Roku legacy products

[JurassicCowboy]

This explains something. I have purchased a lot of Rokus over the years as some of their devices just died. I have 5 tvs, plus I'm responsible for my mom's tv at her house. I have provably purchased 10-12 roku streaming devices over the last 8-9 years and I own 7 (not including the one I gave to my mom) right now!. Maybe 1.5 to 2 years ago her roku stopped working right at her place but when I tried it at my place it worked so I put it in my box of spare Rokus and forgot about it. Meanwhile I bought her a new roku. The other day I was hooking up a new tv at home and I picked one of my old rokus to hook up to it. Guess what.. I see the same problem OP describes... then I find this post. Good to know that the Roku I bought for my mom maybe 3-4 years ago has been discontinued. It was the later version of 3500, and it wasn't cheap at the store where I bought it. I'm losing my patience. TivO did things right. If you bought one of their boxes it would work forever, despite software updates. 

Stop making excuses for greed/laziness. Software companies know how to avoid disabling old hardware or at the very least they could put an obvious message on the screen like "No longer supported."

[Strega2]

Wikipedia says the 3500 came out in early 2014, so if you bought it 3-4 years ago, and it wasn't cheap, then you might want to shop at other stores.

I bought a TiVo in 1999 or 2000, but I replaced it in 2008. I think it was $699, plus a $199 lifetime sub? About $1600 in current dollars, plus I had to replace the disk a couple of times. By 2008, it was time to go HD, and my TiVo was having troubles. It's been a while, but I recall older TiVos having troubles connecting and getting guide data. I think the thing had it's own modem and needed to be plugged into a phone line and later guide updates would make a phone call that would go on for an hour or more and then crash unpacking the download. In addition, TiVo was having trouble/lagging on making the HD transition.

However, from around 2000 - 2006, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world! Although I do remember a post on the TiVo Community titled: "Is this all it does?" Someone was shocked to have bought a TiVo and then found out all it did was record TV - that you had to provide yourself. So in the grand scheme of things, I think I get a lot of bang for my buck from my $25 Roku.

[JurassicCowboy]

I think it was a 3500X. It was definitely being sold in stores when I bought it which was 3-4 years ago at most. I bought it at a Walmart. It was the only Roku model they sold and it was like $40-$45 which, even tho I didn't know it was an ancient model I thought it was an insane price. Still, I had no choice as I wanted to get my mom's tv working so she wouldn't call me every 4-5 hours for the next 3 days asking why her streaming wasn't working. Ha. 

Far as TiVO, I got one of those lifetime deals. It was cheap. Maybe $400 for the one I got 9-10 years back but I did have to update the hard drive. It also had internet connectivity for guide loading. I bought it when I was in the middle of first going from tv stuff to streaming. When I really got into streaming, then it was like 'what's the point' - and yes my TiVO had streaming apps too but managing streaming apps on multiple TVs wasn't going to happen. I even had some little transmitter boxes that let you watch TiVo on multiple tvs but that was very iffy to the point where I stopped using them.  Although TivO did come in handy when there was a big storm and zero internet. People could watch a tv series that was recorded on it for entertainment.  They invented the best menu system ever, imo. I suspect if their management had been smarter about making deals with big streaming companies they would still be at the top tho. Even just a fake "record" that's just like a streaming services of live tv with on demand/save option would have made the system attractive still. Especially if that option was only on TivO. ha.

Anyhow, am I the only one who has had dud Rokus.. or Rokus that crapped out after a few months? The number of Rokus I have purchased is crazy to me. Eh.

[Strega2]

I am on my third Roku since 2016. The first was the often-disparaged most-basic Roku Express 3700 which did become flaky. So, one replacement for problems, and then the third and so far final Roku was just a desire to upgrade.

Roku gets nearly all of its profit from advertising and content deals, so I think they tend to go with the cheapest contract manufacturer to get the hardware made, which they sell roughly at their cost. This is one of the reasons I prefer Roku players over TVs. Many of the Roku TVs seem to be in that same space of cheap hardware that may or may not last, which I think is much more of a bother with something TV-sized.

In the late 90s we (by which I mean a technology development lab within a very big company) had a prototype DVR of our own. The reason the project was canceled was because we couldn't figure out how to make lots of money. Being a big name-brand company, we wanted our name on the box, our UI, our store etc. But when we approached any of the existing content service companies, they all said that we could supply them the technology, but it would be their name, their UI, their store...  When we proposed a stand-alone box our marketing department told us that few users want to hook another thing up and demand that the function be in the TV or cable box.

So we dropped it, and I bought a TiVo, and I wasn't surprised to see them having similar issues.

Also, when we approached CE equipment makers, they told us upgradability was not their business model. Their model was to get the best widget out at the best price, then forget about it and design the next one. I think the business model of making disposable, but cheap, tech products is even more pervasive now than it was then.