261–270 of 444 posts
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Well, I certainly will never buy another one. I doubt I am alone. Sadly there are enough loyal fanatics that I can imagine they will continue to be sold indefinitely.
Wouldn't somebody who boycotts a company to boycott a different company to boycott a third company be the fanatic in this case?
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Do you think people will throw away their perfectly functioning devices because of politics?
Nah, they'll just put a "i bought it before elon went crazy" sticker on their brand-new cybertruck. People talk a big game, but really are unprincipled in general.
At least regarding cybertrucks, pretty much no one is buying them. People are principled - Tesla's brand image is in the gutters and it shows, they are continuously losing market share and SpaceX had to bail out Tesla by buying 131 millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks.
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…
2008? I had the Roku HD1000 [1]. :) My email search: "Welcome to the "Roku-tech" mailing list" ... "Tue, Dec 2, 2003, 10:48 AM" Not sure how I ended up on the mailing list a month before their product was released. There must've been buzz about it for a few months before release. [1] https://photos.app.goo.gl/bMGBqm4mTmfUNJG39
I guess Wood founded Roku but it was basically semi-defunct when we went to work for Netflix, and then the "spinoff" was basically letting Wood poach his team from Netflix over to his existing company to staff up and sell the first streaming device.
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Can confirm Apple is best but Roku is amazingly good number 2. In some ways its UX beats Apple.
Especially because you can get TVs with Roku built-in. I would guess most Roku users aren't using a box these days.
Sure I guess. But those devices objectively suck. the CPU and storage in "smart TVs" are so underpowered that using streaming apps on them is painfully sluggish.
For comparison, I've used the "Chromecast with Google TV" (a $50ish at its release 4k streaming stick that uses the 'Google TV', fka 'Android TV' platform) and a Sony TV on the same platform, released the same year. The Sony UI is a lot more sluggish than the Google stick device. Also tested running an SNES emulator. The Google device can easily do it, the Sony TV can't keep up even on a basic game like Super Mario World.
And then of course, on the other end of the spectrum, the Apple TV exists, which specs-wise can easily play 3D racing games at a fine framerate.
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Assuming the nvidia shield. I'll also echo my general disappointment with the direction of these devices. A decade ago, they were one of the best streaming devices you could buy. then a couple years back it was "there's a new discover tab, filled with ads! Don't you love it?" then it was "not enough people are viewing the discover tab, so we're merging the discover tab with the home tab! Don't you love it?" --- They'…
At this point if I'm dealing with that level of hassle I'm much happier running linux on a computer. The value add of these devices was plug and play, and if it's not that why bother.
I always use a custom launcher (Projectivy) on my Google TV devices, lately typically the $20 Onn stick and intercept the Home navigation to open the launcher either using the option built into Projectivy or with a free app from the Play Store/Fdroid.
Takes Also (somewhat ironically) the best smart TV OS to look for on cheap/subsidized TVs is built-in Google TV. Since they can easily be configured as 100% "dumb" on startup without any ads/nags/etc (it's the first question you're asked). The TV never hits Wifi to update and the remote/menus just do normal TV stuff without any "smart" features. Otherwise, it's luck of the draw how miserable/impossible the manufacturer makes avoiding Wifi/updates.
(Or you could do the same process installing the custom launcher on the TV's built-in Googe TV, but then you're at the mercy of the CPU/RAM the OEM included in BoM some # of years ago and lose the clean seperation between dumb TV/replaceable stick).
$20 Onn stick + $199 "smart" Google TV in dumb mode goes really far these days for a locally hosted setup without ads/annoyances.
Seems like an excellent startup opportunity? Build a clean, no-ads streaming stick with open source firmware upstream of the requisite DRM bits and who wouldn't buy one? Almost like what Roku used to be, and the reason we recommended it, for so many years.
Because it will cost 2-4x compared to a Roku, Amazon Fire, or other device sold below cost and subsidized with ad/VC money. And in order to work on the DRMed streaming platforms, you have to play along with the industry. Can't just relabel a random box from Shenzhen, "upstream of the requisite DRM bits" makes no sense. The original NVIDIA Shield is more than 10 years old at this point and still sells used for around…
I am looking for options and being able to sideload on a Shield is attractive, but if the experience is no different than a homemade Linux HTPC, I can save the cash.
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…
Ironically, I think the Apple TV is the best streaming box out there. Of course, Apple is both the manufacturer and a streamer in their own right. And they definitely privilege their own store and streaming over other services. However, everything else already sucks so much with UIs chock full of ads that Apple wins anyway. It’s awful.
It definitely is.
IMO the only advantage of the Nvidia Shield is better HDMI audio passthrough but it has so many other issues. And with more recent versions of the Plex client for tvOS the lack of audio passthrough is much less of an issue than it used to be (PCM conversion used to introduce sync issues). Also the Plex app for Android TV has been getting consistently worse over the years for me. Plus all the ads Android TV added a couple of years ago. Ugh.
Some of the more exotic boxes out there to run CoreELEC have tehcnically better DV support. These might work if you only want a Plex or Kodi client but for general streaming the Apple TV is just better.
Honestly can't wait for Apple to release a new one. Hopefully with audio passthrough of more codecs.
I don’t like the idea of Roku being owned by anyone, let alone Fox.
Seems like an excellent startup opportunity? Build a clean, no-ads streaming stick with open source firmware upstream of the requisite DRM bits and who wouldn't buy one? Almost like what Roku used to be, and the reason we recommended it, for so many years.
This is full on Google Play Services certification and more. Ultimately to get the thing that can run/stream Netflix etc the amount of work just isn't viable for the price point people would pay for this.
Also the truth is no investor would touch this on hardware sale income alone, needs some subscription plan at least.
Roku was always a weird one, beloved by people who couldn't stand laggy built in TV interface but doesn't really offer much beyond what TVs come with anyway.