Just stopped in to say I agree, there are times when it would be nice to have a web browser on my TV.
---Phone dead and left your cord at work and you're just too darn tired to go buy another one? TV browser
----Want to adult stuff but your girlfriend's got your phone locked down with snooper apps so tight you can't even get in Facebook without getting interrogated?
TV browser!
I'm sure there are many other scenarios, phone broken, gotten shut off, etc but you get the idea.
The question really is:
What does Roku GAIN by denying you a browser?
And the answer is: Everything. Without absolute control of where and how you stream and browse content, they cannot guarantee views for the companies that pay them to advertise all over their home page and everywhere else. It's fairly unobtrusive for now, but Im sure with time it will get worse and worse and corporate greed with its insatiable need to produce numbers higher than the ones the previous quarter slowly erodes modern entertainment until there is nothing entertaining about it at all. Hate to see what it will look like a couple generations from now. Those SciFi films back in the 80's that had the ads coming across people's vision as they go about their day like it's normal, I am afraid they are not very far off the mark. Glad I won't be here to see it.
Anyway, Roku will never allow a browser because it relinquishes control to the user rather than the other way around. I am sure a large portion of their customer base(myself included) would love a roku browser, but they will hem and haw for the next 20 years, throwing out every excuse on the book in order to string you along just long enough to buy yet another device.
