- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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
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…
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.
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.
tl;dr never buy anything Roku, ever again. Got it.
Yeah… I’ve been evaluating moving to Plex or Jellyfin.
Kinda getting done with a lot of this smart stuff. The Monopolies are flexing and I don’t enjoy it.
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
Are you… Are you using the yt APP!?
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!
Sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Imagine that you pay for an ad free streaming service through your roku, like HBO for example. And now you have ads streaming over it?
People will sue for a way to disable it over ad free paid content.
Also, this will lead to way more pirating. People are sick of advertisements.That’ll be why they just pushed a “agree to our new license with arbitrage or your tv is a brick” update
People who don’t pirate already are fools.
deleted by creator
Even if people sue, doesn’t mean they have any legal grounds to win. What law is Roku breaking? You can’t sue your TV manufacturer for not being 4k when you pay for 4k content. Your content display technology has the right to display content how they see fit.
I see this as a job for the free market. As consumers we need to show Roku how we feel about that.
If I purchase a TV, that I now own, and after I own it the company “updates” my TV that I now have to watch ads in order to use the TV I purchased without that condition?
At minimum it’s a breach of contract
Their recent ToS update: “We bricked your TV until you ‘consent’ to waiving your right to sue us if we do something illegal. Also, we won’t tell you what you’re consenting to up front, instead we’ll make you spend hours reading through pages and pages of legal garbage to find where we buried this statement.”
They know that nobody would agree to this if they put it in big bold letters right above the “agree” button, so they bury it behind hours of tedious reading so that people cave in and just “consent.”
If you roofy someone’s drink and pester them until they “consent” to sex, you would get thrown and jail and probably shanked in the liver. If Roku bricks the TV that you purchased and won’t let it work again until you consent to something that you’re nearly guaranteed to miss or not understand by design, their profits go up because people can’t sue them.
This capitalism hellhole can’t burn down fast enough.
The free free market requiring a cool hat and tropical bird.
Yes the free market always wins!
That’s some scummy shit…
Everything owned will do this sooner or later.
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?
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?
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).
Thankfully they patented it, hopefully deterring anyone else from also doing it
lol as if they couldn’t license it
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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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 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.
This theoretical Roku TV’s internal hardware would be capable of taking the original source video feed, rendering an ad, and then combining the two into a single displayed image.
Among the business risks disclosed on Roku’s financial filings from its 2023 fiscal year (PDF), the company says that its “future growth depends on the acceptance and growth of streaming TV advertising and advertising platforms.”
If implemented as described, this system both gives Roku another place to put ads, and gives the company another source of user data that can be used to encourage advertisers to spend on its platforms.
It seems as though a Roku TV that was capable of this kind of ad insertion would need more sophisticated internal hardware than most current sets currently come with—this is the same company that feuded with Google a few years back because it didn’t want to pay for more-expensive chips that could decode Google’s AV1 video codec.
The original article contains 591 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Thanks to OP for reinforcing my choice to forever avoid smart TV’s.
Edit: if you want a non-smart TV look for hospitality TVs.
Also, “how to ask everyone capable to hack your shit product without asking everyone to hack your shit product.”
Or just buy whatever TV you want, never connect it to the internet, and then plug in a separate box where you’ll actually get the content from.
Smart TVs aren’t actually that smart if they have no internet and you entirely bypass their home screen to go straight to whatever box you have.
Some will show ads anyway, or so I e heard. They’re fn asshats
I don’t see how. Unless it has, like, 20 predefined stored ads. But even then it might be refreshing in 20 years to see a commercial for Kia. Be like, “Oh yeah! I remember Kia! Man, crazy how long it’s been since Kia’s have been around. Such a bad car.”
Or for computer monitor
Computer monitors are significantly more expensive for the same size and are overkill for the applications TVs are generally used for.
*their tv
