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Fox to buy Roku

wsj.com

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Re: Fox to buy Roku

#91

Post by jimt1234 »

andrewla wrote: post #4

As a long-time[1] customer of Roku I am tentatively extremely pessimistic. I have always been unhappy with Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content at all, because it could potentially cut into their service-agnostic architecture. Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware, but way worse when they are actively competing with streaming services. And now it loo…

Roku hasn't been 'agnostic' since RokuTV or the Roku Channel, or whatever-the-fuck it's called. I watch with a GoogleTV device, connected to my Roku television through HDMI. A few months ago I started seeing these weird popups, saying something like, "I see you're watching 'The Goonies'. Why not watch on RokuTV?" It was bizarre, and a little creepy considering I wasn't using the Roku platform at all. As it turned out, Roku added a 'feature' for doing content recommendations. I disabled that 'feature', but it was still weird, like, "These guys are watching what I'm watching, even when I'm not on their platform!"

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#92

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Also note that this gives Fox News viewership data for all Roku devices!

Powell Memorandum (1971) intensifies, with corporate buy out of all society's core media functions by extremist conservatives radically racing ahead.

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#93

Post by ivanmontillam »

stogot wrote: post #14
lenerdenator wrote: post #3

Further proof that antitrust is dead in the US.

Does this violate US antitrust laws?

If the spirit of the antitrust law is to protect consumers from enshittification, then yes.

But as written to the letter of the law, no, as this would not create a monopoly. More consolidation yes, but a monopoly technically not.

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#94

Post by shhsshs »

tootie wrote: post #49
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #15

gross, is there any TV is that isn’t Google or Roku that is halfway decent? Bring back dumb TVs

I was leery of of Tizen on my Samsung TV but it's fine

"fine" is a very accurate word to describe Tizen. It's slow and really hard to find things sometimes (why do TVs not have a simple "input switch" button any more?), but ultimately it gets the job done.

You can make Tizen much faster by manually uninstalling the Samsung TV Plus app. It runs in the background constantly. "Much faster" is still slow overall, unfortunately.

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#95

Post by Octoth0rpe »

Induane wrote: post #79
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was dreading my most recent tv purchase (last fall) for exactly this reason, and ended up with TCL google tv. One can apparently setup a google tv as a dumb tv and never sign it into the internet. It acts exactly how I'd want a dumb tv to work now, simply auto uses the most recent hdmi device, or the active one if the most recent one isn't active. It has never connected to the internet, and it never will. My long t…

You'll be able to stop the signal if they add cellular data. Still annoying though.

Hopefully? I mean, adding the cell modem is sort of hypothesizing about the future, and if we're already doing that then we might as well also hypothesize that such a future google tv will refuse to display anything from its hdmi inputs until it successfully phones home, and that that happens weekly.

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#96

Post by nrmitchi »

I may be lambasted for saying this, but I do not believe that Fox (or any large media company, really) should be permitted to purchase direct access to the TV hardware of roughly 30-50% of american households.

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#97

Post by dylan604 »

andrewla wrote: post #74
dylan604 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware I mean, of course they did. If you were running a company and had to choose between a one-time relatively small fee vs a life time of near constant ad driven income per user, which would you choose?

Obviously preferences vary, but I would prefer to accumulate the goodwill rather than the ad fees. I'm not a saint and I would probably try to have some sort of "buy the roku streamer v7, now with ". In the end the tradeoff is pretty rough; judging by alternatives, keeping the cost of the stick low requires that they do the ad thing. I say that I would pay more for an ad-free version but I never went out there and bo…

You have to realize that you are not in the same financial situation as the vast majority of people (based on the hoity-toity nature that HN readers are all well paid). The vast majority of people just accept ads as part of life and do not care one bit about the evils of the adTech world. If they are able to get a service essentially for free or at least a significant discount, they don't mind ads. Most people don't even notice them. If an ad free paid for service was the only option, I'd suggest that a lot of the user numbers would drop.

I'm a weird person in that I'm not anti-ads, but I am anti-adTech. Commercials on OTA broadcasts are good times to get up and get a refill, go to the restroom, are just hit the mute button. The days of DVRs were glorious as well as you could just fast forward through the ad breaks. Streaming platforms are the absolute best thing that ever happened to adTech. They cannot be skipped. That guarantees to the ad buyer that they will get their air time which helps adTech push ad buy rates.

The money made from advertising is not to be dismissed. It can be very significant to bottom lines, just ask Vizio* where they make more money on data than they do from the hardware sold used to collect that data.

*https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#99

Post by donohoe »

I used to love Roku. I even went through their early developer stuff to play with custom channels. It was clear many years ago that their shift form platform to ad provider was underway. Why can't a company always be amazing at something and just stick to that (looking at you Dropbox)?

I have a Roku TV an dmy setup is simple:

- Disable wifi on Roku TV

- Add Apple TV and connect to router

Re: Fox to buy Roku

#100

Post by willismichael »

yndoendo wrote: post #55
baggachipz wrote: post #6

Time for the 'Fox News' button on the Roku remote. Truth Social tweets on your screensaver.

[flagged]

I'm impressed that you were able to cancel SiriusXM. I thought that it was set up to cling to people for life, and possibly continue billing their estate after death.
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