A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads over any device connected over HDMI, a list that could include cable boxes, game consoles, DVD or Blu-ray players, PCs, or even other video streaming devices. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023 and it was published in November 2023, though it hasn’t yet been granted.
The technology described would detect whether content was paused in multiple ways—if the video being displayed is static, if there’s no audio being played, if a pause symbol is shown anywhere on screen, or if (on a TV with HDMI-CEC enabled) a pause signal has been received from some passthrough remote control. The system would analyze the paused image and use metadata “to identify one or more objects” in the video frame, transmit that identification information to a network, and receive and display a “relevant ad” over top of whatever the paused content is.
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Good way to kill their product…
I can’t imagine anyone that would leave the device plugged in after the first ad comes up. Pretty much anyone using such a device would also know how to unplug them. They clearly have other uses for that screen, so it’s not a total loss to keep it unplugged till the user can switch to a different brand.Ah it’s a Roku TV entirely. Reminds me of the Samsung TV ads
Roku TV sets come with ads. Generally, these are restricted to Roku’s home and menu screens, its screensavers, and its first-party video channels, and once you start playing video, the only ads you’ll see are the ones from the service you’re streaming from. That said, Roku TVs have shown ads atop live TV before.
Now, the company is apparently experimenting with ways to show ads over top of even more of the things you plug into your TV. A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads […]
Sadly they already have all the money
I’m glad they patented it so that any of the products I actually buy won’t be able to do this
Parents can be licensed for use by other companies.
Autocorrect or comment on society?
If it’s patented, it can also be hacked more easily.
Why?
I think they’re erroneously stating that there will be so much technical information in the patent that it will be trivial to reverse engineer and remove from Roku products.
Unfortunately that isn’t the case.
So we just ordered a new tv and just want the universe to know that Roku wasn’t even considered and this shit is why.
I mean, yeah sure, but are the alternatives that much better in this respect? Which alternative non-ad-ridden, privacy-respecting smart tv would you recommend (or ended up buying)? Asking for my future tv choice…
Commercial displays are your best bet, although they can be quite expensive.
We have a HiSense Android TV (most are now Google TV, but they’re essentially the same). There are ads by default, but you can install a custom launcher with no ads, so the experience is much better.
I use Projectivity launcher and it looks nicer, has no ads, and it’s much faster and more responsive.
As soon as I figured out how to install a custom launcher, I researched how to disable ads similarly on our Roku TVs and discovered all of the secret menus that could have disabled them, except they no longer work.
So the Roku level of lockdown on their custom OS is much worse now versus an android-based OS.
Samsung, but I’d rather report back when I see if it’s a mistake.
I intend to keep using my AppleTV and hope that’s the end of it. But the Samsung was a process of elimination of Roku and LG via shitty experience with the WebOS on the work TV. If Tizen doesn’t stay out of the way then I’ll start playing router games.
The amount of ewaste they will be producing when they push that update. Should be against some environmental laws.
Not what laws are for.
Is what guillotines are for.
Give me freedom from advertising or give me death.
Roku would gladly do the latter if they thought it profitable
Roku somehow thinking that the Ferengi rules of acquisition was a how-to guide book.
Can’t we put these devices in some kind of dev mode and install software to stop this shit?
I assume these devices run some kind of Linux kernel, with a stripped down Linux distro.
The problem there is proprietary hardware blobs, no one’s made open-source drivers for any of the myriad TV manufacturers, each with their own OS.
roku generally puts a lot of effort into security
“security” for themselves, not the customer, I guess
Now, if only they would invent the exact opposite of this, I would buy it
I want zero ads. Ever.
They did! Its called a pihole plus ublock origin plus piracy.
You can’t buy it, only the hardware, but the software is all free.
Still doesnt block youtube ads 😩
For ad-free youtube on Android TV: SmartTube
For ad-free youtube on mobile Android devices: ReVanced
For desktop: Firefox + uBlock origin
Also for Android: NewPipe
Also for desktop: FreeTubeOr GrayJay for Android
Sadly, Firefox + ublock is becoming unreliable. I routinely can’t play YouTube videos on my desktop computer with that setup (+ a vpn) because google just won’t serve them. I just get perpetual loading screens.
Are you… Are you using the yt APP!?
Roku TV 😞
Oh. Oh no. Do you need a hug? A hammer?
Revanced only, bby!
You can’t defend against ads with pihole if the ads server has the same address as content server
Have you heard about our new ad-blocking TVs?
Thanks to our patented Ad-Away technology, they’re guaranteed to keep you free from all ads! Get yours now, Ad-Away subscriptions start at $49 a month!2 years later, somewhere in their sales and marketing departments:
“Hey, you know what would make us even more money?”
“No, but do tell”
“Advertising”
“Genius - how is it nobody has ever thought of this before?”
Hopefully this ends up something they never actually do like that sony patent for ads that only go away if you call out the name of the product.
Sony fabitch!
The best way to prevent ads is to figure out every way in which they can be served in the future, and patenting every one.
And then do nothing with them.
Utility patents expire after 20 years (under US patent law; might have different rules somewhere else).
Twenty years of sweet freedom from ads
That’s some scummy shit…
Everything owned will do this sooner or later.
owned
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
On this episode of Black Mirror…
My TV set is like a dumb monitor: HDMI in, colorful image out, basta.
Not even audio. And of course it does not get any internet connection. And I don’t feed it any caviar.
TIL what ‘basta’ means.
Enough, stop. TIL.
Aight. So it’s time for me to start taking this seriously. Has anyone tried using like a GrapheneOS or LineageOS as a Roku or FireTV replacement? Is there anything like that which will support an experience with a regular remote control and have apps like Netflix and Hulu work?
The problem with those TV apps is DRM. All the major streaming services require that you either use a locked down platform (probably checking SafetyNet and more on Android TV) or settle for their browser UI which lacks dpad support and gets quality throttled to 1080p or lower.
Circumventing that DRM is possible, but no project at the scale of a platform like those would dare the both legal risk and support headache of making those circumventions (which are very liable to break) a core part of the OS.
Kodi (and distros using it like LibreELEC) exist for people who want a FOSS platform for using non DRM encumbered media with a TV remote interface.
Kodi. But it’s a mess compared to roku.
Hopefully this will enlarge the user base of kodi
Kodi is not suitable for the average user. Some streaming apps like Disney+ require a full chromeOS download just for extracting the DRM part. Roku instead offers for a few bucks a ready-to-go system.
I always wonder why some products just simply have all these DRM features and others don’t. Is DRM just a monopol for the chosen ones?
It’s exactly a monopoly for the chosen ones, gate keeping at its worst. Anything that isn’t blessed is going to be a bit more effort to get working, but I wouldn’t say Kodi is unsuitable for the average user on the grounds of the widevine module though, the DRM module extraction is automated when installing a plugin that requires it.
Maybe not the solution you were asking for, but the Nvidia Shield on the stock code has been a fair compromise for me. The ads on the main screen are relatively unobtrusive, and sometimes even vaguely relevant to our viewing preferences. We largely watch Hulu, Prime and YouTube+ (with free access to AppleTV and Netflix, but I haven’t set those up yet). For ads, we pretty much only deal with Amazon’s new advertising in included Prime content. We’ll probably stop viewing that content once the series we’re currently watching wraps.
For context, my daily driver phone is LineageOS which is rooted all to heck to smack down intrusive advertising and tracking (Magisk, AdAway, AppManager to disable in-app trackers, uBlock on the browser, etc…), and my home network uses a pihole for DNS and malware blocking. I really hate advertisers.
On the pihole, the Shield is actually only the #3 top offender of blocked requests, behind my wife’s work laptop and my kid’s Steam rig. The main offender on the Shield was the ESPN app, which I removed because I never really watch sports outside of tye idd division game, which most of the time I meet friends out at the local pub anyway. Otherwise the Shield has been a well behaved appliance.
So it’s not the perfect ad-free experience, but its hardly the advertising dystopia of broadcast TV.
you could install Android on a raspberry pi with a usb remote.
I’d use a used laptop/desktop on Linux, e.g. something like steamOS, and then use jellyfin to stream stuff to this laptop. The media i watch is pirated, because it is more convenient and better quality than if I stream it through streaming service, even tho I pay for “4k” on these services.
But this displays over HDMI, correct?
Oh, I have read it wrong, upsii, yea it’s over HDMI Well, I guess Roku TV owner have to hope that there comes a way to flash a custom rom on that TV, indeed. But unlocking a bootloader and to find/make drivers for all that proprietary hardware seems like a hard job to me…
Actually you may have had the correct interpretation, they said as a Roku TV replacement. I read it as a way to fix their existing Roku TV.
Thankfully they patented it, hopefully deterring anyone else from also doing it
lol as if they couldn’t license it
also, check their privacy policy 💀
Time to go back to books, fellas. This party is done.
Amazon/Audible walks in.
“Guess what industry I just exploited the shit out of!”
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I never considered Roku and I’m glad.
I had been considering a Roku stick instead of an Amazon fire stick to try and get out of the Amazon bubble.
I now see that Roku basically want to create their own bubble too so probably better to only let one shitty company (Amazon) get my viewing habits.
As long as the Amazon ones still come with Android, just throwing an APK of some FOSS media cwnter onto it is the cheapest way to get a reasonably modern “homebrew” appliance. The ads in the home screen are IMO a compromise I can deal with under that specific circumstances.
They have become the evil they were once apart from.
In a streaming landscape dominated by ad companies like Google and Amazon, Roku was once the viable alternative. Unfortunately, in the 21st century, enshitification comes for us all eventually.
