@lschopf wrote:
The only way around this is to use the roku app on my phone, hit the microphone button, & tell it which channel i want to watch. Better than arrow scrolling through a million channels, but also cumbersome that I can't just use the TV remote to do what it is designed for. Who's idea was this stupid update?
What's ironic (or revealing) is that Roku's CEO has repeatedly said Roku's goal is simplicity. When you hear that as a prospective consumer, or investor you think of Apple-like elegance. A zen experience with your tv.
When you own a Roku tv you realize what he really means is: simple for Roku. No testing of updates before release. Disregard for older models (which would make testing harder). Roku has time to remove Favorites and continuous channel changing, but no time to fix longstanding problems.
Look at the infinite recovery loop. That's existed for a long time. The "can't connect" (mac addr all zeroes) problem where people have to carry their tv down the street with portable generator trying to find an open wifi to use just use their tv. That has existed at least for many months. I've seen a couple of posts saying it's been YEARS.
“When I wake up in the morning I don’t think about our competitors. I’m focused on how can we make our experience better, how can we allow our partners to make more money; how can we get scale on our platform.” (Anthony Wood, Our Goal Is To Power Every TV In The World, CNBC Sep 28, 2017).
You have to wonder if he really believes his blarney, or is just immune from any conscience. The theme being set to a broken tv, as if they're proud of their accomplishments makes me think it's the latter.
There's other quotes like that, where he runs down the other tv/streaming innovators, that they don't think out of the box like Team Roku does. All I can say is: I wonder how much worse it would be if he had mediocre vision like he accuses everyone else of. (Thank goodness Roku didn't get into self-driving cars instead of harmless tvs.).
I'm confident this is going to come back to bite Roku. They had an stock IPO, and now the stock as at stratospheric prices. I've seen this before. It goes to the company's ego, and they think they can do no wrong. It's a bad mirror that can change in an instant. There's absolutely no way a company can operate the way Roku does without developing a very bad reputation (if not regulatory intervention). The leadership seems oblivious or contemptuous of this reality. Tick tock... With Android on tvs now (which the CEO previously said was what Roku wanted to be), tick tock.
"People are often amazed at how much we’ve done with the number of engineers we’ve got." (Roku CEO Anthony Wood, Austin Statesman, Oct 4, 2019). "Amazed" is one way of putting it.
