Roku TVs could one day show ads as soon as you pause playing a game on a connected Xbox, or stop a stream on an Apple TV.

Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.

This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldEnglish
    292·
    8 months ago

    Looks like I’m about to go buy another used computer to setup my streaming services using Kody.

    • Ziixe@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      What’s Kody? I’ve been thinking of getting a pc and setting up jellyfin on it and connect that to my tv, but I’ve never heard of Kody before

      • N0ll@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        8 months ago

        It’s called Kodi. It’s a media centre that organizes and displays a library of your own, locally stored (on a NAS or external hard drive) video files.

        It can be extended with add-ons for example for watching YouTube, but of course there are also some piracy add-ons, which Kodi itself doesn’t condone, but can’t do anything against

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          Jellyfin is exactly that, and open source, so you know you won’t get stabbed in the back like with Roku. Out of curiosity, is Kodi also open source?

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        8 months ago

        It’s a Linux app but runs on almost all platforms. I have it on my phone and my windows PC as well as my dial boot Linux on the same PC. It’s looks like the xbox interface (I don’t have one so I would know). You can get all sorts of things on it like a video library, automatic episode downloads, illegal downloads, porn, etc, Netflix.

        • TheRedSpade@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          8 months ago

          Kodi is cross-platform, so it doesn’t have to run on Linux.

          looks like a PS5 interface

          I’ve never actually seen the PS5 interface, but this part of the comment is particularly amusing since Kodi started off as XBMC (XBox Media Center).