Discussions

[glend123]

Quote: "Please be aware that the Auto Favorites feature has been moved to the Recent Channels view."

These are not even remotely similar.  Recent channels feature sucks.  Makes no sense to add this,  I thought you are suppose to improve the system with an update?

[IK]

Very frustrating to not have favorites. On my tcl tv, when I select recent channel guide, it just finds no channels and locks. I have to use the home button to get out of that. Only all channels works. The guide that includes streaming channels along with ota channels is hugely too many channels to go through. There are too many ota channels alone, especially without favorites. Without any options to narrow down the selections, using arrow keys only to select stations is time consuming and burdensome. The favorites feature made this manageable.

[Jglte7620]

That was an old update...their new recent update took away the “recent channels” now we just have All Channels and All Streaming Channels.

Roku stop “updating” what doesn’t need to be fixed and bring back the favorites!!! 

[Visitor45763]

---

@IK wrote:

The guide that includes streaming channels along with ota channels is hugely too many channels to go through. There are too many ota channels alone, especially without favorites. Without any options to narrow down the selections, using arrow keys only to select stations is time consuming and burdensome. The favorites feature made this manageable.

Someone mentioned that you can go to Home>System>TV inputs>Live TV which has an option to "hide streaming channels." That returned my TV back to what I'm accustomed to. 

Also, a recent update either broke or intentionally changed (nobody seems to know) the way the up/down arrows work to change channels. We used to be able to hold it down, and it would slowly step through channels. I always felt it was too slow, but the change removed that functionality. Now we have to press the arrow button again and again to step one channel at a time. Someone mentioned using the left-arrow to reach the "guide" will then let you hold the up/down arrows to zip through the channels shown in the guide. Then you can press enter on whatever channel you wanted to be at (and be dropped into viewing that channel). That would be the only way 1000+ channels would be usable.

FWIW: I wish Roku would listen to its customers. It's entirely baffling to me how these things are done, without any ability to rollback to a prior update, blacklist a problematic update. 

I wish they'd include customers in beta testing. I'd subscribe to notifications that a beta update is available, and use an option tv software option to take it (and roll it back). Provide feedback about whether it affected me. But, the way they did this last one 5 days before Christmas, knowing full well they'd be short staffed to address fallout, you get the strong impression nobody cares. I don't see how a company can operate this way. I'd be thinking someone will be fired. But, it seems to be an ongoing thing, like it's accepted as normal.

[cwcheese]

The last update got rid of the Favorites section and moved it into a new Recent Channels list. To get that Recent Channels list, you have to bring up the channels guide and use left-arrow to place the cursor onto the channel number column. Then hit * button to get the popup menu to select between All Channels or Recent Channels. Be sure to hit OK button to set the list you want to use.

Be advised, that every time you turn the TV back on, the channels list will default to All Channels, and you'll have to do the above procedure to get back to the Recent Channels list. One other observation I've noted: it seems the Recent Channels list is finite, and after a while it no longer adds more channels that you have watched, and there is no method to edit the Recent Channels whatsoever.

Roku Devs, y'all got some work to do to fix Recent Channels functionality.

[MMP2]

This is crazy! Bring back favorites.  Your recently viewed channels do not include my channels.  They do seem to include **bleep** channels i have never, ever watched ! No way to get rid of them. Like the Spanish Channel?? Don't speak or watch in Spanish.  Next TV will not be a roku! 

[MMP2]

Agree! Well said.  also you used to be able to scroll back on what was on earlier to see if you missed something and now can't. Have deleted the roku channel, won't watch out of principle.  Using Netflix and HBO. Goodbye roku!

[MMP2]

This has nothing to do with favorites and tv guide! You are telling us to go to the roku channel to navigate.  We are trying to see our local, live TV channels that you don't seem to want us to watch!. Just bought father in law a roku. This happened and we returned it! He is 92 and wants his local channels . Not to mention by the time he gets through the list to get to 58 he might be dead! One click at a time..

[Visitor45763]

---

@MMP2 wrote:

We are trying to see our local, live TV channels that you don't seem to want us to watch!

---

IMO, that's exactly what's behind all this. Roku probably doesn't receive any carriage/advertising ("impression") revenue from antenna activity. I think they're trying to inject more profitable channels into what is probably habit-viewing.

I.e., rename "antenna" to "live-tv." Add 1000 other channels that share revenue or pay carriage. Don't allow the customer to hide those individually (I'm actually surprised they let us hide all of them. That feature will probably disappear this summer.). Get rid of "favorites" -- which "enables" bypassing exposure to the 1000 profitable channels. Tell everyone that's been "replaced" with "recently viewed" -- which exposes you to everything you had to step through one channel at a time (because they've ignored thousands of customer requests for a numeric remote). And then, to make you see more profitable content (longer; break your bad habit of watching antenna tv), they turned off continuous channel changing (holding the button down). Maybe if you see a channel for a full second, you'll find something you like. (If that doesn't work, then you'll see it in "recently viewed" again. I.e., "favorites."). FWIW: I'm sure Roku does make money from analytics (viewing habits even with antenna tv; selling demographic data; "big data."). They're just being greedy by shoving more profitable channels at us.

I think it's beyond question that Roku is all about Roku. They don't care about their customers. They offer community support to give the impression they're community driven. But, that's as far as it goes. There's no way to go back to prior updates, or blacklist bad updates. They don't include customers in beta testing updates. They don't publish what changed in an update (you don't know if something was intentional or not). They push a disruptive change just 5 days before Christmas, when they know employees will be taking time off. 

I sincerely feel sorry for Danny. He's like the alternate-universe version of the Maytag Repairman. The job market must be pretty bad to stay with this gig (or they pay him a fortune). I can't imagine anyone spending their years of their life sitting around eagerly waiting for a phone call to provide service for things that never need it. Nor can I imagine being inundated at a company where the word isn't in its lexicon. 

[purrfectpatty]

You keep asking for details about model number, etc. But it's obvious that this is an issue with ALL brands and models so why don't you just please fix it across the board? The option is completely gone and I've noticed that it reacts much more slowly since the update.