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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Inb4 Toyota ads start popping up in your Steam library.
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It’s already in some games unfortunately…
That sounds like it’s determined by the game developer and has nothing to do with steam.
It is, but steam does have its own form of advertising. Their front page is all ads for games and sales, go to your library there is ads for updates for your games.
It just seems to be acceptable since it’s their ecosystem content, but it’s still ads for all intent and purposes.
Yeah, for games. Ads for games on steam makes sense, you’re literally browsing a shop. You won’t see a random ad for a car or wtv on steam
Ads are ads, just because it from the same ecosystem is moot. I don’t need the steamdeck paraded in my face on every page I view. It’s ads
Ads are ads, just because it from the same ecosystem is moot.
so should Steam not have any game discovery features? Is it bad for Steam to display “trending games” because it’s technically advertising them by showcasing them?
Ok buddy, next youre going to tell me the stuff you see on the shelves in the store are ads lmao
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go to your library there is ads for updates for your games.
I have no problem with patch notes
Except it’s for any “game news”……, so if they are peddling another game of theirs, it shows up there as well. Or we are selling a plushie, it’s there in the same place. It’s not just patch notes dude… and never has been either.
It’s an ad if the update is a DLC.
I want to love jellyfin, but the Roku app is a buggy mess.
The Roku app has had a major update recently. Might be worth checking again.
Why would you run Roku on Jellyfin? Wouldn’t that open you to the ads you are trying to avoid?
I’m guessing it’s the opposite way around, they use the jellyfin app on their Roku to steam from their jellyfin server
that makes much more sense.
I’m one of the Jellyfin Roku devs. What bugs are you experiencing?
Not the OP, but I have been getting a bug where I select a show/movie to watch in the roku app, and instead of playing it will exit out to the list of shows/movies menu. These same shows work just fine in the app on a google android TV, or on a computer
Yeah, something is failing in playback and it’s simply falling back to the previous screen. I’d suggest posting this to the troubleshooting forum. I’m sure the support team will be happy to help out!
I’ve used it daily and never had a problem. What did you experience?
I’ve been doing this for a decade.
Highly recommend it. The only thing some people don’t like is using a keyboard and mouse on the couch, but there are endless solutions for that.
Actually…that’s the sticking point at my house. I’m ok with mouse keyboard, but my wife and kids are not.
Still trying to find a remote that will suit that use case.
Logitech k400!
I’ve heard good things about the PS5 Media Remote, which pairs via bluetooth. If my generic bluetooth remote dies that is my replacement plan.
I have a little mini keyboard/trackpad controller. Primarily just use the directional pad and media controls to navigate Plex, but if I need to pop into a web browser or whatever, it works great.
I have like four or five Logitech K400 keyboards, they’ve got a touchpad and they’re super inexpensive!
After various trial and error, not to mention irritation, I have determined that this is the way. It’s what I did in the dark ages back in the day (with a Pentium 3 that had enough hardware acceleration to play DVD’s!) and it’s what I do once more. By hook or by crook, one way or another you’re guaranteed to be able to retain complete control over a PC even if that ultimately means you have to install some flavor of Linux on the fucking thing.
You can get a perfectly capable media center PC for very little money if you don’t need it to be able to run AAA games, which in my case I don’t. Even the various nanocomputer boards like one of the beefier Raspberry Pi’s or any of its myriad competitors can do the job these days, fit in a tiny enclosure, make no noise, and consume very little power.
Fuck all the Chromecasts, Fire sticks, Roku boxes, Apple TV’s, and other sundry and bullshit devices of the world.
Nvidia SHIELD is still ok, because it’s Android TV, and you can install custom launchers on Android. Therefore no ads on your home screen.
Granted, Nvidia is letting the SHIELD line twist in the wind, and the most recent model is from 2019, but it’s not outmoded just yet. I’ll still be using mine for a number of years.
The shield is great for the reasons you mention here. I use primal launcher and have a custom home screen experience without annoying ads.
The shield also outputs music over HDMI without resampling, which makes it awesome for my digital music listening, except the app support is lame.
Yeah unfortunately Android TV is neglected versus Roku and Firestick and so on, but most major apps are there, and you can sideload shit.
Yeah I was getting fed up with apps and boxes said fuck it and am running a mac mini hooked up to a shitload of storage now and it’s been great. Plays media, works as a competent file server for said media, and emulates a bunch of console games. We don’t use anything else now.
Isn’t Apple TV the most ad free box now? I’m still on Roku but I’ve read that Apple TV is equivalent to a Roku but without the ads.
Yeah it probably is in terms of an off the shelf, purpose built option with no tinkering. They’re pretty snappy as well. Decent hardware in there it seems.
We have an ATV but our wireless network is kinda shit and we kept having connectivity issues between the ATV and the Plex server we were running on the Mini so we just went all in on running the Mini as the media player and Plex server in one to avoid it. Bonus was that we now have a very capable console game emulator hooked up to the TV too. Also we just ditched our last streaming subscription so all we were using the ATV for was the Plex app.
It’s a bit overkill but I will say as a server and emulator the new apple silicon minis are great. Zero fan noise ever and they sip electricity and run really cool.
Unless you change the launcher on your Android TV box, Apple TV is the most ad free now. Unless you want to just hook a PC up to the TV anyway. Which can introduce codec and DRM issues if you want to use Netflix and Prime video from the PC.
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
I’m going to take a look. Thanks!
Is there a free DNS from Controld.com I can just put in my network settings?
I only saw the paid option. - thx
Adguard DNS does that for free : https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
Yep I’m using adguard but heard they have new owners of unknown security accountability
Yeah just click free dns from the menu
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 😥
Not with pihole I wont.
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
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.
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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.
This is the way. I’ve only used it for backed up movies so far but Jellyfin is SNAPPY.
Do you want Plex servers? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET PLEX SERVERS
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).
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.
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.
Much appreciated!
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.
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.
Thank you! For me, that’s half of it. The other half is removing everything that’s not my subscriptions on the home page so I’m not seeing a bunch of “the algorithm”. And then being able to boot to the subscriptions page too is so nice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because people won’t pay for it. We are in the minority.
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
We need a fediverse streaming service.
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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.
How do you set up the IR receiver? I would like to use Linux if possible. It’s often such a pain to set up things like this. Took me forever to get my Xbox controller to pair.
I’ve used LIRC in the past. Takes a bit of setup, but it works well once you get it going.
Thanks for that. Were you ever able to get something like this to power a device on from a full shut down?
Edit: power on using the remote.
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.
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.
I have one of these on every TV in my house and they’re great!
yes they are. you can put lineage and degoogle these
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 I have a thinclient attached to my TV running linux mint
Small SBCs and keyboard/remote combos. That’s what we do.
For anybody who has one, here’s a dns block list specifically for Roku: https://github.com/asimcard/roku-ad-list
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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
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!
Can these ads be blocked with pi-hole?
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.
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++?
A semester of programming is more than you need. The hardest part would be installing the OS on the raspberry pi. https://pi-hole.net/
Anyone can set them up, it’s just running an app
I set one up. My IT skills begin and end with being a millennial that had to troubleshoot what I wanted to get to work before App stores.
You’ll be fine in general searching “Pihole setup (insert OS here)”. Some minor troubleshooting was necessary in my case, could be an ID10T issue though.
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.
You can alternatively install Adguard too which will happily sit in a Docker container on a regular server if you’re aware of how to do that.
what info is sent to these domain?
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PiHole blocks the current ads. Hopefully these new ones too.
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.
Firebog.net Ticked lists as a collective, over 10^6 domains long now. Firebog have lists organised by how likely it is to impact general browsing, ticked being least likely (basically do you want to be black listing or white listing).
Thank you. And good advice about over-doing it. I’ve had people complain about “the internet being broken” on my wifi because of an overly-restrictive pi hole.
my streaming device is a 4th gen Intel i5 computer with Kodi.
I don’t think I’ll see more ads in the future 😆
