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Roku Is No Longer a Neutral Platform After Today's Roku OS 9.1 Update (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In the past, Roku seemed to be more of a neutral platform compared with streaming media player rivals like Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV. The company gave everyone else's content equal footing through its add-on channels and in Roku search, as it had nothing of its own to promote. That's changing with the rollout of Roku OS 9.1, beginning today. The update adds a feature that automatically plays back The Roku Channel's movies and TV shows at times; another that better showcases the channel's free content in genre-focused searches; and one that introduces a new navigation menu with offers for other Roku products.
These features arrive alongside other changes, like a new guest mode and easier sign-in to subscriptions. Among the more innocuous changes are the new guest mode and automatic account linking. Roku in January first announced an "auto sign out mode," which allowed guests to sign into subscription channels using their own accounts instead of the Roku owner's credentials. And guests could specify when their credentials would expire on that device -- a useful feature in particular for Airbnb operators. Today, "auto sign out mode" is being rebranded as "guest mode," and can now be enabled or disabled on select devices. It also now allows Roku owners to sign out the guests themselves. With Automatic Account Link, Roku users won't have to re-enter their credentials when activating a new Roku player or Roku TV -- the subscription data will simply copy over from their existing account. Roku will also be promoting its own content and products to users. For example, when users search for "comedy" or "action," the content is displayed in a layout similar to Netflix with large image thumbnails and rows you scroll through horizontally. TechCrunch notes that while Netflix "lets you drill down into genres, Roku instead is organizing search results by whether the content is free, subscription, on-demand or 4K."
The second row of content points users to Roku's "free" ad-supported content. You can view the release notes for Roku OS 9.1 here.
These features arrive alongside other changes, like a new guest mode and easier sign-in to subscriptions. Among the more innocuous changes are the new guest mode and automatic account linking. Roku in January first announced an "auto sign out mode," which allowed guests to sign into subscription channels using their own accounts instead of the Roku owner's credentials. And guests could specify when their credentials would expire on that device -- a useful feature in particular for Airbnb operators. Today, "auto sign out mode" is being rebranded as "guest mode," and can now be enabled or disabled on select devices. It also now allows Roku owners to sign out the guests themselves. With Automatic Account Link, Roku users won't have to re-enter their credentials when activating a new Roku player or Roku TV -- the subscription data will simply copy over from their existing account. Roku will also be promoting its own content and products to users. For example, when users search for "comedy" or "action," the content is displayed in a layout similar to Netflix with large image thumbnails and rows you scroll through horizontally. TechCrunch notes that while Netflix "lets you drill down into genres, Roku instead is organizing search results by whether the content is free, subscription, on-demand or 4K."
The second row of content points users to Roku's "free" ad-supported content. You can view the release notes for Roku OS 9.1 here.
Examples please. Would really like to know.
Slow news day?
I own a fairly recent Roku and an Amazon FireTV that's several years old. The FireTV runs circles around the Roku. It's smoother and faster, and has some really nice games. I have both because there are a few things I can get using the Roku that FireTV doesn't have.
Why do you need to run rings around one or the other? If it streams the content then it's fast enough, period. And when I got my Roku, the Amazon offering was still new and overpriced.
This isn't Roku's content at all. They also get no direct revenue from it that I see, though having more easily findable free content may be a way to encourage sales. The movies are free because they're not recent releases and other streaming services probably don't have them.
They still allow all the other apps that they always did, and there's more stuff than you will find with Amazon or Apple streaming boxes. So I really don't see how this is "no longer a neutral platform" or what the controversy is.
"The update adds a feature that automatically plays back The Roku Channel's movies and TV shows at times [...]"
As in, the damn thing randomly wakes up by itself and starts playing stuff without being asked to? So there I am, minding my own business, looking out the window, enjoying a little peace and quiet, and BLAM some stupid noisy movie kicks in? Not the least annoying.
I tried running Sling on an old Roku box and just moving one menu choice took seconds. It was literally slow motion. The funny thing is the video codecs and software haven't changed since this box was new. They made the interface slow on purpose. The remote was garbage as well. You had to press the buttons with a specific pressure and speed or they didn't register. I bought a cheap small form factor box and installed Slackware. Sling runs great in the browser window. A cron script puts the box to sleep if the browser isn't running.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You must be one of those legendary people unaffected in the slightest when you press a button and it takes half a second for the thing you're trying to control to react... I guess that's not bad, but try entering a wifi password on an abcdef layout keyboard like that, and have fun.
No, there's definitely a reason to not use trashcan hardware in those things.
So just don't install the Roku Channel. There's nothing nefarious here.
That still leaves the question though of what good does better hardware do?
I have gone from roku, to firetv, to apple tv. In terms of experience, I think the apple TV is the most impressive.
For the price of an appletv I can get a small x86 box with win10 (or put linux on it).
I run win10 in tablet mode for my tv and it works great. I can stream from anything, and use kodi for my locally stored content. (local to my network)
Cheap storage VM.
I think the key phrase there was "old Roku box". Get a new(er) Roku. They've a zillion times faster, and apparently what devs use to test everything (if they don't I can't imagine PlutoTV's app's developers as anything other than massive sadists given how unusable it was on my old Roku stick.)
I use a Roku Premiere+, which was already in the process of being replaced in 2017 when I got it, and it's awesome.
I've never had problems with the remotes for either Roku, they're very responsive and thankfully they're ISM, not IR, which means I can control the Roku with the remote pointing behind me if I need to. Best remote I've used. Also it has a headphone jack, which is nice, but uses up the battery too quickly.
I can't imagine how a Slackware solution is more convenient or higher quality, but I'm glad it works for you. We went in the opposite direction, going from a Ubuntu box with a web browser to the Rokus. It makes things much, much, easier.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Sure you can. Nothing wrong with that I did it for years. I personally find the experience awful. AppleTV has all the required apps I like, a unified TV dashboard, and CRC support for my TV to control volume, power, etc. $200 makes it worth it.
No she/he does not need to somtimes geeks wants polished and slick UX, shore the individual in question is probably able to go the x86 route, and probably get some extra features at a lower price point. But doing that might not touch her/his core interest, maybe the person would rather spent that time coding something, punting together a video or playing a board game with a few friends. The case might allso be that FictionPimp is not the only user of the device and the rest of the users might want the features/ease of use/apps their friends have, but this is pure speculation on my part.. Personaly I like playing a bit with linux (centos is my chioice) and I'm seriosly thinking about changing to smart os for zones+zfs etc, But when i want to kick back in front of my tv with some netflix/ primevideo/ youtube i find that ATV 4k has a far better ux than my lgOLED55c7v, and for some reason I have never felt the need to test the others I might just bee a lazy nerd, but hey there are only so many hoers in a day and my ADD does not help either. Have a nice day/evening/whatever (pic the right one I have no idea where you are or what tyme you read this)