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.
After all the issues with software updates, ads, and just overall terrible experience of TV operating systems and those little media boxes, I just finally accepted that my life is better using my TV as a dumb screen that’s connected to a PC and then using Steam Big Picture for games and Jellyfin for media.
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.
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
Ok buddy, next youre going to tell me the stuff you see on the shelves in the store are ads lmao
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?
go to your library there is ads for updates for your games.
I have no problem with patch notes
It’s an ad if the update is a DLC.
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.
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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.
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.
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 like four or five Logitech K400 keyboards, they’ve got a touchpad and they’re super inexpensive!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
He doesn’t wanna get hAcKeD duhhhhh
They are called private for a reason!
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.
Did you add the expression by the user you are replying to?
Does it just block the Roku / Samsung spam, while leaving the platform otherwise in tact?
Step one.
Buy a thing. It is a good thing.
-
Oops, now it only works if you pay monthly. Ok maybe they’re doing some upkeep.
-
Now there’s ads. You’re paying them money, but they want even more so now you’re the product.
-
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 can confirm that I’m blocking all the Roku ads with adguard now. You just plug this list in: https://oisd.nl/
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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
Small SBCs and keyboard/remote combos. That’s what we do.
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.
Use Android TV with an alternate launcher like FLaunchee
Yes I have a thinclient attached to my TV running linux mint
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 oner, 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.
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.
I love the RF remote, the functionality, and the responsiveness.
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.
Much appreciated!
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.
Y’know what I love most about the high sea, matey? She never gets enshittified.
If someone, let’s say, happened to own a Roku TV and a NAS full of some sort of DRM-free video content ripped from home-video media they legitimately own and have legally format-shifted and backed up, to watch their stuff they’d still have to wade through Roku’s enshittifying home screen to access the appropriate media player.
How do i pirate an ad free tv
Might not be the exact solution you’re looking for, but I run my “smart TV” off a cheap ass laptop. The TV itselfbhas never been connected to the internet.
Hmm. Since all I use my tv for is local plex server and hdmi I could just disable its internet access in the router.
e: i did it
Absolutely! There is no reason for the TV itself to have access, I’m actually using this TV as kind of an experiment, I let my last 2 roku TVs access the internet, and after 2-3 years they both went tits up. I’ve heard rumors that they can pretty much be broken on schedule with “updates” and shit. No idea if that is true, But if this TV lasts me a good long while, I will assume it is lol. So far 1 year on this one lol.
Could your tv just phone home via another nearby (neighbors) tv?
I sure as fuck hope not lol. I don’t think my TV has that capability, even if it wanted to. If I don’t give it access to my shit, its just a big-ass monitor lol.
Pihole helps. If you have androidtv you can setup a custom launcher and avoid it on your interface.
I will have to see about getting pihole on truenas core. It has a preconfigured adguard thingy but I didn’tblike it.
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++?
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/
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.
Anyone can set them up, it’s just running an app
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?
None if you block them.
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.
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.
PiHole blocks the current ads. Hopefully these new ones too.
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.
Chromecast 2. No ads ever. Just send stuff from your device to your TV.
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.
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.
Enshittification strikes again!
