricably linked to all Google TV issues, but they didn’t force Nvidia to ruin the Shield TV’S launcher with ads, and other bloat.
At least, not as far as I know. If you have sources saying otherwise, I’d be happy to take a look.
but they didn’t force Nvidia to ruin the Shield TV’S launcher with ads, and other bloat.
The “Shield’s launcher” is just Android TV… Nvidia did not write their own Android launcher just for this device.
Fuck me. You might be right, as I haven’t actually used the stock launcher since the big ad update years back.
I just remembered my original launcher having a lot of a Nvidia specific integrations, but I guess those could have just been bolted on at the system level.
You should not buy a Shield. They haven’t been updated since…2019? And there’s really no reason to. Get the $20 WalMart one.
They just put out a huge update for the shield. Mine still plays the vast majority of things perfectly, even hevc and 4k content. I am perfectly happy with my shield pro. I’d buy one again if the current one shits the bed.
What are my other options? Apple TV and what else? Everything else is ad ridden underpowered and lacking licenses to play media.
They just put out a huge update
I obviously meant a hardware update.
What are my other options?
Anything that runs on Android TV?
Everything else is ad ridden
And the Shield doesn’t have ads? You can bypass all the ads by installing productivity launcher, same as on the Shield.
underpowered
How much power do you think you need to stream videos?
and lacking licenses to play media.
I don’t even know what that means.
As someone who owns both Nvidia Shield TV and standard cheap (Google certified) devices, all running Projectivy, it’s not really comparable.
The Shield runs smoother, has significantly less minor/annoying issues, and actually receives fairly regular updates.
Now, the new Chromecast with Google TV does get updates, but it doesn’t resolve the first two differences.
If you can’t afford, or justify the extra expense, for an Nvidia Shield TV, completely understandable. But don’t pretend that the user experience is the same, because it’s not.
All “standard cheap” devices are not the same. I recommended a specific one, which was tested and featured on LTT.
I also own both and there’s no discernable difference, other than one costs literally 10x more.
I said Playstore Certified, and yes, they are mostly the same when you look under the hood, at least for those classes of devices, per generation.
Same, or similar SoC, with 2/8 (sometimes 2/16) specs.
Once you get up to the 4/32 range, you’re already looking around the same price (+/-) of a Shield TV.
Also, lol @ citing LTT, for anything. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, doesn’t change the fact that it’s broken.
And for the sake of being fair, I didn’t even mention the 1/8 boards.
The hardware is 10 years old and it wasn’t even shiny at the time. Shield is a damned joke.
Im literally willing to ditch the device and cancel all streaming services because of this. When I turn on my TV I don’t want to be forced to consume ads when I haven’t been provided with anything in return.
I just block all ads at the router level. When looking through the most blocked domains I see a lot from Roku.
Im not very computer savvy and currently only have a tablet and a mac mini from 2008.
If you’re not tech savy, how do you row row row your bot???
Gently down the byte stream
How do you do that?
Install ad block if you have a GL.iNet router or pihole
Get an Nvidia Shield Pro and disconnect your TV from the internet.
When was the last time they even refreshed the hardware? Kinda hard to justify a $200 streaming box that runs Google services on 6 year old mobile hardware.
About 10 years old actually. It’s the TI-83 of streaming boxes at this point: an absolute fucking rip-off. Pretty on-brand for Nvidia though.
Yeah it’s got about the same specs as a $30 Amazon tablet and you’d now be relying on the largest ad company in the world (Google) instead of Roku, so it does seem like a total ripoff at $200
Blame the rest of the market for being shit - Shield pro is still the best box on the market for streaming HD video with HD audio.
My tv is dumb. The roku is the device that connects to the internet.
Or spend less money and get a brand new Apple TV 4K
Does your Apple TV stream Atmos? TrueHD? I don’t think so…
The Apple TV 4K does do atmos and has since 2018.
You are correct about TrueHD. In order to get it with Apple tv you have to be using a tv and audio equipment that supports eARC but even then it’s a raw PCM stream which is technically different.
As the average consumer waits 6-8 years to buy a new TV at least half of the people reading this probably still don’t have eARC as it was only common in the highest end of tvs back then. But that probably also means their tv or audio equipment wouldn’t be capable of TrueHD anyway.
For anyone reading this, don’t spend $200 on a set top box with capabilities your TV can’t handle. Save money on the box and upgrade your other equipment sooner.
