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Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

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Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#71

Post by paulcole »

einarfd wrote: post #45

If you live in the right jurisdiction consumer protection laws might be able to force the seller to get this defect fixed or have them take back and refund the tv. Where I live (Norway), there is a five year warranty on long lived products, which a tv is, and if it breaks during that period, the seller needs to fix or replace the product. Motion smoothing that can't be turned off seems a serious breakage, and if they…

> Motion smoothing that can't be turned off seems a serious breakage, and if they seller pushes back, you can point out that Tom Cruise and a bunch of other movie luminaries think motion smoothing ruins movies.

Is this the standard in Norway, where the consumer can just call something they personally dislike "serious breakage" and demand their money back? Does this work? Would you actually invoke your Tom Cruise argument and expect that to change anyone's mind?

Or is the culture there just so passive and avoidant that they'll give you your money back just so you go away and stop bothering them?

Whole thing seems wild to me.

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#72

Post by izacus »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #33

What would be the downsides of simply buying a big computer monitor instead of a TV? It seems to me like an easy way to avoid all the crapware that comes with Smart TVs.

Most the lack of useful things that come with those TVs like support for eARC and similar technologies.

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#73

Post by xoxxala »

jwcooper wrote: post #44
diego_sandoval wrote: post #33

What would be the downsides of simply buying a big computer monitor instead of a TV? It seems to me like an easy way to avoid all the crapware that comes with Smart TVs.

Mostly cost - a 55" Samsung Odyssey Ark computer monitor is like $1800. You can get a similar TV for 1/2 that price.

YMMV, but $900 for no crapware is a price I would happily pay. We don't watch TV in our house, so haven't updated it in over a decade, but our next "TV" will be a monitor.

We did purchase a Roku stick a couple years ago, but they wanted credit card info during the set up, which I thought was BS for something that I just wanted to use for our existing streaming apps -- so we never used it.

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#74

Post by adamomada »

kstrauser wrote: post #28
xur17 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I realize that I might just be the exception here, but I honestly really like it.

I'm glad other systems offer it as an option for people who enjoy it. I can't fathom the decision process that permanently enabled it for everyone.

They made the feature, they’re gonna enable it or nobody would use it and it would have been a waste of time making

You’re really gonna hate the fact that 99% of people think this is what stuff on their digital television is supposed to look like.

(Which is exactly why Roku did it)

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#75

Post by hagbard_c »

mikenew wrote: post #24
saulrh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put any android TV into dumb mode ("Basic TV") during setup, which disables many-most of the smart features without affecting core display functionality: https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en .

You're still greeted by a full-page ad on the main menu. But yes; it is better.

Tell me, mr. Ad-man, what good is an ad network... without an internet connection?

I recently got my hands on a "smart TV" for free because the power supply was broken and the replacement the owner had bought did not work. That turned out to be due to the fact that he bought the wrong board so I used parts from both boards to create a working power supply and there I was with a working "TCL 50DP660", this turned out to be a 50" 4K Android TV. Whatever I do with it, it won't get an unfettered internet connection just like all other 'smart' things around here. They live on their own private network where they only get to see what I allow them to see, i.e. my own media services and whatever proxy service I provide to the outside world. No auto-update, no ads, no nothing.

In Cocaine [1] Dillinger spells "New York" as 'a knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork'. Here we spell the 'New Net' as 'a wall, a block, a proxy and a lock'

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9JLen8TTJg

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#76

Post by m348e912 »

bloomingeek wrote: post #36
m348e912 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you find masters? I only know of stems ripped from games like Rock Band.

Mp3Caprice

The site seems to sell high quality 320kpbs mp3s but as far as I can tell none of them are seperate multi-channel recordings (aka masters)

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#77

Post by adamomada »

t0mas88 wrote: post #46
xur17 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I realize that I might just be the exception here, but I honestly really like it.

Same for me. I can't stand watching sports with fast motion or large panning scenes on a low refresh rate screen. But agree with the post above that 24p double exposed is even better. Smooth and no artefacts. Luckily that's an option Sony TVs have by default if you pick cinema mode.

For sports it’s the one and only time I enjoy 60 Hz content, to the point that 25/30 feeds look like garbage. I mainly watch footer and hockey, slower sports it might not look so bad.

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#78

Post by tomrod »

cjk wrote: post #50

I used to work at Roku (audio team). I left in late 2020, but I know that many of Roku's best and brightest were shitcanned as part of the several rounds of layoffs that happened recently, in an effort to cut costs. It would not _at all_ surprise me to learn that this was a mistake, and that there's no one left that knows how to fix it.

Geez, add this to the crummy way they've been rolling out no-opt-out "features" and regressions like automatically showing your recently watched series.

Yes, I really _didn't_ want my 7 year old to stream the Walking Dead, thanks for the nightmares Roku!

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#79

Post by kstrauser »

iamleppert wrote: post #65

I hate to break it to you, but you are only a tiny fraction of the users of something like Roku. The software isn't developed for individual users, it's developed according to a product roadmap, which is itself driven by the behavior of the largest and most profitable cohort of users. If you don't fall into that category, you don't have a choice. Things that may be irritating or upsetting to you, if they make money o…

That's a solid point! Much as I gripe about my iPad Pro not doing things I wish it did, Apple still sells a gazillion of them to people who think their vision is better than mine. They're a $3T company by knowing what their customers want.

I'd be tempted to give Roku the same benefit of the doubt except that the person here on HN who says they like motion smoothing is literally the only person I've ever heard of who did. My in-laws are far, far from tech-savvy videophiles. Last time we visited them I had to set their TV to the right aspect ratio. They'd been watching it that way for ages. And when a software update turned on motion smoothing, they called to ask me how to turn it off because they absolutely hated it. These are regular, non-techie people who just want to watch TV and have zero interest in tweaking or tuning a thing. They are not nit-picky. If it bothered them so much that they had me fix it, I've gotta think there are a lot of people who dislike it.

And because of all that, I think this decision is bonkers. It's a hugely polarizing setting. People who like it like it. People who don't tend to absolutely detest it. I can't imagine what advice Roku got that made it seem like a good idea.

Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

#80

Post by ianburrell »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #43
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to use a computer comfortably from the couch

That's what Chromecasts and its competitors are for. You may say that that's the same as a Smart TV, and chromecasts come with their own crapware, but the big advantage is that they're separate devices. The Chromecast has no way to infect your monitor through HDMI. If the Chromecast or whatever starts misbehaving, you throw it away and replace it with something else. You lost $50 instead of the $300+ that your Smart…

Large monitors are rare. I found Dell 55" for conference rooms. They don't have the features like HDR. They are expensive, the Dell is $1000, and cheap 55" are $300, decent $500, and good $1000.

For lots of people, the builtin speakers and apps are fine. I also got the impression that TVs have gotten faster and UI are less sluggish. Why spend $50 for Chromecast when TV already has Android TV, and cost $200 cause going in spare room?

Don't have to use the smarts of smart TV. I never use the apps on my TV, it displays HDMI. I could stop applying updates or unplug the Ethernet and it wouldn't change.

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