A Roku software update blocked antenna TV access without an internet connection, exposing how smart TV business models prioritize connectivity and data over basic broadcast functionality that should work offline by default.
A Roku software update blocked antenna TV access without an internet connection, exposing how smart TV business models prioritize connectivity and data over basic broadcast functionality that should work offline by default.
Mine was never ever connected to the internet. HDMI is all I needed and wanted. What evil they’re doing now is making you connect it to the internet on first boot.
I’d bet the next step is that it has to be able to phone home at increasingly frequent intervals to allow functionality such as playing content from connected ports.
This is brought to you by the same company that’s developed technology to detect if an hdmi connection is paused so that it can be interrupted to inject ads…
Oh man. Let me tell you about what I saw from the Roku I got back in 2020 or so.
I got a pihole before or shortly after my Roku. The PiHole showed my most blocked device being… the Roku. Almost over 4000 DNS requests denied, especially after I fully blocked them on the PiHole because I got tired of their ads being shown when all I’m turning the damn thing on for is Plex/Jellyfin.
They don’t like that one bit! Get this, for the time to be accurate, it MUST have connection to their servers. Not just once, mind you. Every day I leave my house, I turn off things, the Roku being one of them. I turn it off by turning off the extension it is plugged into. Every time I turned it back on, it would just show the time you cut it off at. So, if it was 8 AM when you turned it off, and it is now 9 PM, well, the clock on the Roku would still be around 8 AM.
So, yeah. Now, I just use my Steam Deck as my watching device, hooked up to the dock. Added benefit of not having to “sideload” (read install) a YouTube IPA onto my phone. Fuckers.
Stallman was right.