Solving playback issues

[atxchip]

Hi, Jim. Thanks for your contribution. Something else that would be nice: If Roku would make this access clear to it's users. From the start. I dug through all the Terms and Conditions specified in the Roku software and didn't see any mention of this issue, unless it was "implied" or buried in some nebulous verbiage.

I'm wondering why Roku suddenly thought it needed to so directly issue this message?

Nonetheless, I've cleared up my issues with this, completely. I've switched to a standalone hardware media player. Sure, it means another remote to keep track of, but the price$$ is very reasonable for these devices. To me, the benefit is NO Ethernet or Wifi, so NO INTERNET connection.

[kevin30]

ROKU sure seems to be taking a caviler attitude towards user's privacy. IE 'We know we're selling your info without permission so with our latest update we decided to add a vague information selling warning screen that you must approve or our media player is useless'.

[atc98092]

@kevin30 you're seeing way more than what's there. Roku has always had a privacy notification available on their web site. And that screen info doesn't say anything that hasn't been listed for a long time. But since no one ever actually reads those end user license agreements, it appears they decided to add one additional notification. Roku is not compiling any data about what content you are watching on your attached drive through RMP. There's zero business motive for doing such a thing, so why would they make any effort to do such a thing? Exactly what information do you think would be available to them on your media drive that would possibly benefit them?

[atxchip]

Hello, Dan

Whoa, wait. I don't think we're concerned about Roku gathering info about what we watch on our attached devices, at least not in this thread. That's a whole different issue. But Roku's hardware/software should be able to prevent other services from accessing those devices.

I'm sure concerned, however, with that message stating that installed streaming services have direct access to our personal media attached to the Roku hardware. That's what the message says, plain and clear. What reason would the fubo's and the hundreds of "free" movie streamers have? Do I even need to make a list?

[atc98092]

Again, that's a generic message that isn't specific to Fubo or any other channel. It's simply saying that a channel is able to read your external drive if that's the purpose of the channel. Right now there are a number of channels specifically designed to access your USB drive, including Roku Media Player, Chaneru, and several music-only player channels. Plex can't access the USB drive, and I can't remember if Emby can. But those channels that can are designed for that specific purpose. If a channel isn't developed for local media playback, it won't be accessing your drive, plain and simple. People are reading nefarious intent into this, and it simply isn't there. 

[renojim]

Sorry @atc98092 , any channel can access the USB drive if it wants. 

The main takeaway here is that nothing has changed!  It's always been this way.  Maybe Roku should have made that clear from the start, but it seems that they've opened a real can of worms letting people know about something that's been around for over a decade.  Ignorance was bliss.  The right way to do this would be to add permissions a la Android, but I've rarely known Roku to do anything the right way.

[atxchip]

Gentlemen, I understand your viewpoint. As Dan mentioned, if it's 'the purpose' of a channel, then it should certainly be allowed to fulfill it and that's up to the end user to determine. Or should be. As it stands, EVERY channel apparently has access, carte blanche. Roku's popup warning seems to allow us users to disallow this unrestricted access, but there's a problem with the implementation, as many, including myself, have noted. Mainly, that if we "Do not allow" unrestricted access, we ourselves cannot use the Media Player. In my case, my portable HDD just disappears. For others, it seems to be haphazard operation.

I'm confident Roku will just fix the access problem. Allow us users to decide whether or not ALL channels have unrestricted access. It looks like Roku may have attempted to, thus the pop-up with 'allow' or 'not' options.

[atxchip]

Jim, yeah, kinda alarming to realize a portable HDD or thumb drive with family info has been essentially hanging out on the internet. Despite what many of these obscure "channels" claim to be offering, there's no way to know the extent of their access, beyond just offering a movie chock full of advertisements. I'll admit, I've used a couple, for certain old movies, but I remove them when I'm done. And I'm sure not gonna watch ALL the activity on my home network, looking for suspicious activity. But, you're absolutely correct, "Ignorance is bliss."

[atc98092]

OK, I worded my response poorly. I didn't mean to imply that only channels that are designed to play media from an external drive are able to read that drive. But a channel is going to have to be programmed to access the drive, and there's really no reason to do so if the channel isn't designed to play media from the drive. It uses resources that they don't need to use, make hooks into the Roku OS that aren't needed, and would simply be a waste of time because there's no market for any information that might be found on an external drive. Where is the benefit for the channel developer to access an external drive if they aren't planning on playing the media?

If you go down that rabbit hole, then you'd have to ask the same question about channels that really do need to access the drive. They have the same ability to read the drive, and could misuse any information found there. But again, how could it be misused? What possible benefit is there for someone to retrieve that data? What are they going to find? The file names of the media on the drive, and perhaps the codecs used in those files. There is no value to that information, even if the file names are matched to a movie or TV show. 

You just need to step back and look at any possible reason someone would want that data and realize there is no valid reason. And it's a read only data path, so someone couldn't alter anything on the drive. 

[atxchip]

Hello, Dan,

Yes, I'm still trying to get this all through my head, clearly, about "channels' and their ability to access hardware, specifically devices attached via USB. You mentioned that Plex cannot access USB devices. I'm curious about how you know that. There may not be a GUI icon or menu button for a user to explicitly choose that. I don't think that means the software is not capable of USB interaction behind the scenes. I'm certainly not getting onto Plex, it looks like a great service. I'm more concerned about the possibility of rogue channels, masquerading as, for instance, "FREE movies" and the like. I don't know about other users, but from time to time, I have family get together and special occasion  videos, The kind of stuff you wouldn't want on Facebook or other social media. Yet here it is, likely available to a competent network programmer. It's something I believe Roku could prevent, as the source of entry.

Edit to add: Dan, Yes, yes, I just saw your response and we crossed paths. You know exactly what I was talking about. Great. I guess we differ only in our confidence no bad actors would dare use Roku to gain access to private media, for any of a number of nefarious reasons.