Community discussions

[Iona-D]

Here is the real future of Roku granted by it’s released profit margins showing it’s intending direction it will take.  It might not be what most here signed up for.  With it total lack of Customer Service Phone Call Centers (the Pandemic provided a really neatly package reason to drop Roku’s own), a real stable Chat option (?), or even a simple basic direct contact-i.e. something!-option to any real live breathing person at the other end.  Not just a mad jumble puzzle of ineffective email and web links to nowhere and generalization of problem solving.  What gives?

Well I tried to describe it before in other post now becoming too numerous to bother refer back to.  And I will not bother here.  I rather you just go over to this link and decide for yourselves where exactly YOU fit in (or not):

https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/01/14/why-is-roku-buying-video-content/

(and it probably will not be pretty for the people wanting a “nice” company to directly care just about you and your needs/concerns-plus everyone else in the same boat-based on Roku’s and other social media sites).

As for myself, I said enough on this and most other topics.  I really hate to waste my very valuable time that I can give to both online, offline, and other socialization ways just repeating myself over and over to people who are in a major denial way or simply not bothering to read what’s directly in front of them.  Worst of all, I cannot possibly help anyone with their Roku problems, simple or complicated, as I (or probably any of you out there) am not even valued by Roku anymore or even an employee.  Even Roku has it's very friendly reminder every time you land on one of their forum's pages.  Which I doubt anyone bother to read that either.

That goes for Amazon, Google (Chromecast/Android) or any other streaming platform offered today or in the future.  The only thing that matters to each of them is……...eyeballs!  Lots and lots of them.  So no more guilt trips about attaching a wide variety of streamers of built in OS technology hooked up to your televisions.  

I sure don’t anymore!

[fluke]

I see the support issues as being different than their plans on how to expand.

Your feedback about your own experiences trying to deal with Roku are still helpful feedback.

As to them extending more into content, it is probably a requirement to compete.  They are taking on Amazon, Google and Apple.  Each of those other company have extended into content.

If you rollback time to the early 2000's, there was a number of companies competing in the digital music player market.  Diamond has the Rio PMP300.  Creative Labs had NOMAD.  And a fruit company had something called an iPod.  Most of the products left it up the customer to "rip" music off a compact disc on their own.  Apple on the other hand also provided the iTunes music store.

Of the digital music players from two decades ago, the iPod will probably be remembered by the most number of people.  Apple didn't stop making it's flagship product or abandon the people that cared only about that flagship product.  But to make the iPod successful they got into the business of also handling the content.

I think we are seeing Roku trying to learn from history.  It isn't clear if that is the right move or a wrong move.

If you really want to get a feel for where the company is headed behind the scenes, look at what job opennings they have:

https://www.roku.com/jobs/listing 

When I checked, they had 5 opennings for people in content Programming.

For Software Engineers they have 78 job opennings.  Of those 9 are related to Quality Assurance which leads me to believe they have gotten the message not everyone was happy with RokuOS 9.4.

Overall, it seems like content programming isn't replacing working on their flagship products.

However, of the 191 opennings, none seem to be for tier 1 customer support staff.  I don't know if that means they outsource for that or if they just aren't expanding that right now.  But maybe this is an area they need more feedback from customers for.

[Strega]

For me, Roku is (by far) the cheapest video device I have ever bought, and yet is still very capable.  I know you're around my age, so I know you remember when VCRs and Laserdisc players were over $1000 (or about $4000 in today's dollars).  And then you had to feed them with movies that cost more than Rokus.  (Movies that were SD in the case of laserdisc or way below SD in the case of video tape.)  As such, I don't really feel "signed up" for anything with my Roku.  It's a great little $30 gizmo that gives me access to Amazon Prime and Netflix, and occasional forays into other things.

Since you linked to an investing article, I must say their stock has done great over the last 5 years.  I probably have a little in my index funds.  In hindsight I should have had more.  That said, I'm kind of conservative and don't pile huge amounts into a single company with a P/E of N/A.

Sorry, I don't understand talk of "guilt" and "denial" and anyone can hang out at a forum as much or as little as they wish.  I just finished my coffee and I'm going out for a walk now.  Mostly when I'm here in my home office, I either studying Chinese or working on CSS to modernize my vintage 1995 website, (along with writing a PERL script to do most of the editing for me) and I just pop over to the Roku forum for a break.  The website modernization is something I've said I was going to do for years, but it took a pandemic to really get me going on it.