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.
LOL “Roku was one of the platforms with fewer ads” my ass. Every. Fucking. Menu. Had that shit.
That’s why I stuck with Google TV/Nexus TV for so long - because despite Google collecting that viewing info, I wasn’t getting feature-length ads interrupting my shit.
I blocked it with nextdns, my Roku shows no ads at all. Instead there’s just a blank space where the ads would be, which is so much better and less obnoxious.
Maybe I’m not using all of Roku’s features but the only ad I see is the one box on the right of the homescreen. To me that’s much less intrusive than the full screen stuff I see on Google TV or Fire Stick.
For the approximately 1 second a day I look at the Roku home screen?
Apple TV boxes have no ads.
I know everyone here hates Apple, but, there it is.
You can turn that off pretty easily. The AppleTV+ app has the ability to configure how it uses that little quick look space. You can set it to only display your “up next” content.
Any apps in that dock region can show featured content when they are highlighted by the user. Any app can do that, not just Apple’s. Quite a few third party apps use that space to show featured or watchlist content.
Technically that Home Screen can display an app’s featured content. And Apple and other apps often use that space to promote new shows. But you can turn off TV+ promos and or move apps out of that region.
Roku actually installs physical ads onto its damn remotes. I have remotes that promote streaming services that don’t even exist anymore.
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.
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.
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.
Mainly because the major streaming services wouldn’t allow their platforms to run on it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
