Yeah it just appeared on mine, too. We only use the tv for kids stuff (only a couple channels) and now my 5 year old could turn on graphic war news coverage for all I know. I have all the “features” set as Hide on the setting > Home Screen page, but it doesn’t take it away. 100% if this doesn’t go away we’ll trash our Roku. Ugh!
I just got off with customer service. They said sorry, it’s a new feature you can’t turn off. I went into one of the channels in this “On Now” section and then it looked like the settings would allow me to hide channels (it says check ok to hide). I painstakingly hid several hundred channels (who knew! We only use 5 apps). Went out and back in—none of them are hidden even though it says they’re hidden still in that manage channels menu. Wow. Big time safety issue to let kids have easy push access to anything that pops up. What if my 5yo turns on the news? The horror channel? Ridiculous. When it was only through the Roku Channel I could just remove that and have no worries. We will throw away our Roku at the end of the month if they don’t make this optional.
If you log into your account at https://my.roku.com you can create or reset a PIN value. You can then choose when the PIN is to be required, such as before it will allow any channel, subscription, or purchase to be made on your account.
These are NOT channels or apps that I have added to my Roku. I have always had a pin protecting channel downloads. I have also always had the live tv option set to Hide. Nonetheless the new “On Now” selections across the top of my home page lead to an endless access to the Roku Channel (not one I’ve added) and all its ”Live” channels. Customer support tells me this is a new feature and isn’t optional. There is no way to block it, no way to control which channels come on (they are all set to Hide but still show and turn on). Perhaps a Roku TV’s parent controls would address this, but with our Roku Express I’m told I now have now way to protect my children from wandering into heaven only knows what from this new mandatory display of “On Now” selections. It is infuriating. I would rather remove tv entirely than risk a 5yo wandering down to watch cartoons in the morning will instead wind up seeing adult-focused content. Our 5 allowed apps all have parent controls or are made for children. It is unacceptable for Roku to force their content on us.
Paging Roku employees @RokuAustin, @RokuERey, and any other moderators to be sure this concern gets passed on to those who should be aware of it.
Hi @mlkmnsgrl @Davidf3,
Thanks for flagging, and welcome to the Roku Community.
We'd like to see more on this behavior and need your help. Could you please provide us with the details below?
Once we have this information, we'll be able to forward it to the right team for further review.
We'll look forward to it.
Thanks,
Rey
3900x Roku Express
YG0063121099
12.5.0 build 4175-51
device id C33926121099
issue report 99-429-099
There should not be any hint of Live anything when the settings say to hide live tv and we don’t have the Roku Channel loaded. This is such a breech of safety!
Thanks for the update, @mlkmnsgrl!
We'll forward this to the appropriate Roku team for further investigation. Once we have information about this, we'll provide an update here in this thread.
Your patience and understanding are much appreciated in the meantime.
Thanks,
Rey