Tell me about using Roku

Vudu is brilliant for this. There's an enormous catalog of movies available to rent or purchase (including Grease and Saturday Night Fever), with outstanding picture & sound quality and resolutions up to UHD (4K HDR).

Also FYI: Roku's search functionality (available off the main menu) is great for finding things like this.

 

NBC threatens to black out its channels on Roku due to a dispute over Peacock — FORTUNE

 

Got a "We Could Not Locate The Page Requested" banner clicking on your Fortune link. I even turned off adblocker. Didn't work.

 

Sorry don’t know why. Anyway the title pretty much sums it up. The two companies acting like children and pointing the finger at each other as to who is at fault. If you just look at it most other companies are available on Roku and you don’t here any of them complaining as they know Roku gains them a large market share to attempt to get the attention of for their content. Where Peacock and HBO Max are just thinking they are better than everybody else and are greedy enough to keep even more money for themselves. Basically making the customers do the work and come to them when it should be the other way around!!

 

NBC reaches deal with Roku over Peacock app, avoiding blackout — FORTUNE

 

AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support coming to Roku in 2020 | Appleinsider

 

It is now on both:

Roku Price Target Raised to Wall Street High After HBO Max Inclusion — TheStreet

 

FINALLY getting an HDMi cord for our Blu-Ray, Lulz.

Stocking Stuffers, people!

 

Can you run KODI on Roku?

 

It's good, it's simple, it works. It's better than an Amazon Fire stick.

That said, I now prefer Google TV / Chromecast.

Yes, I have all three (Roku, Fire Stick, Google TV) running on various TVs.

If you pay for Netflix, you can get the Google TV / Chromecast adapter for a net price of $6 ($90 includes $84 in Netflix credit for your account):

https://store.google.com/us/config/chromecast_google_tv

(Note: It goes in and out of stock).

 

If you think there's no way for Spectrum to track what you're watching, you're fooling yourself... hint: "their digital box receiver"

 

Could Roku Ultimately End Up Streaming Failed Quibi Content? — TheStreet

 

They know exactly what everybody is watching and collect and sell that information forward. Do you watch Fox News or Msnbc, then they know how you are going to vote. Their AI can figure out if you are white, black, old, young and
how many people in your household. And of course they already have your name and address and credit card info .

I couldn't believe that I had to submit to a credit check to get Frontier broadband service in Florida. More info for them to have and keep.

I recommend The Social Dilemma, a documentary playing in Netflix, scary, so you can see how much individual info Big Tech has on all of us.

As far as the annonimity all the different services promise, one of them was quoted : "We don't need your name, we are not your friends."

To stay within the topic, I like my Roku Express very much, but how do they make money if they only sell you maybe 1 or 2 devices every few years? I bet selling user information is also big for them.

 

From Can Roku’s Revenues Double By 2020? :

• Platform: Roku generates platform revenue from advertising sales, subscription and transaction revenue share, sales of branded channel buttons on remote controls, and licensing arrangements with TV brands and service operators.
• Players: Roku generates player revenue from the sale of streaming players through consumer retail distribution channels, including major brick and mortar retailers, such as Best Buy and Walmart, and online retailers, primarily Amazon.

 

Ads and payments from services. That was the issue with HBO Max - Roku expected a percentage of their revenue.

 

They don't care about how you vote, they care about what you watch and how you interact with their services. Do you want more cartoons or more docudramas? Do you binge watch for hours at a time, or turn it on one once a month? Eyeballs viewing is what matters, not if you vote red or blue.

Yes, but also associated information like I mention above. How long do you spend searching, what show do you watch "next", do you watch new shows or your favorite shows from 20 years ago? This type of information is what is used to make content purchasing decisions and new customer acquisition costs. How to spend money, and how to make money. Which are the only things that really matter, no matter if your company is making shoes, or streaming shows.

And when I say "you", it's never at a personal level. All this data is aggregated. No one cares what one person watches, or your particular preferences. No way to make money by looking at one person's data

 

As I have said elsewhere in this thread, if you really believe this, you are fooling yourself.

 

In all seriousness can I ask you - are you involved in these types of details as part of your profession/career? Because I am. So I'm not fooling myself.

 

The X1 platform sucks! "Upgraded" to it not long ago, and I hate it. The old Comcast box had dynamic range compression if you wanted it for movies, but the X1 has nothing of the sort. The apps are super slow as well.

 

You are right about data aggregation, up to a point. I am always amused when I search for a product on Amazon and for the next 3 or 4 days I get all sorts of ads and emails in all different screens and platforms for the same type of product, if not the exact brand I searched for. I bet my neighbors in my block did not get the same ads. Sometimes I play detective and figure out what my wife has searched for by the commonality of the ads I get.

I will never forget discussing verbally in front of an Amazon Alexa device buying new tires for my daughter. Sure enough, the next day we both got ads for tires and not from Amazon.

The Social Dilemma, the documentary playing in Netflix can explain it better than I can, but yes, there is a degree of granularity that current AI can achieve that is scary. At one point they discuss how the exact same Google search can produce different results for different people based on what Google knows about you.

 

No doubt, and I've had similar experiences.

My comments were specific to how SVOD services aggregate data. Because they want to know what type of show you might be interested to watch next, not how to sell you new Michelin tires

 

You should consider using their app - available on a Roku device - so you can ditch the box. The monthly fee is lower too.

 

Fair enough, we are talking about different things. I think. How would we ever know? And how did you know we bought Michelin?!?!?!?!

 

i have 2 roku units.

the only negative i can say is changing channels, you have to endlessly scroll to find the channel you want, especially bad with spectrum because there a literally hundreds of channels.

 

Same here. Super annoying. This is where Roku's "less is more" remote design negatively impacts the user experience.

There was plenty of room for those revenue-generating dedicated service buttons that I never (intentionally) use, though.