we live in hell
I don’t even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they’re saying…hey do you want a worse experience?
we live in hell
I don’t even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they’re saying…hey do you want a worse experience?
What brand? so I know NOT to buy it
I believe it’s Roku. That purple symbol in the bottom right is on the remote as well.
Very budget so this doesn’t surprise me.
Also beneath the purple asterisk is the words “Roku TV” in grey on the bezel
Fuck Roku. Don’t buy these. They shove ads down your throat constantly, and they proactively, aggressively stop methods of circumvention.
Wtf I thought roku TV were one of the good ones. I use a Roku thing that you plug in and I haven’t seen this yet.
The good ones go bad eventually :(
The Roku box was one of the good ones… about ten years ago. Though maybe this is just a TV thing. TIL Roku makes actual screens.
In the past few years especially, I’ve seen so many unshakable “good ones” go bad. Some, in the worst possible way.
My Sharp TV runs Roku software. Suffice it to say I do not have it web connected and use an android box instead
The poster really needs to just turn off the Smart TV experience.
No. No, they are not one of the good ones.
The little asterisk symbol on the screen is leading me to believe it’s a Roku.
I have two roku tvs. The day I see this is the day they get disconnected.
You can probably use a pi-hole to block those things.
The amount of Roku stuff my PiHole blocks is asinine. I just recently added a blocklist for smart TVs and it ballooned the query counts like mad.
+1 for PiHole. Worth the ~$40 for the Pi Zero W and accessories alone.
That’s because they retry failed connections until they can phone home again. They aren’t normally making tens of thousands of requests.
It can scream into the void for as long as it wants.
I fucking hate my Roku Tv. One of my roku TV became unusable after software update. Can’t be rolled back. I’m just stuck with a perfectly fine screen and shit software. And yes even connecting another device via HDMI is an issue because the TV restarts randomly for “updates” while watching external sources.
Hrm, that’s a pretty good argument for buying a tv and leaving the built in smart features without internet access. Sorry about your issues.
I’d there no way to factory reset it?
I can factory reset but not downgrade the firmware. The newer firmware is too demanding for the crappy chip in the TV.
Shoutout to the PiHole team. Love you guys and the work you do.
Which smart TV blocklist are you using? Should probably add that into my pihole.
Posted under Phar’s comment, but here’s the direct link
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/master/SmartTV.txt
I really need to get around to that on my pfsense
What block list is that?
Pretty sure it’s the smart TV blocklist from Wally3k / Firebog. I’ll confirm and update later if I find out otherwise.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/master/SmartTV.txt
You can, but don’t forget to also block other outbound DNS connections in your firewall. Lots of “smart” devices are hard coded to use 8.8.8.8 regardless of what DHCP says. Pihole won’t stop those, so you have to block it at the firewall.
Or redirect them to the PiHole.
And don’t forget to block/redirect secure DNS on port 853.
No, you can’t. I’m running pihole and have a TCL Roku tv connected via HDMI to an Apple TV, and the ROKU APP RECOGNIZES CONTENT FROM IT and makes the suggestion, overlaying it OVER THE HDMI STREAM.
It’s the worst
You can actually turn that off in the Roku settings. I did when I saw it demanding I watch my content from my PC on their shitty ad bloated sponsors.
I am now realizing it might be more work than it’s worth for Roku even though I used to prefer their systems being a bit more stable.
Ew that’s approaching dystopian levels of grossness. My tv should not be watching along with me.
Pi-hole FTW.
Or a private DNS service that allows filtering like nextdns
They put one too many ads on the home screen… then they made them larger…
fuck em. they get nothing now.
blocked their ad servers at the DNS level.
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I guarantee you someone paid Roku to do this
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Those channels precisely. They get ad revenue when you watch it on their channels. If they can get Roku to bring them traffic, Roku would charge for that. No engineering effort goes unpaid.
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I have an old Roku Express or something similar and love it. It has an RF remote and a very responsive UI. But it is slowly becoming crappier with the infrequent updates.
Name and shame!
It’s literally on the screen….
It says Roku TV
But not exactly obvious. Don’t be a jerk.
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