Roku has patented a way to show ads over anything you plug into your TV

A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads over any device connected over HDMI, a list that could include cable boxes, game consoles, DVD or Blu-ray players, PCs, or even other video streaming devices. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023 and it was published in November 2023, though it hasn’t yet been granted.

The technology described would detect whether content was paused in multiple ways—if the video being displayed is static, if there’s no audio being played, if a pause symbol is shown anywhere on screen, or if (on a TV with HDMI-CEC enabled) a pause signal has been received from some passthrough remote control. The system would analyze the paused image and use metadata “to identify one or more objects” in the video frame, transmit that identification information to a network, and receive and display a “relevant ad” over top of whatever the paused content is.

EdibleFriend,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Hopefully this ends up something they never actually do like that sony patent for ads that only go away if you call out the name of the product.

SonnyVabitch,

Sony fabitch!

PoliticallyIncorrect,

Good way to kill their product…

derpgon,

Sadly they already have all the money

otter,

I can’t imagine anyone that would leave the device plugged in after the first ad comes up. Pretty much anyone using such a device would also know how to unplug them. They clearly have other uses for that screen, so it’s not a total loss to keep it unplugged till the user can switch to a different brand.

Ah it’s a Roku TV entirely. Reminds me of the Samsung TV ads

Roku TV sets come with ads. Generally, these are restricted to Roku’s home and menu screens, its screensavers, and its first-party video channels, and once you start playing video, the only ads you’ll see are the ones from the service you’re streaming from. That said, Roku TVs have shown ads atop live TV before.

Now, the company is apparently experimenting with ways to show ads over top of even more of the things you plug into your TV. A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads […]

assembly,

Aight. So it’s time for me to start taking this seriously. Has anyone tried using like a GrapheneOS or LineageOS as a Roku or FireTV replacement? Is there anything like that which will support an experience with a regular remote control and have apps like Netflix and Hulu work?

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe not the solution you were asking for, but the Nvidia Shield on the stock code has been a fair compromise for me. The ads on the main screen are relatively unobtrusive, and sometimes even vaguely relevant to our viewing preferences. We largely watch Hulu, Prime and YouTube+ (with free access to AppleTV and Netflix, but I haven’t set those up yet). For ads, we pretty much only deal with Amazon’s new advertising in included Prime content. We’ll probably stop viewing that content once the series we’re currently watching wraps.

For context, my daily driver phone is LineageOS which is rooted all to heck to smack down intrusive advertising and tracking (Magisk, AdAway, AppManager to disable in-app trackers, uBlock on the browser, etc…), and my home network uses a pihole for DNS and malware blocking. I really hate advertisers.

On the pihole, the Shield is actually only the #3 top offender of blocked requests, behind my wife’s work laptop and my kid’s Steam rig. The main offender on the Shield was the ESPN app, which I removed because I never really watch sports outside of tye idd division game, which most of the time I meet friends out at the local pub anyway. Otherwise the Shield has been a well behaved appliance.

So it’s not the perfect ad-free experience, but its hardly the advertising dystopia of broadcast TV.

zarenki,

The problem with those TV apps is DRM. All the major streaming services require that you either use a locked down platform (probably checking SafetyNet and more on Android TV) or settle for their browser UI which lacks dpad support and gets quality throttled to 1080p or lower.

Circumventing that DRM is possible, but no project at the scale of a platform like those would dare the both legal risk and support headache of making those circumventions (which are very liable to break) a core part of the OS.

Kodi (and distros using it like LibreELEC) exist for people who want a FOSS platform for using non DRM encumbered media with a TV remote interface.

Samsy,

Kodi. But it’s a mess compared to roku.

fin,

Hopefully this will enlarge the user base of kodi

Samsy,

Kodi is not suitable for the average user. Some streaming apps like Disney+ require a full chromeOS download just for extracting the DRM part. Roku instead offers for a few bucks a ready-to-go system.

I always wonder why some products just simply have all these DRM features and others don’t. Is DRM just a monopol for the chosen ones?

richmondez,

It’s exactly a monopoly for the chosen ones, gate keeping at its worst. Anything that isn’t blessed is going to be a bit more effort to get working, but I wouldn’t say Kodi is unsuitable for the average user on the grounds of the widevine module though, the DRM module extraction is automated when installing a plugin that requires it.

FeelThePower,
@FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

you could install Android on a raspberry pi with a usb remote.

Petter1,

I’d use a used laptop/desktop on Linux, e.g. something like steamOS, and then use jellyfin to stream stuff to this laptop. The media i watch is pirated, because it is more convenient and better quality than if I stream it through streaming service, even tho I pay for “4k” on these services.

Drewelite,

But this displays over HDMI, correct?

Petter1,

Oh, I have read it wrong, upsii, yea it’s over HDMI Well, I guess Roku TV owner have to hope that there comes a way to flash a custom rom on that TV, indeed. But unlocking a bootloader and to find/make drivers for all that proprietary hardware seems like a hard job to me…

Drewelite,

Actually you may have had the correct interpretation, they said as a Roku TV replacement. I read it as a way to fix their existing Roku TV.

Hobbes_Dent,

So we just ordered a new tv and just want the universe to know that Roku wasn’t even considered and this shit is why.

ilmagico,

I mean, yeah sure, but are the alternatives that much better in this respect? Which alternative non-ad-ridden, privacy-respecting smart tv would you recommend (or ended up buying)? Asking for my future tv choice…

Cosmocrat,

Commercial displays are your best bet, although they can be quite expensive.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Will probably last longer too since they’re intended for 24/7 or at least 16/5 continuous runtime.

Hobbes_Dent,

Samsung, but I’d rather report back when I see if it’s a mistake.

I intend to keep using my AppleTV and hope that’s the end of it. But the Samsung was a process of elimination of Roku and LG via shitty experience with the WebOS on the work TV. If Tizen doesn’t stay out of the way then I’ll start playing router games.

ReallyActuallyFrankenstein,

We have a HiSense Android TV (most are now Google TV, but they’re essentially the same). There are ads by default, but you can install a custom launcher with no ads, so the experience is much better.

I use Projectivity launcher and it looks nicer, has no ads, and it’s much faster and more responsive.

As soon as I figured out how to install a custom launcher, I researched how to disable ads similarly on our Roku TVs and discovered all of the secret menus that could have disabled them, except they no longer work.

So the Roku level of lockdown on their custom OS is much worse now versus an android-based OS.

ilmagico,

While Google is hardly privacy-respecting and ad-free, I guess the fact it can be more easily customized is a plus, maybe I should consider it for the future. After all, that’s the same reason I stick with Android.

Can GoogleTV be rooted like android can, preferably without resorting to hacks, like in some android phones where the bootloader is unlockable?

ReallyActuallyFrankenstein,

Can GoogleTV be rooted like android can, preferably without resorting to hacks, like in some android phones where the bootloader is unlockable?

Not that I’ve found, although over at XDA forums they seem to be working on it. I unlock and root my Android phones, but I doubt any TV manufacturer has even considered making their bootloaders unlockable so it’s an uphill battle.

drkt,
@drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Thankfully they patented it, hopefully deterring anyone else from also doing it

ANIMATEK,

lol as if they couldn’t license it

ANIMATEK,

The newest LG GX (4?) is actually removing ads from their UI, I think it is totally ad-free. It is expensive as fuck though, it makes sense to deliver a premium experience.

kautau,

It’s weird now though that TVs didn’t have ads, and now people are willing to pay more because it could have ads but it doesn’t

richmondez,

I think the point is that “not having ads” shouldn’t be allowed to become the premium experience when it used to be the standard experience.

Etterra,

I never considered Roku and I’m glad.

thetreesaysbark,

I had been considering a Roku stick instead of an Amazon fire stick to try and get out of the Amazon bubble.

I now see that Roku basically want to create their own bubble too so probably better to only let one shitty company (Amazon) get my viewing habits.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

As long as the Amazon ones still come with Android, just throwing an APK of some FOSS media cwnter onto it is the cheapest way to get a reasonably modern “homebrew” appliance. The ads in the home screen are IMO a compromise I can deal with under that specific circumstances.

JonEFive,

They have become the evil they were once apart from.

In a streaming landscape dominated by ad companies like Google and Amazon, Roku was once the viable alternative. Unfortunately, in the 21st century, enshitification comes for us all eventually.

DogPeePoo,

Now, if only they would invent the exact opposite of this, I would buy it

I want zero ads. Ever.

melpomenesclevage, (edited )

They did! Its called a pihole plus ublock origin plus piracy.

You can’t buy it, only the hardware, but the software is all free.

Steve,

Still doesnt block youtube ads 😩

naitro,

For ad-free youtube on Android TV: SmartTube

For ad-free youtube on mobile Android devices: ReVanced

For desktop: Firefox + uBlock origin

onion,

Also for Android: NewPipe
Also for desktop: FreeTube

asexualchangeling,

Or Firefox for android, the app version also can use extensions

dmtalon,

Or GrayJay for Android

d4rko,

Or Tubular

AtariDump,

Ad free YouTube on RokuOS? TIZEN?

Ad free YouTube on iOS?

harsh3466,

Sadly, Firefox + ublock is becoming unreliable. I routinely can’t play YouTube videos on my desktop computer with that setup (+ a vpn) because google just won’t serve them. I just get perpetual loading screens.

melpomenesclevage,

Are you… Are you using the yt APP!?

dm_me_your_boobs,

Revanced only, bby!

Steve,

Roku TV 😞

melpomenesclevage,

Oh. Oh no. Do you need a hug? A hammer?

teamevil,

So if you can side load check out smart tube app

Llewellyn, (edited )

You can’t defend against ads with pihole if the ads server has the same address as content server

melpomenesclevage,

This is true. Hence the piracy. Only way to go ad free.

Llewellyn, (edited )

But with the risk of malware infection, unfortunately.

When something is free, you’re the product.

I’d advise to continue to use non-pirated products, but only from those companies, whose service you’re satisfied with.
And if there’s none, don’t consume product at all. It’s not like movies are vital for you.

melpomenesclevage, (edited )

Vlc is pretty good, and I run a pretty strange distro. If I’m extra scared, I’ll use qubes or get a sacrifice machine.

I think the poor having culture is important. Either art is important, or it Fucking isn’t. You seem to be arguing its the frivolity, not the substance and fruit of civilization.

Video isnt my favorite medium, I have a lot of criticisms of it, but its still art, still precious. And so everyone deserves to have it.

Llewellyn,

And so everyone deserves to have it.

And authors along with those, who maintain content distributing infrastructure, deserve to be rewarded for their labour.

melpomenesclevage,

But I can’t pay them. Its not generally an option. Have you seen the terms on their Fucking contracts?

Literally the closest I can get is wandering around Los Angeles giving money to people who look vaguely familiar or give off writerly vibes.

Llewellyn, (edited )

But I can’t pay them.

Then don’t consume the product. It’s entertainment, not vital goods.

By the way, where do their salaries come from, in your opinion?

melpomenesclevage, (edited )

Okay but then noone should. Theres no way to give money to the people who made this shit. I’m not saying I’m poor, I’m saying there is no vector by which I could.

And I just said why I’m gonna, and why I’m gonna give more away to everyone else. I’m gonna buy extra tools to do that, just to spite your classist ‘the poor should have no culture’ bullshit.

Llewellyn,

Theres no way to give money to the people who made this shit.

But there is. Part of the money you pay distributors goes to the creators.

And by the way: distributors not just “speculate on digital goods” or whatever you seem to imply. They distribute. That means they make goods available through the internet in a convenient way.

Servers won’t pay for themselves.

melpomenesclevage,

part of the money you pay to the owners

Lol no it doesn’t. I saw the contracts the AFL-CIA pushed on the workers, and I know being good bought or beloved doesn’t get people hired again because the shit heads who do get the money send it on cocaine and child slaves and private jets and the worst possible decisions with the capital and IP dipshits like you give them.

I don’t get my films from Netflix. I torrent them; distribution is a community effort!

Don’t worry; I give back, keep my seed ratio high, never shut off a torrent until its at least 3:1 etc.

Llewellyn,

Where do you think creators salaries come from?

melpomenesclevage, (edited )

Starbucks, maybe olive garden. Same as always. I can’t change that.

melpomenesclevage,

Wait were you calling amazon video Hulu and Netflix convenient? Are you an ad fetishist? Is the best part of a movie figuring out where and how to watch it? I can’t understand another way to believe this.

Llewellyn,

More convenient for me, than torrents: because I watch content either on TV or on phone.

melpomenesclevage,

I have vlc on my phone. Toss an sdcard in yhere, movies for days (more if i rewatch or dont watch while sleeping).

Dunno about TVs but last time I saw someone use one’s native software it looked like hell to use.

Llewellyn,

Samsung and LG are pretty good

melpomenesclevage, (edited )

Typing with a god damn remote. No thanks.

Or a phone app that’s gonna break like two years after purchase and snitches on everything.

Llewellyn,

You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to it.

KISSmyOSFeddit,

Have you heard about our new ad-blocking TVs?
Thanks to our patented Ad-Away technology, they’re guaranteed to keep you free from all ads! Get yours now, Ad-Away subscriptions start at $49 a month!

quaddo,

2 years later, somewhere in their sales and marketing departments:

“Hey, you know what would make us even more money?”

“No, but do tell”

“Advertising”

“Genius - how is it nobody has ever thought of this before?”

DogPeePoo,

Lol 😂

Nice 😆💀

9point6,

I’m glad they patented it so that any of the products I actually buy won’t be able to do this

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

If it’s patented, it can also be hacked more easily.

dutchkimble,

Why?

TheGrandNagus,

I think they’re erroneously stating that there will be so much technical information in the patent that it will be trivial to reverse engineer and remove from Roku products.

Unfortunately that isn’t the case.

dutchkimble,

Ahh you’re right that’s probably what they meant, but yeah in that case every patented software would be hacked

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Well, the idea is that anything and everything can be hacked. It’s just that the difficulty varies wildly; some being trivial whereas others are impossible until someone finds an exploit. If you’re working with a total black box, you’ll have to make many assumptions, which means that figuring stuff out may take a while. If there’s at least some documentation, such as a patent, you won’t have to guess absolutely everything. That doesn’t guarantee that it’s going to be easy. Maybe the patent doesn’t go into much technical detail, but still manages to describe the product in just enough legal detail that the company can sue anyone trying to come too close.

667,
@667@lemmy.radio avatar

It will be licensed to manufacturers with advertising incentives and packaged into consumer electronics.

Savvy electronics users will supply their own HDMI cables; this product will be for people who only understand enough to plug the ends between their box and the entertainment system.

Hell, you might even see these cables being handed out for “free”, akin to the AOL disc days.

RainfallSonata,

Parents can be licensed for use by other companies.

spacemoss,

Autocorrect or comment on society?

sugar_in_your_tea,

¿Por qué no los dos?

Teon,
Teon avatar

Sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Imagine that you pay for an ad free streaming service through your roku, like HBO for example. And now you have ads streaming over it?
People will sue for a way to disable it over ad free paid content.
Also, this will lead to way more pirating. People are sick of advertisements.

Drewelite,

Even if people sue, doesn’t mean they have any legal grounds to win. What law is Roku breaking? You can’t sue your TV manufacturer for not being 4k when you pay for 4k content. Your content display technology has the right to display content how they see fit.

I see this as a job for the free market. As consumers we need to show Roku how we feel about that.

KillerTofu,

Yes the free market always wins!

melpomenesclevage,

The free free market requiring a cool hat and tropical bird.

NounsAndWords,

If I purchase a TV, that I now own, and after I own it the company “updates” my TV that I now have to watch ads in order to use the TV I purchased without that condition?

At minimum it’s a breach of contract

GooseFinger,

Their recent ToS update: “We bricked your TV until you ‘consent’ to waiving your right to sue us if we do something illegal. Also, we won’t tell you what you’re consenting to up front, instead we’ll make you spend hours reading through pages and pages of legal garbage to find where we buried this statement.”

They know that nobody would agree to this if they put it in big bold letters right above the “agree” button, so they bury it behind hours of tedious reading so that people cave in and just “consent.”

If you roofy someone’s drink and pester them until they “consent” to sex, you would get thrown and jail and probably shanked in the liver. If Roku bricks the TV that you purchased and won’t let it work again until you consent to something that you’re nearly guaranteed to miss or not understand by design, their profits go up because people can’t sue them.

This capitalism hellhole can’t burn down fast enough.

mPony,

a job for the free market

Hey, as long as there is a way for ordinary people to attend shareholders meetings in person and have direct physical access to the humans who made these decisions, I’m sure everything will work out in the end.

Drewelite,

Is that how you think the free market is supposed to work? People don’t get to decide how companies operate. They have every right to create a shitty product. As long as there’s room for competition to punish them for that bad decision.

Kedly,

The free market has failed dude. THIS IS THE RESULT of it!

Drewelite,

Capitalism and our current implementation has many failings. A company making a really shitty anti-consumer decision when there are plenty of alternative competitors and options is not one of them.

Kedly, (edited )

Capitalism rewards the most ruthless pursuits of money. Without regulations monopolies, shit products, and the cheapest wages possible are the end results of it as those are the most efficient ways to get as much profit as possible. In the end, any company that doesnt participate in such tactics gets out competed

Drewelite, (edited )

Capitalism, has a bunch of problems. Those are some of them. Frankly I think it’s due to collapse and I hope we’ll be better for it. But Roku? Monopoly? They’re a mediocre company making a possibility short sighted decision. This is capitalism working as intended. Don’t buy it if you don’t like it.

If you don’t like capitalism call out real problems, because this just sounds like you’ll take anything that looks bad and blame it on capitalism. Which weakens the overall argument against it, IMO.

Kedly, (edited )

Bud, you just agreed with me what the real problems are, yeah monopoly doesnt apply to Roku, but shit product DOES with this change. But all THREE are huge problems for “regulation FREE MARKETS” which is what I listed them in response to

Edit: Formatting

Drewelite,

Ah, I think I misunderstood. My mistake. I would make the point that I think many consumers would actually prefer the cheap ad riddled version of many services. Like, many streaming services people complain about having ads, have an ad free tier they’re unwilling to pay for. But I assume you’d make the argument that’s from the poverty created by the other problems within capitalism. Which is a valid criticism.

Kedly,

Fuck man, lemmy is such a refreshing change of pace compared to reddit for these kinds of conversations. And yeah, its partially from poverty style decision making, and some of it is theres usually a larger percentage of a customer base that doesnt care about the finer details of what goes into what they are buying as long as its cheaper than there is for those that want higher ethics/quality. Either way though, without regulation (with it too, but regulation lets there be an acceptable floor intalled), the cheapest to buy product will eventually win out over the competition, and the cheapest way to get the cheapest product will win on that front. At that point, since the goal is to get as much money as possible, the product will start rising in price now that the competition is gone, and steps will be taken to prevent new competition from forming

Drewelite,

Oh I know right? I have shared this sentiment with other… lemmings? It feels like people think more about actually fostering meaningful conversations. Anyway, thanks for your thought provoking comments!

Holyginz,

Lol, wake up man, the free market hasn’t been free for years now.

whodatdair,

That’ll be why they just pushed a “agree to our new license with arbitrage or your tv is a brick” update

melpomenesclevage,

People who don’t pirate already are fools.

CrowAirbrush,

Let 'm pirate. Teach them how to do it better even.

watson387,
@watson387@sopuli.xyz avatar

That’s some scummy shit…

melpomenesclevage,

Everything owned will do this sooner or later.

Antagnostic,

owned

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

crazyminner,

The amount of ewaste they will be producing when they push that update. Should be against some environmental laws.

melpomenesclevage,

Not what laws are for.

Is what guillotines are for.

AtariDump,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f3dfa277-03b4-4a73-9663-6264389ec2d3.jpeg

melpomenesclevage, (edited )

Bread and circuses. They’re gouging us on the bread and making the circuses inaccessible, these dipshits are practically begging for a red terror, by making the worst outcome still better than the ongoing white.

If I were making their decisions for them; I’m not sure I could do much better at priming the populace for revolution.

JonEFive,

Give me freedom from advertising or give me death.

starman2112,
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

Roku would gladly do the latter if they thought it profitable

quaddo,

Roku somehow thinking that the Ferengi rules of acquisition was a how-to guide book.

jaybone,

Can’t we put these devices in some kind of dev mode and install software to stop this shit?

I assume these devices run some kind of Linux kernel, with a stripped down Linux distro.

swab148,
@swab148@startrek.website avatar

The problem there is proprietary hardware blobs, no one’s made open-source drivers for any of the myriad TV manufacturers, each with their own OS.

jaybone,

How do emby or jellyfin devs develop clients on roku?

I would think, if you have that level of access, you could also stop or patch whatever OS services they run.

Surely you can ssh into these devices right?

sugar_in_your_tea,

The API for developing apps is absolutely open, but the OS isn’t. They’d give you some kind of development environment (like Android with Android studio), and a way to get logs out. The apps are often vetted by the platform like Android and iOS apps are, and they’d be able to override anything your app could do anyway.

So think consoles, phones, tablets, etc. The OS is locked down, but you can develop apps for it.

So probably no SSH access unless you find a backdoor or something. Your time is better spent buying something without that crap, like certain projectors, commercial displays, etc. They subsidize the cost of the TVs with that nonsense, so they’re going to prevent you from removing it.

0x2d,

roku generally puts a lot of effort into security

ilmagico,

“security” for themselves, not the customer, I guess

0x2d,

i’m trying to say that they’re pretty locked down

RainfallSonata,

I don’t understand why anyone uses one of these,when you can stream anything you want for free on your computer in your web browser.

SupraMario,

I don’t know why anyone wants to connect their TV to the Internet…

TheGrandNagus,

To watch things? To stream music? Game streaming? To avoid the additional expense, cable clutter, and additional remotes of android TV boxes (which also contain ads out of the box anyway)?

Honestly what kind of question is this lol. It’s pretty obvious why people connect their TVs to the internet.

SupraMario,

Use a media extender… they’re like $20.

JonEFive,

Try finding a dumb tv for sale of relevant size and quality. I know you don’t have to connect it to wifi… Usually. But I just want a TV that doesn’t have all this shit in it to begin with.

SupraMario,

O I’m not saying it’s easy. Just don’t connect it. I’ve got tvs with all that crap but they’re connected to my media extenders that I can control, vs a TV that for w/e fucking reason needs updates.

Reverendender,

Is this sarcasm, or do you genuinely not understand watching TV?

RainfallSonata,

Anything you would watch on tv is available free on the internet. No subscriptions, even Netflix. I"m not being sarcastic. Hang your f’ing monitor on the wall, then. That’s all that makes this “tv” different. Well, and its advertisements.

SharkAttak,
SharkAttak avatar

tl;dr never buy anything Roku, ever again. Got it.

Threeme2189,

You’ve got it the other way around. Roku sell their TVs at a loss. Buy one, use it as a dumb screen and help them go bankrupt faster.

APassenger,

Yeah… I’ve been evaluating moving to Plex or Jellyfin.

Kinda getting done with a lot of this smart stuff. The Monopolies are flexing and I don’t enjoy it.

ours,

Do it, it’s great. The NVidia Shield is a great client for it but is getting more and more adds on the homescreen. The are alternative loaders without the add you can put on it.

bpev,

Fwiw, this was also on HN yesterday. Never tried it myself, though:

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39941232

sugar_in_your_tea,

Just do it. I ripped our DVDs and put them on my NAS with minidlna configured, and I can now stream my stuff directly to my TV through the “Photos and Videos” app. My other TV has a Raspberry Pi running Kodi, so if my next TV doesn’t support dlna, I’ll just do that.

Screw all of these companies and their predatory practices.

quaddo,

Jeff Geerling discusses having done the same, in one of his videos.

jkrtn,

Roku has patented a way to ensure I don’t buy their junk.

KISSmyOSFeddit,

Roku about to patent a way to make you buy their junk.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Just imagine they work out a deal with every consumer TV manufacturer to put this on everything.

MaliciousKebab,

I’ll just buy a giant monitor then, it’s better anyway.

sugar_in_your_tea,

If only they made 60"+ monitors, I’d do the same. But since those don’t really exist, the options are:

  • prevent TV from accessing the Internet
  • get a commercial grade monitor - more expensive
  • projector - most seem to not have smart nonsense
  • pihole - may or may not work

I’m going to try out the first, but allow certain accesses (Netflix and Disney+). If that works, I may not need to worry about the rest of the list.

tarius,

Just a thought: What if I were to buy a TV with a port other than HDMI and use a converter from Roku device to that port? For example, hdmi to display port or whatever.

garretble,
@garretble@lemmy.world avatar

Is there a consumer tv out there that has display port as an option?

Monitors for sure, but I’m talking 70” OLEDs and whatnot.

JamesFire,

Use more adapters

Adapt hdmi -> RCA -> hdmi

brian,

that gets rid of cec but everything else would still work. you really just have to plug your other devices into the TV directly instead of into the roku. the problem will be the tvs with roku integrated directly

kent_eh,

It’s a lot cheaper and easier to not use a Roku device.

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