I have a TCL with what I assume is Roku TV, and I'll never connect it to the internet for this exact purpose.
Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
11–20 of 181 posts
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#12My next TV purchase will be a dumb TV.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#13I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. It's like the frame interpolation that some TVs had to generate 120p frames from 60p. I actually prefer the original 24p (or 24p double-exposed to 48 like cinema projectors do) for films. What really bugs me are the "Remastered" versions of songs on Spotify that sound like they were produced with today's audience in mind and doesn't sound like the original rec…
Real film does have (effectively—the aperture’s closed half the time so you don’t see a smear of moving film) a blacked out every-other-frame which makes the perceived motion smoother (some digital projectors can replicate this, though it halves the effective brightness so you need a really bright one for it to work ok) but yeah, I’d take a little judder over faked digital smoothing. It looks awful.
[edit] I just mean that an actual film projector does achieve smoother motion than most TVs displaying 24 fps the best they can “naturally”, but a TV’s natural best is still far better than the alternative of alien-looking digital motion smoothing.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#14"If it ain't broke, don't fix/update it." That's my moto. Apart from Firefox, my banking apps and Signal, I don't update anything, ever. Not the TV, not the media-box, nothing. Eventually it leads to tragedy and discomfort. Sometimes I custom update my Win machines for Security patches, but anything that has to do with usability, UI, function, etc. I leave it as is. (I firewall all my apps in my machine anyway).
I wish that had been my motto earlier. I bought a resin 3d printer off craigslist in perfect working condition, tried to update the firmware (for no good reason), and ended up promptly bricking the thing. I got it fixed in the end, but it was a huge unnecessary waste of time and energy.
More recently, I updated my Vision Pro to the OS beta, which broke my ability to open files off my NAS. That, too, is fixed now…but again, I should’ve just left well enough alone.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#15"If it ain't broke, don't fix/update it." That's my moto. Apart from Firefox, my banking apps and Signal, I don't update anything, ever. Not the TV, not the media-box, nothing. Eventually it leads to tragedy and discomfort. Sometimes I custom update my Win machines for Security patches, but anything that has to do with usability, UI, function, etc. I leave it as is. (I firewall all my apps in my machine anyway).
I don't even give my TV the wifi password. I'm paranoid that it's going to update something without my consent. I fear the day they come with cellular modems and bypass the wifi entirely.
I used to worry about cellular modems, but now I think it will be just plain old wifi they use. There's Comcast Xfinity, Amazon Sidewalk, and probably other companies that turn their device into a communal wifi hotspot.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#16I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. It's like the frame interpolation that some TVs had to generate 120p frames from 60p. I actually prefer the original 24p (or 24p double-exposed to 48 like cinema projectors do) for films. What really bugs me are the "Remastered" versions of songs on Spotify that sound like they were produced with today's audience in mind and doesn't sound like the original rec…
> I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. A simple description would be: It makes film movies look like direct-to-video productions, so basically everything looks like a soap opera. Horrible indeed.
I've even commonly heard it referred to as "soap opera mode".
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#17Earlier this year my roku-enabled TV started showing some new Terms Of Service, and it wouldn't let me watch anything unless I agreed to them. ...or unplugged it from the network. Now, it sounds like they may have done me a favor.
The fine print of that TOS allowed you to opt out if you mailed a letter to a specific legal department at Roku within a certain time frame.
Also, that should be a crime.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#18> Not long after the update rolled out, other Roku TV owners (mainly TCL, but Hisense, too) began posting about the issue in Roku’s community forum and on Reddit. Since I work at The Verge, I told our team about my issue. We reached out to Roku for comment and got no response. We wrote about the problem. Commenters on that post agreed: it sucks. Still, there was radio silence from Roku.
They're probably working on some slimy PR excuse for why they feel the need to force-feed you an unwanted feature, how it's actually for your own good, and subtly insult you for not liking it. That seems to be the standard pattern for when a tech company arrogantly pushes a feature that people don't want or like and provides no way to turn it off.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#19Lol, my TV. That thing on your wall, that thing you paid thousands for, is controlled by the software. You don't own that software. It is owned and controlled by other people. You have paid for a service, that service being the privilege of calling yourself owner of a thing. Your privileges are temporary and may be revoked at any time. In the meantime, any perceived changes are for the benefit of those who actually own the software. Any impact of said changes on renters like yourself is very much secondary.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#20My next TV purchase will be a dumb TV.
Good luck finding one, but this has nothing to do with Smart TVs, and everything to do with what you hook up to a TV.