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 together.

Same. I'm so sick of being locked into one system or another, having my eyeballs monetized, or getting the shitty version of an app because it isn't the vendor's platform. I got a Roku because they're as neutral as one can get, and so far I'm happy paying for YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime and Netflix. You tell me I can't run those on my Roku, well fuck you and your service.

The thing is that Google shouldn't be forced to make their apps for the 30 different streaming box app stores if they don't want to. If there's no money to be made and they inherently lose money by tasking a team to keep the Roku app (or LG app or Samsung app, etc) up-to-date then they shouldn't have to.

The Google Cast protocol is actually pretty open in this regard - the apps are just a combination of html, js, websocket, and a protobuf server with no need to publish anything - all the TV makers would have to do is embed Chrome (they would also have to use a not-e-waste chip to do so, though, as supporting 4k hardware vp9 and drm is intense and expensive). There also really isn't an app store that needs moderation or business deals to happen for your casting to work - the only registration is really so Google has a paper trail of accountability in order to prevent malware and perform some API calls (https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/registration).

Wait, what? Who exactly is "forcing" them to do any such thing, and how?

Fire Stick is a joke. The wifi reception is terrible, the entire UI is laggier than my old cable box, and the apps crash on launch more often than not.

Roku just works, and it works like something that was designed by professional adults and not blood-sucking marketeers eager to screw over their users to make an extra ten cents.

Sadly, you and I are exceptions - caring about it only enough to voice our disregard for it. Usually, by the time a person is old enough to not need the churn of mass culture to be relevant to their peers, they're usually hooked on some brand or other of high-quality spam. Unlike street drugs, mass media rots your brain with full societal approval.

This is nothing new of course - many writers, musicians, and filmmakers of the 20th century have expounded on the soul-crushing effects of commercialized culture. As expected, they have ended up being more obscure to the general public than the ones who embraced it. It was weird seeing for the first time a mainstream artist or work that risked to be slightly more original than the industry average (in order to reach a previously uncaptured audience segment) being lauded as some sort of genius, while its subject matter was the same old "hey you, yes you, buy a bigger TV!"

Allocating resources and incentives (economy) and collectively deciding what's valuable and worth incentivizing (culture) are two separate layers of the social "stack". Advertising couples them in the worst possible way, effecting a positive feedback loop of wastage. The possibility that the emergent adtech hivemind's ultimate purpose is to measure and hone the efficiency of this mass pacification strategy is Orwellian par excellence.

My answer to this? Just enough economic productivity to afford unabashed dirtbaggery on the cultural plane. Anyone who does not share this perspective is watching a different movie.

People said something similar 10 -15 years ago about pirating with bit-torrent. There was certain rage with them I couldn't understand. Now I finally feel the same. I think the age of Napster and BT will be back.

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-...

Yeah I know it’s confusing (not being sarcastic). The AppleTV is the device. The TV app is an app on the AppleTV and iOS devices.

Over the years there has been drama between Netflix and Apple over it (and Spotify and Amazon Prime Video). I think it's mostly been resolved, but Apple wants apps to integrate more deeply but it sounds like it needs to convince these companies to do it one at a time.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prim...

Amazon chose to avoid this fight with Kindle years ago and everyone I talk to is confused why they can't buy books from their iPhone/iPad. Mostly because Amazon can't tell them.

The point is these are all oddball, Apple-imposed hoops that affect these companies from running their business. Even though they're spelled out and relatively consistent, it's relevant if you're claiming Roku is more heavy-handed than Apple.

There is a huge difference between having to follow one rule and submitting your app to the store and being required to make a revenue and ad sharing deal.

The proof is in the pudding. Every streaming service has always supported iOS from day one. Then you hear “we are still waiting to make a deal with Roku”.

Is this a comparison with Roku? Whenever I buy stuff using a Roku app, Roku is not involved.

The comment you quoted was specifically for people who I knew would reply about Apple “forcing” content providers to use in app purchasing.

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 the HTML platforms pretty radically under-perform these days.

Android TV could win but much like the US cable operators the large CE providers aren't too excited about getting so closely tied to Google. Roku's continued independence is cool in a space where there is so much consolidation, and attractive to some CE manufacturers.

Despite how much I dislike Google, I’ve resorted to using a Chromecast because it’s quicker, less of a hassle, and gives me the option of forcing stereo audio instead of the faux surround sound. I can also use JustWatch on my phone, tap the service that a movie/show is on, and directly open the corresponding app to cast from. It’s also nice being able to type directly on my phone instead of using the Roku remote, especially since many of the available Roku apps don’t support keyboard input from the mobile Roku remote app. Finally, I like that I can cast directly from my computer as well.

I also have an Apple TV, but its touchpad remote is annoying and it provides less value for me since I’ve moved away from Macs.

I currently have a really nice Sony with Android TV, but I had so many problems with the built-in Android that I plugged an nVidia Shield box into it instead and all those problems went away.

The other OS's all had their own issues, but the worst part of them was, like your Roku, the slowness. Everything is massively underpowered. Nobody wants to wait for the TV to slowly load apps when they want to be watching something.

In addition, other than Android, all of them tend to lag behind on updates after the initial launch of the each app.

So now I ignore whatever is on the TV and use an external box. I've considered FireTV and Roku again, but every time I look into them, I read about problems that I don't want to have (like this article) and so I stick with nVidia Shield boxes.

Can confirm. I tried a bunch of different things (even the OUYA), went to support smaller companies (Wetek) but it was all one big mess and impossible to have a couple of days pass by without a crash of either the viewer programs or just the complete OS getting stucked. I feel sorry for them, but really this thing should be like a plain analog TV which worked (in my area) fine every single day for decades. The Shield does this for me. Think I had one crash of the local TV streaming app in the past months, for the rest it has been working flawlessly for years and didn't even have to replace the remote's batteries yet. That is how such dedicated hardware should just work.

I have a Roku at home, but also an nVidia Shield. The Shield is fast, but it has a lot of problems. First is that you must install an app to disable the Netflix button. If you enter Netflix, it does not easily let you leave the app and the button makes it far to easy to accidentally enter it. Second, the YouTube app on the shield has a weird problem where it goes into some kind of stagger mode where it updates the screen only every few seconds (maybe it gets into this mode if the bandwidth is temporarily too low). You need to rewind the video to get it to play again properly. Finally the triangular remote is terrible- it's falling apart.

Roku has none of these problems. I should say I have the older RF Roku remote, not the newer cheap LED one.

Not sure who’s to blame here.

I haven't noticed any differences in color though, so I can't speak to that. Maybe the HDMI input has different picture settings set than the base Roku? I'm sure you've tried that though, so I don't know.

That being said, when I first use a new input on my TV, I sometimes forget that each input has its own profile on my TV, and have to shut off the stupid smooth motion modes and adjust colors, etc. Are you sure this isn't the case on your TV?

Maybe try swapping the inputs and see if that makes a difference?

Chrome cast is also greatly affected by what your casting with, VLC, Videostream, chrome can all produce very different results depending on the content

Indeed, one of the nice things about Android TV is that from a content protection point of view you don't really need to trust the OS at all as it's all abstracted down to the hardware.

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 was a cheap way to add that functionality without a big box. With that said, I am regularly disappointed with the performance of Roku especially with Plex. I am considering an Apple TV because I know IOS devices work well with Plex and there is a more robust app ecosystem available.

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.

Fortunately there's an unofficial "uncertified" third party channel you can add to get back basic Twitch support: https://www.fanbyte.com/guides/how-to-watch-twitch-on-roku-d...

I haven't found anything similar for Reuters, so I just have their YouTube feed now, but I still miss the nicely packaged 15-30 minute segments.

I've seen audio stutter on a smart TV running the Netflix streaming app, and similar stutter on a network-enabled Blu-Ray player running the Amazon Video streaming app. I've seen 4K playback cause occasional stuttering in the Amazon Video app on a smart TV. Disney+ group playback is currently unsupported on PS4, but is supported on Xbox One. A few years ago, the PS3 Netflix app supported 1080p, whereas the Xbox 360 Netflix app only supported 720p. I've also seen the Xbox One YouTube app insist on playing a video at 720p or lower, despite that Roku will play it at 1080p (perhaps an issue with only a certain codec being available at that quality?). I've seen a paid video service with an iPhone app with completely broken Chromecast support (they fixed it a few weeks after I filed a bug report).

I'm struggling to understand the claim made by this statement. Maybe I missed something? What does HTML have to do with serving video over the wire? Underperforming on which metrics? What's the time value of "these days"?

LG is the only one that could be said to have sufficient marketshare to justify that investment for any but the largest VOD providers now. The revenue generated from those platforms once rights holders are paid is a fraction of what it costs to maintain them simply through testing overhead. Android TV and Tizen's marketshare has increased rapidly over the last few (read three-ish) years, and when you often need to account for international rollout or repurposing in your cost analysis it's even stronger (Roku has zero marketshare outside of the US, many large cable companies outside of the US have Android TV based set-top boxes with multiple million installations).

This generally also applies to browser based streaming, with the added bonus that is where a bunch of piracy comes from.

- a Roku - the newest "Chromecast with Google TV" - old style chromecasts - an "smart TV" with Android TV - A "smart TV" from visio

The worst by far are the smart TVs. The old chromecast is next because there's no UI outside my phone, but I always have my phone so it's not that bad. Next is the Roku and finally, top marks for the CCGTV. It's super fast and responsive and I love it.

When I purchased the Google TV device I was under the impression that Android TV was one of the major platform on the market, but later I found out that in terms of apps choice, it's not the best.

Also, it's puzzling that some apps are available for Amazon's Fire TV but not for Google TV / Android TV - both are based on Android so I thought it would be very easy to make an app available to both platforms - maybe there are some technical aspects that I'm missing.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/CHROMEBIT-Stick-Desktop-RockChip-3288...

Now I just use my TV (as a monitor) optical out since it is connected via ethernet. I can still use DLNA on it as well to play my music.

I think it's pretty safe to call Spotify a big tech company at this point

It's possible that my expectations don't match the wider worlds though: my girlfriend loves Spotify and uses it for podcasts as well as music.

For me, music requires album-focused UI, and I honestly prefer having Podcasts broken out into it's own app or interface. Mixing the two just didn't feel right.

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 Roku, is that they are still at the mercy of who supplies them their content. Until they diversify and provide exclusive content of their own that keeps people subscribed (ala Netflix), they're doomed once labels and studios want to me-too and spin off their own services. Disney used to primarily have deals with Netflix, now they've split that off into Disney+. Netflix is able to maintain because of their content. I doubt Spotify will. Nor will Roku.

So even if you have the impression that they're not 'connected to' a big tech company, they're definitely at the mercy of if not already somehow owned by.

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.

Also how are the small advertising companies doing the truly terrifying advertising tracking? Are they tracking me across the web when i go to seemingly completely unrelated sites like google, fb, etc?

Roku forced HBO Max to make a deal.

https://www.cnet.com/news/roku-hbo-max-finally-strike-deal-s...

Roku strong arms Fox

https://www.techhive.com/article/3519910/roku-fox-and-the-th...

NBCUniversal Peacock

https://awfulannouncing.com/nbc/nbcuniversal-threatens-pull-...

I have a Chromecast, and various consoles. Roku is still the best overall (despite shortcomings). Everyone I know who bought a Roku prefers it to all the other options. Can anyone tell me what other streaming devices have over Roku?

What I need:

- A real remote. Not going to use my phone to control things.

- Good search. When I search, I want results from most of the apps - so I can find out which ones have the show/movie I'm looking for (with an indication of price).

- Good support from all the major services: Youtube, PBS, Plex, Netflix, all the major TV channels (HGTV, ABC, CBS, etc).

- Easy to install my own app without militant control from the manufacturer.

- Affordable ($25-35), and not integrated into my TV.

- Can use in hotels/motels - this is critical (Roku generally wins big here - Chromecast totally fails).

And in any case, it doesn't check all the boxes - particularly the one about "use in motels/hotels when I travel"

My TV actually has Android, but due to multiple problems that resulted in me having to reset my TV to factory and set everything up again, I went back to my older nVidia Shield.

We now have the Shield on both TVs in the house, and they both work great.

With all the Android phones out there, nobody is going to skip Android as a device when launching their service. (Unlike Roku, which is a decision they have to make.) They also tend to update their apps a lot more often, so you always end up with the latest bugfixes and improvements. And the number of users guarantees that bugs get reported and fixed.

It doesn't fit your "affordable" point, though. We're talking $200, not $30. I've had mine quite a few years, though, and it's been well worth it.

The remote is great, and includes a Google Assistant voice search button that's super useful, and the search is federated in the way you describe, and very good. It has support from every service, but it integrates really well with YouTubeTV, obviously, which is nice because there's a great Live tab with a guide. You can run the app store and install whatever Android TV app you want: I've installed NordVPN on mine to get around NHL.TV blackout bullshit.

AND it will get around a captive portal because it has a remote/browser, so you can use it in a hotel. Honestly, it's a delightful little device.

Also, they just announced a YoY doubling of advertising revenue.

Their low end device is $30, and provides a best of class (but HD) experience. I don’t really see how they can realistically be undercut on price, unless competitors started paying people to use their devices. Do you want to deal with a janky streaming device for the next 5 years, or just shell out the cost of a pizza and six pack?

If anything, they’ll be attacked from the high end. Are you willing to pay an extra $100-200 for a non-ad-subsidized streaming device?

So far the only apps that I use that don't show Japanese as squares or worse blanks is the Apple airplay app (which shipped initially without support) and the YouTube app. It's a frustrating experience using Plex with properly named shows, but atleast burning in subtitles gives support while watching.

They needed to buy a digital signal processor to do advertising? That sounds odd. Can you elaborate?

That's when I ditched Roku. Android devices are cheap enough and arguably a little better.

Roku really has no lock-in - their entire value proposition is "you can stream the services you want on this cheap device." Nobody buys Roku because of the "Roku ecosystem" or "network effects" or anything else - they just buy it because it's cheap and (supposedly) works.

When it stops working - and it doesn't matter why - it's easily replaced.

I don't care about YTTV at all, though, becasue I don't want any live tv, period.

Personally, I have switched to Fire-Stick and Chromecast with Google TV from Roku because the Roku interface hasn't evolved in the past few years and they are also pushing ads and their own channels now.

I prefer the moving fast and breaking things to stay away from our limited TV time.

I think it's great. It was cheap. I'm a fan of Roku (been with them since 2008 or so).

I'm disappointed to see these tiffs with content companies. Remember the time when every video you wanted to play on your computer required a different software player? Are these companies planning on re-doing all that with hardware?

"Oh, I have a Roku for most things, then plug in Apple TV for Apple+, I use the Fire stick for Prime Video, and the Chromecast allows me to watch YouTube TV! I just needed a TV with 17 HDMI ports!"