321–330 of 408 posts
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Apple TV isn't made by a big streaming service either.
Apple has iTunes. And I don't have a single apple device in my house, so interoperability would be problem. Not to mention that Apple TV is significantly more expensive.
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TV manufacturers have mostly chosen to create and maintain their own ecosystems. This is actually a declining trend. LG and Samsung do but Moore's law has gotten it to a point where Android TV and, in fact Roku's platform are becoming much more prevalent on TVs, particularly some of the newer lower end devices. There's a large cost to maintaining your own HTML based platform (which is what most 3rd parties are) and t…
AppleTV, AndroidTV, FireTV, Roku, WebOS, Tizen, Comcast X1, ATT TV, Xbox, PlayStation, etc—the space is incredibly fractured. Outside of the TVs with Roku built in I wonder how many people will buy Roku devices in the future. It will be hard for Roku to continue to compete if they have say, 10-20 percent market share. I use a Roku now, but I don’t think I will in the future. My tv is older, so no built in apps. Roku…
The entire smart-tv space is definitely fractured, and trying to develop for so many platforms all at once can be frustrating, especially when you're doing so in your spare time. Thankfully, at least in my case, I've had someone more experienced step in recently to help with a side-project on AndroidTV, but I digress.
Honestly, if I had a dongle for my Chromecast that supported ethernet, and I weren't too lazy to order one, I wouldn't really use the Roku anymore. With the removal of the Twitch channel, Spectrum channel, and others, I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with the platform.
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As a Roku user who thinks Google takes a pretty hostile approach to anyone using their App on Roku, I disagree. If I'm in an App and search, I expect my search to be localized to that App. That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to…
> That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to me. This is kind of thread drift, but I really agree with this. I wish products would stop trying to get me to use some particular feature. First, they cram it onto every screen in the ap…
Google itself is the worst offender in this. Turn off the Meet advertisement in Gmail for Android, and they literally pop open a giant comment box saying, "In 1000 words or less, please type in an excuse for why you disabled the giant Google Meet advertisement we plastered all over your Gmail accounts?"
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Not illegal unless it is monopoly abuse somehow.
Well it is monopoly abuse.
If it is about their DRM and not their freely licensed VP9 then I could see where it get into abuse if competitors can't use it. And I see where standing up the music service using youtube and messing up the system voice search is abusive.
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I use roku simply because its not connected to a big tech company. Same reason I use spotify. I wonder how many others there are like me
The big problem with Spotify is that they're primarily controlled by the labels with their licensing agreements. All of the majors also own portions of shares within the service. People also don't realise that I heart Radio is Clearchannel rebranded. The closest thing to an actual independent streaming service I'd say we have right now is Beatport or Bandcamp. The situation that Spotify finds itself in, along with Ro…
It is just scary how big these companies are, but because so many in HN are working for them I don’t expect it to be a popular opinion.
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> Youtube music is crap It's good enough for a lot of people. I pay for YouTube Premium, so I get YouTube music (formerly Google Play Music) included, and it works well enough that I'm not going to pay for a separate music app.
Google: Look, you can buy a device with less storage, and store all your MP3s in the cloud! Me: This sounds terrible… but ok, let’s give it a go. Google: Now that you have all your music in the cloud, wouldn’t it be nice if you paid us monthly for access to a lot more music? Me: No. Google: I see you switched to another app while watching a YouTube video. If you paid us extra, you could keep playing that in the backg…
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The reason I picked and stay with Roku is that they aren't married to a single Big Tech co. I already suffer the lack of a proper YouTube app on my Echo Show because Amazon and Google are having a tiff. I don't want to pick an ecosystem and live exclusively inside of it. As it is, I'm already in a mixed household (Me with iOS and my wife with Android) and it's a pain to deal with the lack of cross-platform playing to…
Roku is actually more heavy handed than Apple. Apple allows any streaming provider to be on the AppleTV without making any kind of deal or negotiation. No, streaming providers do not have to give Apple a cut. They can force you to pay on their website. You can not pay for Hulu Live, Youtube Live TV, Netflix or many others through the App Store.
Content providers do have to make deals to get on AppleTV. You just don't hear about it.
Here's an example:
"WarnerMedia has firmed up a distribution deal with Apple for distribution of its forthcoming streaming service HBO Max.... Under the deal, HBO Max will be available on Apple devices and integrated with the Apple TV app on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV."
(note the words "the deal")
https://deadline.com/2020/04/hbo-max-apple-streaming-distrib...
And there are few details around the HBO and CBS deal to get on Apple TV here:
In a second sign of frayed relations between the two companies, Netflix has decided to opt out of the Apple bundle, which will upsell subscriptions to HBO and CBS in addition to its original programming
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/multimedia/netflix-apple-...
Welp, I specifically bought a Roku device a few months ago just to use YouTube. I ran into major issues using Fire TV's YouTube app. The app would fail to get past the initial loading screen and hang forever. It would typically require 2-3 device restarts to work again, and even then it would only work temporarily. I tried completely resetting my Fire TV, relogging in, etc but never managed to get it to work properly…
IMO Roku should make a rokutube site and wait until Google decides to abandon ChromeCast and comes crawling back.
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Roku is actually more heavy handed than Apple. Apple allows any streaming provider to be on the AppleTV without making any kind of deal or negotiation. No, streaming providers do not have to give Apple a cut. They can force you to pay on their website. You can not pay for Hulu Live, Youtube Live TV, Netflix or many others through the App Store.
> Apple allows any streaming provider to be on the AppleTV without making any kind of deal or negotiation. Content providers do have to make deals to get on AppleTV. You just don't hear about it. Here's an example: "WarnerMedia has firmed up a distribution deal with Apple for distribution of its forthcoming streaming service HBO Max.... Under the deal, HBO Max will be available on Apple devices and integrated with th…