Technology

Had to Google it but it looks pretty nice. I thought you meant that you were injecting giant ads into Android TV.

does the UI just render blank squares in that case?

They were born in it, moulded by it, they've never seen a world without an add somewhere in it.

I'm on the home screen for one second. The remote, in fact, has buttons on it, I don't even need to look at the home screen.

You can add or remove tiles as you see fit (although they definitely like to add some for you from time to time), but like I said, I barely use the tiles.

I love people on here who don't and have never used it expressing any feelings on it at all. Like, why do you care, other than were all here (on the internet) just to get mad about shit?

looks like they shrunk the menu to icons in order to make room for the ad on the same view, not just when you arrow over to the app icons.

It's best because everything else is worse

My family knows me as the anti-apple IT Guy. So, it shocked everyone when I brought home a Best Buy open box Apple TV 4K (saved me $20US).

Honestly, this is my first Apple purchase since my ipod and I have to admit: it's good.

Roku has lost their way and my 3 Roku Ultra devices are all dying for reasons unknown (freezing, random reboots, spinning endlessly when trying to open an app). I'm just so done with them (and Nvidia) for my streaming hardware business.

I was using NextDNS instead of pihole because I wanted my ad blocking to still work when I’m out and about.

Couldn’t stay on the free tier because I make so many DNS requests. Which seemed weird - it’s just the two of us using the network?

Lo and behold, the fucking forgotten Roku attached to a TV was doing a fresh DNS lookup every 30 seconds to try to call home and send telemetry data. It accounted for like 60% of my DNS traffic!

I can't tell what Spectre units do but they look like maybe an option

e.g.

https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV/U750CV-UMRD-75-4K-UHD-TV-product1131category1category73.html

I have an LG TV with all promotional stuff disabled. Not sure if they all do that, but my 65 inch TV is ad free!! For now.

And they wknder why piracy is skyrocketing again. It’s not hard, dipshits. Fuck.

I think I read that licensing for the transcoding or something was the hang up.

There's several problems. Transcoding is one but there's also issues with content providers requiring the use of their own apps along with Linux not (until very recently) being able to use any HDMI spec beyond 2.0.

I've been a ROKU user for over a decade but the last year has had me thinking more and more about boxing up my devices and sending them to their HQ with a note "Since you treat these like you own them I figured I'd just send them to you."

I am really REALLY tired of them dicking with my boxes and updating / reconfiguring things however and whenever they see fit.

TCL TVs (whose OS is just Roku, and I imagine Roku is the same situation) blink the front LED as an Error when there's no network connection or it can't hit whatever servers it has configured for FW update check. It can get stuck on partial firmware updates when it can't cokplete every check it wants to make. The LED has a diffuser on it so it's a significant negative impact.

I can't even tape that LED because that's also where the IR sensor is. My next step is to disassemble the thing and snip snip.

I don't use any smart features, just HDMI input like you. Finding a Dumb TV has been a challenge.