we live in hell

I don’t even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they’re saying…hey do you want a worse experience?

    • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I ended up giving up and just putting a Linux PC attached to my TV as a media center. I host plex on it.

        • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          Other server software are available of course. The concept stays the same though. Very much recommend doing this. I’m halfway there, running Plex on my desktop PC and watching on my TV and other devices at home. Very comfortable setup. But I wish I had a small computer like a Pi or something, and a NAS to hold my drives. That way my desktop PC could rest.

          • Krauerking@lemy.lolEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Personally I was a fan of buying something like a Dell optiplex as my my NAS and Pihole but I do wish I had a better enclosure for the drives as any truly good one seems to be hundreds of dollars and mildly defeats the idea of self hosting being cheaper.

            • MonkeMischief@lemmy.todayEnglish
              0·
              9 months ago

              I just use an old crappy hand-me-down mid-tower gaming case I stuffed some drives into. As long as you can keep them cool, dusted, and away from vibrations (with HDDs), plenty of (used?)cases will have enough HDD slots to get you started.

              Also old rackmount servers on ebay have plenty of slots I hear, but rackmount fans are waaaaay louder.

              • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                9 months ago

                Room is my main issue. Living in an apartment I can’t have large boxes/computers just standing anywhere. So it has to be very small and quiet. 😅 Pi should be perfect. Maybe mount it underneath my desk where my desktop PC is or something. 👍

                • MonkeMischief@lemmy.todayEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  Right on, that makes sense!

                  If you’re not planning on storing absolutely tons of data at first, you can also squeeze a lot into so-called “1 liter PCs”. Traditional platform, a little more power and room than a Pi, and you can neatly tuck them away!

                  I hear they float around eBay quite readily these days.

                  Sadly haven’t been hearing the very best things about the Pi 5, but earlier ones can do well as little servers.

                  I’ve been learning a lot from the self hosted podcast lately haha. Also one of the hosts runs this site (which I happened to find first) that can be pretty helpful!

                  https://perfectmediaserver.com/

                  I remember some folks on reddit saying USB isn’t the most reliable connection for long-term drives, but I’m not 100% sure what that was about. Maybe the connectors wear out?

                  Perhaps someone who knows more can enlighten me.

                  Best of luck! I hope you have a lot of fun. 😁

    • xyguy@startrek.websiteEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      Connected a Samsung smart TV to my network when we first got it. The thing damn-near crashed my pi-hole asking for so many ad/tracking domains. Factory reset it later that same day. I think my % of requests blocked went from 15% to 68% in just the 3 hours or so the Smart TV was connected.

      • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        They started to wisen up and hard-coded dns requests to 8.8.8.8 to bypass dns ad blockers now. Heck, some apps like Netflix already do it for years now. If your router can transparently redirect all dns requests to your pi-hole, you should use that feature.

        • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          So they recognize that the owner of the product is trying to prevent them from collecting data, and actively try to circumvent the owner’s security measures? This shit should be illegal, and carry a huge fine. You paid for the device, and it’s connected to your network, which you control. I’m sick and tired of corporations thinking it’s totally okay to be straight-up spyware and adware. Some supposedly legitimate companies these days make old-school computer viruses look down right respectful.

          • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Not only that, I have the entire Roku domain blocked on my network, and even though there’s no reason for it, as evidenced by the fact that there’s no problem running it for a month, and it doesn’t happen to all TVs, depending when it was last handled, it breaks my Plex app every 30 days in such a way that it needs to be fully reinstalled, which requires unblocking Roku, allowing phone home of the prior month’s data. Old, but not obsolete, app versions should still work fine - have a kodi Plex app that hasn’t been updated in years and that works without issue. So this is absolutely an intentional choice to force users to at least cough up their viewing data, even if they can’t give you their ads. And they can collect a surprising amount of information through those apps.

            Took me a couple months to figure out what was happening (by waiting 2 months and doing the reinstall on the same day for all of them and checking the next time one broke, then staggering them the next time) but I’m no longer using the apps and will probably just factory reset all three of them, leave them off the network entirely.

            The amount of work they do as a company to make my private experience complete shit because I don’t want them invasively collecting my info and shoving ads down my throat… is absolutely disgusting.

        • Stupidmanager@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          10 months ago

          or use the blocking feature of your firewall. Here’s Roku being persistent and ignoring my pihole. Firewalla for the win.

    • snowe@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      All new Roku devices do that, even if it’s not a Roku tv. Roku went from one of the best video devices to the worst in one fell swoop. Literally the only good off the shelf device is the Apple TV.

    • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Yep - this. I absolutely abhor “smart” TVs for just this reason.

      But, even lack of internet sometimes isn’t enough. I recently, and inadvertently, left the wireless adapter on my TV enabled, after having to temporarily join it to my wireless for a firmware update (digital TV tuning needed updating for my region). After I was done, I cleared the wireless config, but I didn’t think to go into the other menu where you can entirely disable the wireless adapter.

      Little did I realise that meant the TV started broadcasting its own SSID, for friggin’ Apple Airplay or some other shit. I found this out when my 9yo daughter was suddenly exposed to some adult content for about 10 seconds. Best guess is a nearby neighbour mistook my TV for theirs.

      I’ve obviously disabled the wireless adapter again, but this has been a terribly difficult lesson I’ve had to learn.

      For anyone concerned, my daughter is OK. My wife had a good chat with her about it. She had considerably more talking down to do with me - I was ready to start knocking on doors, to have my own chat.

  • casual_turtle_stew_enjoyer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    This is called Automatic Content Recognition and it can be disabled in the settings, highly recommend doing that. It should have asked you whether you wanted it enabled when you set up the TV, as it’s legally required to be opt-in in the US opposed to opt-out. Since you’re using a Roku Smart TV, it specifically is taking two full resolution “video snapshots” every second.

  • Teon@kbin.social
    3·
    10 months ago

    Anytime you see the word “smart” in the name of the product, remember to mentally replace the word “smart” with “tracking”.

  • LoamImprovement@ttrpg.networkEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    I can almost guarantee this was some stupid marketing exec’s idea. Someone had to write the code that interprets that you’re watching an episode that someone else has available for streaming. Any software dev worth their salt would have seen this request and said “This is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever seen in my life” and they probably had to make it anyway because it pays the bills.

  • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Ah yes I want to watch the exact same thing I am watching but from another provider, definitely just take my money, hypercapitalist

    • Rognaut@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      I believe it’s Roku. That purple symbol in the bottom right is on the remote as well.

      Very budget so this doesn’t surprise me.

      • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Fuck Roku. Don’t buy these. They shove ads down your throat constantly, and they proactively, aggressively stop methods of circumvention.

      • idunnololz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        Wtf I thought roku TV were one of the good ones. I use a Roku thing that you plug in and I haven’t seen this yet.

  • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    We need a Lemmy community dedicated to find, repair and exchange dumb TV. These are become increasingly rare and increasingly needed.

  • The Barto@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Hey! How dare you only pay once for a lifetime of viewing, you should be paying monthly… No daily, for the right to view pieces of cultural history.

  • PeterPoopshit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    Pretty soon you won’t be allowed to use a tv to watch stuff that isn’t state approved media from a state approved source. I had an airbnb once that was set up in such a way that you could sign in to any streaming service you wanted but hdmi was blocked. I doubt the owner intentionally did that but it’s scary to actually see this type of shit firsthand.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    9 months ago

    It’s called “Post-Purchase Monetization”, and it’s why your 65” OLED tv is so cheap. They capture and sell your viewing data - but only if you hook it up to an internet connection. So don’t hook them up to an internet connection.

  • ZeroCool@feddit.chEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    On your Roku TV go to Settings > Privacy > Select Smart TV Experience and disable “Use Info from TV Inputs”