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Roku TV bricked until agreeing to new terms of service (programming.dev)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/technology

300 comments fedilink hide all child comments

See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn't use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don't agree to their terms, then I don't get access to their new products. That sucks, but fine - I don't use their services except for the TV itself, and honestly, I'd rather by a dumb TV with a streaming box anyway, but I can't find those anymore.

Anyway, the new terms are about waiving your right to a class action lawsuit. It's weird to me because I'd never considered filing a class action lawsuit against Roku until this. They shouldn't be able to hold my physical device hostage until I agree to new terms that I didn't agree at the time of purchase or initial setup.

I wish Roku TVs weren't cheap walmart brand sh*t. Someone with some actual money might sue them and sort this out...

EDIT: Shout out to @[email protected] for recommending the brand "Sceptre" when buying my next (dumb) TV.

EDIT2: Shout out to @[email protected] for recommending LG smart TVs as a dumb-TV stand in. They apparently do require an agreement at startup, which is certainly NOT ideal, but the setup can be completed without an internet connection and it remembers input selection on powerup. So, once you have it setup, you're good to rock and roll.

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[+] [email protected] -10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And where do you plug in the aerial to watch TV? Or doesn't it work like that where you're from?

[–] Ghostalmedia 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You’ll need to buy TV tuner with HDMI to do that.

But honestly, I probably wouldn’t go the monitor route unless you were all in on streaming.

[–] Raxiel 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I dumped my satellite TV subscription service last year when I realised all we ever watched on it were on-demand services. I hooked one of the dish feeds into the TVs own socket since it was there, but beyond testing it worked it's had no more than an hours use in the last six months.
We just watch stuff on the TVs streaming apps instead of the satellite decoders streaming apps (saving about 100kWh a year).
One of the few times we watched live TV, it was just on in the background and we realised the show that was on seemed interesting, we'd missed the first 10 minutes but there was an option to press a button and open the on-demand app and restart immediately from the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Which most people are or should be tbh. Also, if anyone is searching for a dumb TV it's more or less guaranteed they're tech savvy enough to be running some sort of stream box/pc anyways for the TV.

[–] Ghostalmedia 8 points 8 months ago

Antenna TV is still kind of nice in that there is live coverage, it’s free, and it works when the internet is out. I get the appeal.

[–] atrielienz 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

TV tuners are fairly cheap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Never heard of them please elaborate a bit, I'm always open to learning new and better stuff.

[–] TunaLobster 3 points 8 months ago

HDHomeRun is one of the common brands. They have a couple that can even demodulate ATSC 3.0.

[–] atrielienz 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hasn't worked like that in the US for a couple decades. I remember early 2000's there was a push to go digital and a lot of people with older TV's that didn't have coax or similar were given dongles by the government so they could make tv signals all digital. No more aerials on TVs.

https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2009/the-switch-from-analog-to-digital-tv/#:~:text=SUMMARY%3A%20On%20June%2012%2C%202009,signals%20must%20be%20transmitted%20digitally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

My new (2023) Philips Roku TV has an antenna input and receives OTA digital channels just fine.

[–] TunaLobster 1 points 8 months ago

No clue what you're talking about. I've got an SMA connector on the back of my TV. The did government subsidized conversation boxes. It worked about the same as a VCR. Tune the TV to a specific channel and then use the convertor as the tuner. That by no means caused TVs no to longer than SMA connectors. That was due to TV manufacturers also having their fingers in streaming services. Gotta love that vertical integration!