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Posted by thm 7 hours ago

Fox to buy Roku(www.wsj.com)
177 points | 241 commentspage 2
Fnoord 2 hours ago|
A company with the business practices of Fox News I will not buy services or products from. Same with regards to Oracle.

I actually regret buying a Nvidia Shield TV. Yes, software support might be there. But what isn't there is the interface (without advertising, the cancer of the world) it came with. Thanks to Google. Thanks to Google, my children are now forced to see inappropriate advertising when the TV gets powered on.

valicord 40 minutes ago|
It's very easy to block the Shield home screen ad with pihole
hvs 4 hours ago||
I used Rokus for years (happily) but they slowly began to degrade the experience with ads on their home screen (that were often not appropriate for children). Due to an unrelated project that required me to purchase an AppleTV I was quickly amazed at how much better their product was. Fast and clean. Never going back.
sanex 4 hours ago|
I feel the same about disney when they started adding hulu content to the main app.
dylan604 6 hours ago||
Ugh, Fox. I recently made the decision to not spend $10.99/month for their FoxOne app to stream World Cup matches. I decided to watch the Telemundo broadcasts instead, even though I don’t speak Spanish, just to not give Fox my money. If I were Roku user, this would definitely cause me to quit being a Roku user. I doubt I’d be the only one, but I also do not believe it will be enough total to be noticeable.
kleiba2 6 hours ago||
I could not handle the Spanish commentary, though. I know that that's a real cultural gap on my side, but Spanish soccer commentary is something I could never get accustomed to - way too much talking for my taste, and I especially cannot relate at all to the goal "celebrations".
dylan604 5 hours ago||
I'd rather listen to that than give money to Fox. However, I'm learning that I understand a lot more Spanish that I would have thought. I know enough words that I can at least grasp what I think the topic is, but not the details. Almost like hearing parts of a conversation 3 groups down from you at the bar.
carlosjobim 1 hour ago||
Do you think people will throw away their perfectly functioning devices because of politics?
bigfishrunning 1 hour ago|||
Nah, they'll just put a "i bought it before elon went crazy" sticker on their brand-new cybertruck.

People talk a big game, but really are unprincipled in general.

mschuster91 1 hour ago||
> People talk a big game, but really are unprincipled in general.

At least regarding cybertrucks, pretty much no one is buying them. People are principled - Tesla's brand image is in the gutters and it shows, they are continuously losing market share and SpaceX had to bail out Tesla by buying 131 millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks.

dylan604 1 hour ago|||
No, that's why I said that if any one did, it would be so low of a number that nobody would notice.
donohoe 4 hours ago||
I used to love Roku. I even went through their early developer stuff to play with custom channels. It was clear many years ago that their shift form platform to ad provider was underway. Why can't a company always be amazing at something and just stick to that (looking at you Dropbox)?

I have a Roku TV an dmy setup is simple:

- Disable wifi on Roku TV

- Add Apple TV and connect to router

asveikau 3 hours ago||
Should we expect the Roku apps for non-Fox content to break? That was kind of the selling point of Roku, that it was relatively streaming platform agnostic, not tied to one of the big players.
carlosjobim 3 hours ago|
What do you think? Does it make sense that Fox would invest the entire value of their own company for that end goal?
asveikau 2 hours ago|||
It depends. If they have the foresight to know that alienating their existing install base is a bad thing, then maybe they will put in a shoestring budget to keep the lights on for the old stuff.
frollogaston 3 hours ago|||
The Amazon Firestick works with other services but heavily promotes Amazon stuff. I'd expect it to be like that.
jm4 1 hour ago||
This is the next MySpace deal.
thm 6 hours ago||
Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/fox-roku-deal-f6e564f9?st...
throwatdem12311 6 hours ago||
gross, is there any TV is that isn’t Google or Roku that is halfway decent?

Bring back dumb TVs

Octoth0rpe 6 hours ago||
I was dreading my most recent tv purchase (last fall) for exactly this reason, and ended up with TCL google tv. One can apparently setup a google tv as a dumb tv and never sign it into the internet. It acts exactly how I'd want a dumb tv to work now, simply auto uses the most recent hdmi device, or the active one if the most recent one isn't active.

It has never connected to the internet, and it never will. My long term concern is that google will eventually put cell modems in their tvs, and then using my next tv as a dumb tv will no longer be an option. For now though, this is your best bet.

stereolambda 41 minutes ago|||
Honest question: why doesn't the dumb TV crowd use old TVs (dunno, 10+ years old) as a replacement? Does image quality difference feel so dramatic? Maybe I don't care about this enough. To me the DVD fidelity was not earth-shattering but fine in practice. I do go to the cinema and see new TVs in stores, so it's not like I haven't seen better, just isn't worth a huge premium for me.

Other things I can think about is reliability of the screen (like dead pixels), and your family if not clued in may think you present as "poor".

Induane 4 hours ago|||
You'll be able to stop the signal if they add cellular data. Still annoying though.
nrclark 2 hours ago|||
I don't see this happening any time in the near future. The extra hardware cost is nontrivial, and there's a software support burden. Cellular bandwidth also isn't free, and probably wouldn't be covered by the value of any ads/telemetry that it carried.
Octoth0rpe 4 hours ago|||
Hopefully? I mean, adding the cell modem is sort of hypothesizing about the future, and if we're already doing that then we might as well also hypothesize that such a future google tv will refuse to display anything from its hdmi inputs until it successfully phones home, and that that happens weekly.
anderber 6 hours ago|||
You can get an off-brand Android TV and install a custom launcher like https://at4klauncher.com/
bsimpson 1 hour ago|||
My parents bought an Amazon TV at Costco that is surprisingly responsive for being a smart TV.
fckgw 1 hour ago|||
Buy an AppleTV box and don't connect the TV to WiFi.
superxpro12 6 hours ago|||
LG seems to still be somewhat agnostic.
nosioptar 6 hours ago|||
I picked up an android TV box for $25 that works with LineageOS.

It sucks because its android, but at least its degoogled.

Edit: for a TV, I love my 30 year old Panasonic. Paid $20 for it at the Mormon goodwill. Only 720p, but has the best speakers of any TV I've owned.

xnx 4 hours ago|||
Google/Android TV seems totally fine and capable as long as you use a custom launcher to eliminate all the advertising on the home screen.

Google doesn't do scummy screen spying ("ACR", Automatic Content Recognition).

KerrAvon 4 hours ago|||
LG + never log it in to the internet + an Apple TV box. The webOS UI sucks, but so do all the others apparently, and you never have to interact with it in practice if you use the Apple TV for streaming.
tootie 6 hours ago||
I was leery of of Tizen on my Samsung TV but it's fine
shhsshs 4 hours ago||
"fine" is a very accurate word to describe Tizen. It's slow and really hard to find things sometimes (why do TVs not have a simple "input switch" button any more?), but ultimately it gets the job done.

You can make Tizen much faster by manually uninstalling the Samsung TV Plus app. It runs in the background constantly. "Much faster" is still slow overall, unfortunately.

voakbasda 6 hours ago||
If this happens, our Roku TV is going in the trash. They locked out their customers of their own devices by pushing updated firmware that forced agreement to new terms. They lost my trust during that episode, and this move shows that was the right decision.

Meanwhile, Fox lost my respect decades ago. The idea that they could gain network level access to one of my devices cannot be reconciled with my need to feel secure and safe in my own home.

Anyone wanna take the opportunity to share their favorite brands and models of dumb TVs?

bigfishrunning 1 hour ago||
I use a sony projector as my tv -- it's a finicky expensive device, but the picture is good and there's no apps or network connection on it
internet101010 3 hours ago|||
The closest thing you will fine to a dumb tv is a commercial display, which will not be available with the latest OLED, 120hz, etc.

You have to buy a smart TV and disable the internet + external device like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.

gaws 4 hours ago|||
> Anyone wanna take the opportunity to share their favorite brands and models of dumb TVs?

You can find them in your local Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist region.

999900000999 5 hours ago|||
I think I’m going with a Google TV. I already trust them on my phones anyway.

If you want more control buy a pc monitor and some speakers or commercial display.

riahi 6 hours ago|||
Any but never connect it to the internet and use an appletv
ben4next 3 hours ago||
[flagged]
Benlovescnn 3 hours ago||
Why do you think reporting and telling the truth is such a bad thing?
ben4next 3 hours ago||
Thats my question. But I don't understand what your truth is?

Was this true? https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/07/media/cnn-settles-lawsuit-vir...

holistio 3 hours ago|
I remember when Google buying YouTube for $1.6b sounded crazy. And then when then-Facebook Meta bought WhatsApp for 10 times that.

$22b.

Are there any companies left that are not in the decabillion range?

TheCondor 2 hours ago||
That's what I took notice of... About half their revenue is subscription and about half is advertising. 100m users. $220 per home? I would think that's high.

They certianly have enough to ice the carriers out. I wonder what an HBOMax subscription will cost in a year, I bet a fair bit more.

carlosjobim 1 hour ago||
Yes, hundreds of thousands of companies, if you are interested. But you're here.
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