Features, settings & updates

[RoweKooSux]

3-4 years ago, we purchased a decent 4K TCL QLED television that happened to use Roku as its OS.  I was hesitant, because I like my television to be a television, not some glorified computer with a display attached.  I read some reviews, and was satisfied that the vast majority of what I was reading indicated Roku was a pretty decent system, with few issues.  Hesitantly, I laid the cash on the counter and walked out with the new TV.

I was nicely surprised.

It worked well.  Rarely crashed.  When I went to "Live TV" I could watch live television, tuned in by my set which is connected to my outside antenna, and I could see all the useless television time wasting programs I could stand, for free.  57 channels and there's nothing on.  I bet Bruce Springsteen never thought that terrestrial broadcast television would have more channels in most markets than the cable TV providers did back in the 90s.  (Bruce was so much better when he didn't tell us about his politics). 
I could hook the TV up to an ethernet cable and go to the "RokuTV" app and get all the streaming television I could stomach.  I still don't know who would want to watch The Price Is Right reruns, but there it is, attempting to suck me in to my childhood memories of 1976 and TPIR's brain-worm style music bumpers.
And the YouTubes... sure is fun to watch from 12 feet away with a simple remote control.
And my little HDHomerun ATSC3 NextGen TV tuner... yep - there's a Roku App for that too.
It all makes me almost forget how wonderful Windows Media Center was, before Microsoft decided that they didn't want to support it any longer.
For those who like those other streaming services, I see there's likely an app for all of them.
Such a nicely integrated 6-foot experience TV system Roku made for it's customers.  From my 2021 self, thanks, Roku!  

Fast forward a couple of years, and this once wonderful Roku-based television has turned into nothing but trash.  From my 2025 self, no thanks, Roku!  The first 3 years was fine.  This last year has been nothing but frustration, anger, and total disgust.

Here's what the "brilliant" engineers at Roku has done to ruin their product:
Some "brilliant" engineer decided it would be a great idea to make us have to click and navigate around useless junk we don't want nor need, and wrote in a "Now Playing" row of huge ugly icons at the top of the channel guide.
What we used to do: Press the left arrow key to go back to the channel guide.
What we have to do now: Press the left arrow key, expecting to get to the channel guide at the exact channel in which we were watching, but now having the focus shifted to this stupid "Now Playing" or "On Now" (or whatever) row of ugly thumbnails of shows Roku thinks we should be watching instead, and having to cumbersomely navigate past in order to get back down to the channel guide.

Some "brilliant" engineer decided we aren't smart enough to know what we want to watch and what we don't want to watch.
What we used to do: Enjoy the Home screen looking like we made it look.  No surprises, no changes, just exactly what we want thanks to Roku's ability to customize stuff.
What we have to do now: Frequently hide those idiotic things which Roku decides we want to have in the Home screen menu on the left by going into the settings and telling Roku to "hide" them.  No, Roku,  I don't want to see the "Elf Tossing Streaming TV Channel" during Christmas.

Some "brilliant" engineer decided they would figure out how to write what amounts to basically a virus for our Roku, masquerading as an app which allows us to load pictures or look at existing ones as a "screen saver" type app.
What we used to do: Press the power button to turn on the TV, and press it again to turn it off.
What we have to do now:  Hold the power button down to turn the TV off, because some Roku installed some rogue virus-like app without our permission which will harvest our data without our permission.  Want to uninstall that "app"?  Ha!  We won't let you!

Some "brilliant" engineer decided that all channels are the same, whether they are streaming or actually broadcast for free over the air.  And that same "brilliant" engineer decided they would change your channel guide without asking you.
What we used to do: Go to "LiveTV" to watch broadcast television channels, conveniently numbered by their broadcast channels.  Want to watch channel 2 news?  Well for sure, channel 2 would be listed in your program guide right at the top.
What we have to do now: Stumble through several different categories of numberless streaming channels to maybe eventually find those broadcast television channels which you're looking for.
And woe to you if you actually wanted to watch that favorite streaming channel which was available at channel 246... because Roku decided we're all too stupid to know we want channel 246, so they list the channels by name now instead of channel number, and make it extremely difficult to find these channels by number.

If I had just purchased this set, brought it home, and had to deal with this "feature" packed Roku system, I would have boxed it back up and returned it, choosing instead something that didn't have Roku built in.  Now I'm essentially SOL since I had a set which worked fine and slowly became almost unusable due to "feature updates".

Oh, and now I see where Roku is apparently adding some unwanted auto-play ads to their devices, as a "gift" of turning the set on.  Thankfully that has not happened to me, but rest assured, if it does, it will be far costlier to Roku than if they didn't.

Roku, we're sick of your forced "features".  Hopefully some person who was in the same boat as I was 4 years ago is reading this, trying to decide whether he wants to invest in something with the Roku label on the box.  Guess what my advice would be?

[renojim]

@RoweKooSux, I agree with everything you said (especially about Springsteen 🙂 ).  That's why I'll never own another "smart" TV unless I just can't find a "dumb" one and why my current Roku TVs were set up with no connection to the Internet - they're almost like good old-fashioned TVs that way.

P.S. - I'm still using WMC for all my DVR needs.

[Strega2]

My 2008 Samsung dumb TV continues to be a joy. I recently had access to a 2017 Samsung Smart TV for free and I was skeptical, but it was free, and it turned out that by not connecting it to the internet, it's almost as friendly as the 2008 dumb TV.