From this article, it seems as if Roku is going to shove more ads onto the home screen.
Roku plans to “immerse advertisers in more parts of the home screen” by adding interactive and shoppable ad formats, Kristina Shepard, Roku’s vice president of global ad sales and partnerships, told AdExchanger during CES last week.
https://cordcuttersnews.com/roku-plans-to-add-more-ads-to-its-home-screen/
Sounds like a nightmare about to come true. All Roku really cares about is their ad revenue anyway, not customer satisfaction.
If you don't want ads you have to buy an apple TV device. Amazon Fire TV and Google TV have ads too.
My Shield is far worse on home screen ads than any Roku. Although from the sounds of this they might be trying to catch up. 😛
This does seem like a trend across all the various streaming devices. Google TV has an Apps Only mode (not by default, you have to find it and turn it on) which is nice. But Google has said that the Google TV UI will be revised soon. A lot of people are afraid that Apps Only will be removed in the new version.
Officially the Shield is still using Android TV, not Google TV. There's no Apps only mode for that version. And I too have heard it's going away on Google TV. Must push those ads!
YouTubeTV is working great on my Raspberry Pi 4 running RPi OS, and I get to pick my background, those apps run in a traditional browser.