Roku has made, in my mind, a horrible mistake by trying to be more than a hardware vendor. My first Roku was great -- select the app you want, play video. A lot of the streaming services were very immature and had terrible UIs; Netflix's was particularly good and Amazon remains one of the worst. They had a headphone jack on the remote (genius!) so that I could listen to content while other people in my household slept.<p>Then on the next generation, they started requiring a credit card on registration (boy did I have to hunt to find out how to set it up without that). I am perfectly capable of getting credentials for the services in question, why would I ever put my credit card information with a service where I never expect to use it?<p>Then they started peppering the UI with ads. The net effect here was basically just to make the interface less navigable by wasting a bunch of space advertising channels and programs on a device I paid for?<p>Finally they added a bunch of buttons to the remote to take you to specific services, which I only every use mistakenly, and of course includes "Rdio", where all I get when that button gets mashed is a message saying "this service no longer exists". Their interface with the big tiles is very well done; I don't need these shortcuts.<p>I would gladly pay extra for a version of the Roku that cut all of these features; like Amazon hardware and the "with sponsored content" where I can pay an extra $20 to get the vanilla version. It's still the best of the devices I've used (Amazon Fire Stick/Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast) but it's a shame they keep trying to suck more ongoing revenue out of it.
I 'upgraded' my parents Roku 3 with the Apple TV 4K, but they ended up going back to the Roku exclusively.<p>The remote on the Roku is much more intuitive and the d-pad allows them to select what they want with confidence. The apple tv's remote with its touchpad is unwieldy by comparison.
I had a Roku. Replaced it with a second hand Apple TV after software updates stuck ads all over the menu.<p>Pretty shit thing to do to paying customers, and one of the main reasons I’m so hesitant about IoT gizmos in general. Might start out great, but the provider can turn it to shit at a moment’s notice with no recourse.<p>And it looks like this continues to get worse since I bailed: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902423/roku-tv-interactive-pop-up-ads-automatic-content-recognition" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902423/roku-tv-interact...</a><p>They made a “more ways to watch” feature to automatically find when content is available on a streaming service, and then two years later gunked it up with advertising that you can’t disable short of turning off the feature entirely. Cool.<p>Makes you wonder if the real reason they built that feature in the first place was as an excuse to monitor everything you watch and monetize that data.
I had one of the first generation Roku boxes. And all it did was play Netflix movies. Which was why I bought it.<p>But then one day I turned on my TV and the Roku has upgraded itself. Now I could watch Amazon, Netflix and other channels.<p>It was a very pleasant surprise.
I continue to love my Roku and some of the oddball niche channels. But their ad serving is really immature. From seeing the same ad 3 times in a row to Overt aggressive insertions to sometimes freezing on an external ad feed to the rampant ad scams, it becomes frustrating to watch anything but The no-ad subscription channels which may not have that culty flic.<p>I don't mind supporting folks with ad viewing, but I also expect some variety, freq capping, and a bit of targeting. On the plus side, when all those Spanish ads come on, I can recognize almost half the words now.
I've bought TVs with Roku built-in, Chromecast built-in and other weird tries at streaming built-in. All but the Roku are basically worthless as the manufacturers did not ship upgrades, basically making what was a smart tv, just a tv. The Roku TV happily updates itself, and seems to have more and more channels and apps every week.
I had no idea Roku was born from Netflix, they did a good job at distancing themselves. I think this origin story also speaks to Reid fully understanding what he set out to do with Netflix, which is to stream entertainment over the internet. From the name to this move it seems very clear that's has taken that mission VERY seriously. It is really hard to invest in something so much and when you realize it is wrong viciously distance yourself from it. very few companies rarely pivot from their original mission. The only thing I would have done differently would be to open-source the hardware and Software of the Roku, basically creating a ton of competitors but at the same time pushing the mission of streaming movies further and getting Netflix to more screens. It still worked out regardless
The decision to separate out the hardware from the streaming was prescient -- no need to cannibalize deals with other hardware vendors, and get support for Netflix to be universal.<p>I only wish that Netflix had been as prescient about its original content division. If they had spun that out as another company, then it would have been possible for Netflix to continue to score content deals, instead of steadily losing content.
My main beef with the roku is the sluggishness of the UI. And I have a few of them in the house (ultras or whatever the top of the line one was as of six months ago. Amazon had a sale and I bought a few). I also have a bunch of Apple TV 4Ks.<p>Say I am watching Plex and then want to switch to Netflix and then maybe go over to Channels to watch some News on MSNBC. The Apple TV can do this without reloading the app or losing my place in the video. It is nearly instant. The Roku has to reload the entire app taking a minute and losing my place.<p>But I do like the Roku remote. So there is that.
Original? I had the Roku Sound Bridge. It was purely for music. It hardwired to your stereo and could connect to your iTunes library by WiFi. You controlled it via a remote and the box’s display. <i>When it worked</i>, it was great.<p><a href="https://images.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageHandler/trim/620/378/products/2004/593/x593M1000-o_MT.jpeg" rel="nofollow">https://images.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageHandler/trim/620/3...</a><p>Seems like it should have been part of the origin story, no?<p>I still have it actually. Someday I’d like to figure out if it’s possible to re-purpose it.