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[Jafro]

My 80+ year old parents made the mistake of buying a voice remote.  They don't agree to the license agreement.  Neither would I.  There is no disagree button.  They have not agreed to the 40-page long license agreement yet.  They turned the $600 TV I bought them into a brick.  Turning it off and back on, unplugging it, pressing everything but the okay button on the remote does nothing.  Removing the voice remote from the house also does nothing.  I'm 9 hours away from them, I'm $600 lighter for having bought them a now-useless brick of a television, and they have other non-voice remotes they also can't use to quit this stupid, annoying, forceful legal document that's preventing them from using any of it.

I suppose Roku's take on this is if you disagree with our remote, we'll take your parent's TV away from them?  We never agreed to any license agreement that allows a remote to do this to us.  The ability to disagree with a license agreement should be an option for EVERY human being who is being presented with a legal document.

[RokuJohnB]

Hi @Jafro,

A warm welcome here in the Roku Community!
We will be more than happy to take a closer look into this issue that you're having with your new Roku remote. Could you send us a photo or video of your running issue?

With detailed information, we will be able to assist you further.

Thanks,

John

[andyross · Accepted solution]

The voice will only work if you HOLD DOWN the voice button. It does not listen all the time like Alexa or similar.

Since it's a TV, you should be able to use a generic IR remote. There are tons of universal remotes out there that support Roku devices. You can find several at WalMart, Target, etc...

You can also get the Roku Simple Remote.

https://www.roku.com/products/accessories/roku-simple-remote 

[Jafro]

I'm sorry, I can't help you with any of what you're requesting.  It happened far away from me in my parent's home, and I am always the first point of contact for their technical support.  Octogenarians do not understand that a rechargeable remote that looks just like their supposedly-lost remote adds a microphone to their TV experience.  That new piece of hardware talking to their previously-working and properly-set-up TV launches a voice remote setup assistant.  

All they wanted to do is control their TV, they had no interest nor desire to add a microphone to their internet connection.  None of us are the least bit concerned with how it functions.  None of us want this feature, and they are incapable of operating it correctly even if they did.  I'm saying nothing they wouldn't fully agree with.  They don't know enough about technology to understand what they bought.  But they follow my instructions very well.

The voice remote setup assistant can not and will not let you quit it.  No manner of power cycling either with the remote or the wall outlet will let you escape it.  You can unplug the TV overnight, drive the remote to another county, leave the remote by the roadside, come home, plug the TV in, turn it on, and you're right back in the unquittable setup assistant right where you left off.  This is not an instruction I gave them.  This is something they did all on their own and told me about later.

Where this applies to me is... I set up the email account, payment, and roku account FOR THEM because they don't understand technology.  I gave them all the subscriptions they wanted and I signed them in as HOTEL.  The way they had to fix this was with a GeekSquad appointment.  Competent enough because that fixed it, BUT... I never gave them the account password.  I have absolutely no idea how, but they've managed through that appointment to still be signed in after a factory reset.  Perhaps the TV stored all of my settings?  I don't know if it did that or not?  Somehow now they're signed in as HOME, and they're hitting my credit card with thousands of dollars worth of purchases so far.  I hope I get to see them again this year.  I've changed account settings, reset passwords, I can't stop them from doing it.

Really.  Please.  Put a "I Disagree" on that setup assistant that quits it with a warning that says, "you will not be able to use the voice feature on your new remote until you enable it in Settings/Remote".  It's simply the presence of the voice remote that launches that assistant.  You should be able to repeat this using any non-voice Roku TV, and then pointing the voice remote at it and hitting a button.  Try to exit without the reset button...  I dare you.

[Jafro]

Thank you, yes.  That is definitely the fix for the hardware portion of the issue.  

Here's what happened.  I reordered the same Simple Remote on Amazon that I've sent my parents 4 or 5 times now already.  They're the ones who bought the voice remote, and after that setup assistant got launched they realized they'd made a mistake... they ultimately discarded the voice remote out of frustration.  They found two of their old Simple Remotes, plus the additional one I sent them arrived.  So now they were drowning in remotes.  But nothing can end or bypass the setup assistant even after the voice remote is physically gone forever.  So my feature request is more or less a plea to be able to quit the voice remote setup assistant after it has been launched.  That is the software side of it.

The physical reset button on the back that factory-defaults the whole TV configuration-is the only way to exit the voice remote setup once it launches.  That can be very consequential to some users who do this.  So it should be easy to either disagree, power-cycle, or exit the assistant until the NEXT time someone manually launches it in Settings/Remote OR hits a button on that remote again.  Just please let them quit it somehow.