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I went with a HTPC and haven’t looked back.
That time was long ago. The writing was on the wall as soon as they put a giant perpetual ad on the home screen.
Here’s the worst part, there are no parental controls on the home screen, so if I’m trying to get my kid to Disney+, while it loads we’re staring at some ad for a horror flick. Great job Roku…
Honestly, the parental controls on the Roku are non-existent and it’s definitely on purpose, really pisses me off.
I like Roku. Their products have so far had the best functionality.
If they go through with their current plans to turn half the home page into an ad, I’m probably gonna try and sell mine (better to drive down the overall market with more supply).
I pay for a number of streaming services, and I pay extra so I don’t have my time wasted with ads. I don’t want ads in my home. If the device I purchased to bring me ad-free TV is going to itself show me ads, then as far as my needs go it’s no longer fit for purpose.
Plasma Bigscreen will be here soon keep an eye.
So excited for Bigscreen. Might just finally replace my Kodi setup.
The Fox acquisition was the last straw for me too. I’ve watched Roku go from a user-friendly streaming device to a front end for an advertising company. A couple of years ago it became so irritating it finally pushed me to implement an Adguard Home DNS sinkhole after years of thinking it wasn’t worth the trouble. Roku has also made it difficult to block ads, big gaps are shown in the UI when you do, and some apps can’t be updated without disabling Adguard and downloading a bunch of Roku’s ads too.
Yesterday I bought an Onn streaming box (Android TV) and it’s like going from a abacus to a computer. After a couple of hours configuring, loading a new launcher, and using ADB to debloat I’ve got an ad-free, clean interface with much of Google’s tracking disabled (at least as much as possible). Even better, some things (like the remote’s volume control) work that never worked with Roku.
It was such a breath of fresh air I just ordered a couple more ($15 for the 2k model right now) and will have completely dumped Roku by the end of the week.
It’s been a long time coming.
If they make you do all that work to scrape the shit out of their asses, why do you still dwell there, rather than sailing the high seas?
Not seeing anywhere close to $15 for any of their models
They’ve upped the price I see to $19.88 in the last hour. The nearby stores are now out too. What prices are you seeing?
Goddamnit. I got my Boomer parents to ditch cable and get a Roku, in part, to keep them away from Fox News.
Move them to a cheap Onn Android TV device. You can configure it with a completely clean interface with no ads at all, and no asshole company’s changing the menus constantly once you install an alternate launcher. You can also debloat it like any other Android device and shut off most of the tracking (as much as is possible with Google involved anyway).
I bought my first one yesterday. After configuring it and seeing what a massive improvement it is over Roku I bought a couple more today. 2K ones are on sale for $15 right now.
Or a cheap used Apple TV
I have a couple of them that I bought shortly after the LTT video on the topic with the intention of rooting. After figuring out that I’d unfortunately got the newer hardware revision that can’t be rooted, I had them just sitting in a box.
If “debloating” them without rooting and installing Lineage or whatever is “good enough,” maybe I should take another look. Do you know of a good guide to follow? Is there anything special that needs to be done, such as preventing it from updating or connecting to the Internet before the factory malware is removed?
The one I bought can be rooted and I had planned to do so, but found it wasn’t needed.
You can use ADB by itself, but this tool makes debloating a breeze. Deleted packages can be easily restored if you make a mistake. ADB needs to be running for it to connect. Be aware the remote is a Bluetooth device so don’t make my mistake and turn BT off.
Remember when you could plug a keyboard into a smart TV and use it as a remote. I remember.
Wait, the $15 2K model you bought yesterday can be rooted? I figured anything made in the last few years would’ve been patched.
Can you tell me the exact model (the code on the box, like this, as explained in this XDA thread about the model I got where I experienced disappointment), and where you found the information about rooting it?
I appreciate that you’re happy with yours even without rooting, but I don’t think I’d be able to trust it not to enshittify in the long run on the stock firmware.
Instead of a Roku Stick, you could use the Google TV Streamer or Apple TV 4K…………Amazon’s Fire devices are also an option, but I figure anyone with moral qualms against Fox may have similar issues with anything tied to Jeff Bezos.
I got a kick out of the article recommending Google and Apple like they’re the ethical option against Amazon here. Any sane person with moral qualms against Bezos will have plenty about Google and Apple too, so let’s not pretend that any of them are anything less than evil.
What suggestions do you have for simple media players that techy people could recommend to their families? It seems like for the most part we’re limited to Android-based devices or the Apple TV.
I have no idea what anyone in the following comments is talking about and I’m otherwise “techy”. I couldn’t imagine a non techy person dealing with any of these recommendations. They just want something to work out of the box without lots of obscure configurations and zero support. As soon as they have a problem they are stuck. They aren’t going to search through tech websites and special interest groups. I think a lot of folks don’t understand how alien any of this is for the vast majority of people.
It’s not there yet. But I’m hoping KDE plasma big screen continues to receive love. If it gets into mainstream distributions. It will likely be big. It’s a much more smart TV like shell for the KDE desktop. All the familiarity of your Google TV, Apple tv, fire stick, Roku etc. But none of the advertisements or lockdown. With waydroid it should even be able to run most of your Android applications as well as all the native Linux and KDE applications. But again this is something to watch for. Not quite ready for deployment yet.
I’m just running Linux with an always on top Kodi on an N100 mini-PC.
Works fine with a wireless remote for the purpose of being a TV Box that I just have on my living room and use in the same way as I would a commercial TV box.
Granted, I also use that as a homeserver (its seriously overpowered to just be a TV Box) but that side of things I manage remotely via SSH.
You don’t really need access to the full desktop to run Linux apps if you just want a TV Box.
This would be awesome!
It absolutely would be. I’m watching it with great interest. The thought of having a Raspberry Pi and old E-Waste business PC or a cheap n100 or 150 system at the television. Running Games movies everything. It’s very attractive.
I was going to say, an old 1L ThinkCentre Tiny, Optiplex Micro, or HP Mini would fit the bill nicely. I already have one set up for retro gaming. It would be nice to get it set up as kore of an overall media center, with a remote-friendly interface. I know I can do that with Libre elec and Kodi but I’m not a fan. KDE is my desktop of choice so I’d love to see what they come up with. Plasma Mobile is solid so I would imagine it could be similar.
Build a media stick out of something like a pi seems like the only option? I wouldn’t want to deal with that though and I’m not aware of anyone selling a plug-n-play ready options like that unfortunately.
I did that and I’m curious why you say you wouldn’t want to deal with it?
If the setup matches my own personal setup, then I would. But I wouldn’t want to have to deal with troubleshooting it if anything comes up down the road when ill have completely forgotten how I set it up in the first place.
Also, I know from experience that someone like my parents would opt to use the commercial options over something I set up for them.
Yeah a remote with 3-4 buttons and a d-pad is about the limit for many people.
I just use a mini PC and use streaming services through the browser when I do use them.
Couple that with a air mouse/keyboard combo remote and its pretty good. Not perfect but good for non tech people too.
I was just looking into this recently and CoreELEC came up. That or LibreELEC that run kodi. The hardware that was recommended would be a ugoos x4q
Depending on how maintenance-free this is once it’s configured (because non-technical people are not going to mess with things), this actually looks like a pretty solid solution. Thank you!
It’s been years since I’ve used Kodi but I remember after it being set up it was pretty solid. I’m sure it’s been improved since then
An Onn box with protectivity launcher, all bloatware removed, and ReVanced apps is the simplest/cheapest way to go.
I would suggest using a PC with a Kodi or Jellyfin and the arr stack to automatically download all of your shows and movies.
Paid streaming services won’t work because of DRM, so you need to host your own.
I have the hosted part taken care of but the other half of the issue is the media player side for people that are not technical at all. They basically need a device where they can open an app that just works and have a simple interface to navigate around and play media.
If the media is stored locally or on a network share on your LAN, then Kodi will work well for that. When you first instal it, tell it where you keep your files and enable auto scan on startup. After that, you just open it and browse your TV show or movie library.
If you want to stream the media away from home things get a bit more complicated.
All kinds of media player distros for raspberry pi
I mean, the Apple TV is doing significantly less sketchy shit, selling your data, and spying on you.
It also doesn’t have Home Screen ads and ads stuffed everywhere.
Of the options, regardless of how you feel about Apple, it’s the only viable commercial tv box.
The creepiest thing mine has done is have the Peanuts cartoon screensavers be relevant to the weather in my area. Seeing Snoopy and Woodstock get blown around on a windy day is oddly nice haha
I don’t actually know its happening, I might just be more aware of the windy cartoons or rainy cartoons when I’m actually experiencing that weather 🤷♂️
It’s cutesy until it’s not. Anybody who has long-term experience in recommending any brand will tell you that the brand will eventually decide they don’t need to be outstanding in any category.
Apple just started pushing ads in its maps app, which was supposed to be the better alternative to Google Maps.
Right… but the discussion is specifically about how Apple is pretty much the only consumer friendly TV device available right now. Hopefully a new, better one comes along but to your point, that one will eventually be shit too soooo idk whats the point its all going to burn
I hooked a PC up to my device. You’d be surprised how consumer-friendly it is. I didn’t even need to beg Tim Cook to run my favorite programs on it.
I want to try this for sure, but was that an out of the box solution?
I have a PC but it can’t use HDMI CEC correctly, so I would have to buy an adapter, then buy a special remote, configure that, then figure out how I want my boot storage encrypted or not.
What’s the app/service situation like?
That’s a great solution. It think we were talking more about people that don’t even use PCs. Older people like grandparents or other tech illiterate that maybe use a tablet at most.
They they sell TVs with apple tv as its built in os?
No that’s just an app, the set top box has all the main streaming apps without the bloateare of smart tvs, you should never ever connect your smart tv to the internet.
Roku has been one of the worst from a privacy standpoint, alongside Amazon devices. Google isn’t much better but for privacy, there is no off the shelf option better than AppleTV. Heck, even the beloved Nvidia Shield gets poor marks for privacy.
- Buy a second hand Google TV or amazon Firestick so your money doesn’t go to the tech overlords
- Change the android rom to linageOS
- Profit
Until the browsers I use axe ad-blocking, it’s as simple as a HDMI cable and watching through PC tunneled to TV.
I’ve given stream sticks an honest try, but they’re all abysmal. It feels like I’m caged in an advertisement ecosystem.
It feels like I’m caged in an advertisement ecosystem.
It is a caged advertisement ecosystem
Pretty soon I think I’m going to try using a Raspberry Pi as a streaming box. As long as it can play 4K content from Jellyfin and Youtube then it’ll work great
For real, a long HDMI cord from my PC to my TV with a wireless keyboard & mouse is the peak couch setup. I love it.
Way ahead of you.
What do we do with existing TVs that have the Roku OS? I imagine alternative FW isn’t an easy option since so many different HW brands use Roku
You can reset the tv and set it up without internet. It still works as a “dumb” tv.
As reddig33 mentioned, reset the TV and don’t connect it to the internet. Buy a Google TV or Apple TV device of some kind, set the TV to that HDMI channel and use it instead of what’s built-in.
Some recommended options for Google TV devices:
- Best:
- Nvidia Shield TV Pro
- Google/Android Ecosystem
- Although released in 2019, this is still the king and top option to get
- Nvidia Shield TV Pro
- Better:
- Google TV Streamer (4K)
- Google/Android Ecosystem
- Walmart onn 4K Pro Streaming Device, Google TV with Gemini (NEW 2026 Model)
- Google/Android Ecosystem
- Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus (newest model)
- Amazon Fire Ecosystem
- Apple TV 4K
- Apple Ecosystem
- Google TV Streamer (4K)
- Good:
- Walmart onn 4K Streaming Device, Google TV with Gemini (NEW 2026 Model)
- Google/Android Ecosystem
- Walmart onn 4K Streaming Device, Google TV with Gemini (NEW 2026 Model)
- Bare Minimum:
- Amazon Fire TV Stick HD (newest model)
- Amazon Fire Ecosystem
- onn 4K Streaming Device
- Google/Android Ecosystem
- Amazon Fire TV Stick HD (newest model)
Hope this helps.
I can vouch for the quality of the Shield TV Pro, except they did put some ads on the home screen in the past couple years when they had their first big update in a long time if not ever. It does come with a steeper price tag, but for me it was worth it.
Projectivvy Launcher is your new best friend.
I’ll have to give this a try. Honestly, I watch 90% of my media on my computer these days, but I do get to the TV occasionally, and my wife uses it. This looks nice and clean.
- Best:
I just block my Roku’s telemetry and ad servers at the DNS level with my pi-hole, and it works fine for streaming from my Plex/Jellyfin server. If you really wanted to be sure, you could just reset the firmware and refuse to connect it to the WiFi afterwards. It’ll still work just fine as a regular TV. Then you can hook up something like an Nvidia Shield Pro or an Apple TV 4K to it, and use that to stream instead.
I want to know what I can do with an existing Roku Ultra box I have. I’ve been using it in my office lounge ever since I was gifted it by a recruiter, but only have experience hacking Fire TV devices.
Dumped it last year. It was a good run.
