- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Feels nice to get some trade-in cash for my Roku tv. Digital TV with the local channels and YouTube more than satisfies.
I built Kyu Launcher so you can get Roku experience on your Android TV.
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.
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 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.
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.
Don’t worry, the next model they release probably won’t allow you to do that.
Never used it, preferring my ways.
Yeah, this gives anyone with tech savvy to avoid the damn thing and make their own media center.
It gives us what?
This is how I learn there’s a TV adaptation of “The Burbs”???
It’s pretty good too! Low impact, great cast and decent story that takes place in world but not as a reboot or anything cheese like that.
Bumbling oddball neighbors banding together to do a SERIOUS INVESTIGATION is such a no-brainer of a formula. I love the original film, just watched the trailer and it looks fun as fuck.
It really is. The cast has fantastic chemistry and feels like real people despite the heightened ridiculousness of the premise.
Dope. Will give it a look.
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.
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!
Enshitification is just business doing business. It suck as much value as it can out of anything it touches until it’s barely worth it then just let’s the quality hover there. They call it “the price the market will bare”, also known as, giving as little value as possible.
Everytime something turns to shit it’s because the business side of the endeavor has started making the decisions.
Roku is another prime example of enshitification
Agreed, but are there any realistic alternatives in the android space to firestick and roku?
can you go into detail on the boxes and your mods? interested in getting some of my family off of Roku for this reason
I got some cheap ONN boxes, Which seem like the best value for true Android TV devices. If you have the funds NVIDIA Shield TV is probably the way to go.
It’s possible to skip the Walmart account login at setup, but probably not possible to skip the Google account sign-in (let me know if you find a way!).
Setting up side-loading is trivial, although largely unnecessary. I loaded Stremio, Jellyfin, and a VPN for better streaming experience and control. I replaced the default home screen with Projectivy Launcher. You don’t need to go into ADB shell or anything like that. There are also other home screen launchers that fix the major problems with the default GoogleTV screen; Emotin UI (closed source), FLauncher (dormant), Leanback Launcher, ATV Launcher (closed-source).
There are lots of options for web browsing, File Explorer, on-device media, stores, etc. that are easily available.
very neat! thanks!
So how long before ONN gets enshitified?
Always a concern. They will eventually require a Walmart account I guess. I’ll have to remember to disable updates.
I would love to exit the Roku ecosystem. I don’t use any Apple products and I’m not interested in starting.
It’s amazing how there are really no open-source products in this category of devices.
I’m also curious what you ended up with
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
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.
They updated my roku a few months ago with this and there was an opt out to revert, and I took it. It asked if I really wanted to change back to the old UI as it would be unable to swap back. I hope that stays true!
My understanding is that they pushed it to some people as a beta and eventually they would roll out the update to everyone even if they opted out of the beta. I opted out to go back to the not as bad homescreen and blocked it from the Internet in my router settings
That’s what I figured. I havent blocked the device completely, but I would like to block the update if possible. I just need to look and see if I can block just the update dns query. Was your fix a total block?
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.
Yea I’ve been ignoring that forever. I jsut go to my Jellyfin app at square 1
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.
Are they ads for thing to pirate…?
People probably wouldn’t like it to have only one product without a single ad. They probably had bug reports about it “my roku doesn’t display ads on my smart TV, does that mean that it’s broken?”.
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
The biggest hurdle is streaming services’ DRM (something called widevine iirc) that just doesn’t work on linux, which limit you to low resolutions like 720p. There was some struggles between AMD and the HDMI consortium preventing them from shipping HDMI2.1 drivers, but that appears to be solved.
Seems like doing some clean room design off of Roku OS would be a good choice.
