Roku Eyes Patent That Would Inject Ads Into… Everything
from the dumb-is-smart dept
When last we checked in with our friends at Roku, they had made the unpopular decision to effectively “brick” user streaming hardware and television sets if users didn’t agree to a typically draconian end user agreement that effectively bans your legal right to sue the company.
Eroding your legal rights using fine print isn’t new; it’s been a U.S. corporate standard since the Supreme Court gave AT&T the green light to do so way back in 2011, and part of Roku’s plans since 2019. Being extra annoying about it was a new wrinkle; but this too isn’t all that uncommon for publicly-traded companies trying to boost growth, revenues, and market share at any cost.
But such behavior has diminishing returns, of course. You can cross a threshold where you’re so focused on boosting revenues that you forget about the end user experience and drive users to the exits through sheer annoyance.
That’s the mode Roku’s clearly in now, as made evident by recent behavior and a new patent the company has filed that would help the company force ads on top of whatever you’re watching on your Roku TV, regardless of whether or not you have a third-party device or game console attached:
“A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads over any device connected over HDMI, a list that could include cable boxes, game consoles, DVD or Blu-ray players, PCs, or even other video-streaming devices. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023, and it was published in November 2023, though it hasn’t yet been granted.”
So, in other words, if you attached a third-party streaming competitor’s device to your Roku TV, and the TV detected that you had paused playback, it would insert a static or video ad into the screen. Of course it’s just a patent and doesn’t mean this will be implemented, but it is kind of representative of the broader “smart” TV sector, which cares less and less about product quality as it pursues data monetization.
For years all I’ve ever wanted from TV manufacturers is an extremely “dumb” 4K 65 inch TV that has a whole bunch of HDMI inputs, but no “smart” internals. Since I know the real money is increasingly made from spying on users and monetizing their every fart (while failing to properly secure the collected data), I’ve even been willing to pay extra for simplicity, quality, and privacy.
Yes, I know I can simply not connect my TV to the internet. But that’s not fixing my problem. Even basic HDMI switching and settings are now tethered to clunky, bloated, smart internals and GUIs that take time to load, and get slower as the TV ages. Some manufacturers also block you from basic functions unless you agree to be tracked and monetized. And yes, I could also buy a business-class set, but such options are cost prohibitive and often lack features like HDR.
Instead of having a business segment that tailors to people who simply want a quality, dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers television, the market keeps heading in the other direction (like this TV that shows ads on a second screen, constantly, even when the primary TV is off).
I know why they’re doing it, but I don’t have to like it. And I know that given the tendency of publicly-traded companies to push their luck to please Wall Street’s incessant demand for improved quarterly returns, there eventually comes a point where user annoyance causes a revolt, and the company in question usually stumbles forth anyway, oblivious.
Filed Under: 4k, ad injection, advertising, hdr, injected ads, privacy, smart tv, surveillance, television, tv
Companies: roku
Comments on “Roku Eyes Patent That Would Inject Ads Into… Everything”
At least that one’s free. And the problem of ads can presumably be solved with a curtain or a small piece of furniture.
People actually pay for those TVs and Roku boxes that show ads and probably abuse personal data. That’s a whole other level of badness. Magazines and newspapers used to do the same (still do, for the few still using them).
(Similarly, people like to mention that cable TV was originally ad-free, but that was never true. Maybe some pay channels enshittified themselves.)
I own a TV with Roku functionality built into it. If Roku ever put this shit into action on my TV, I would turn it off and get rid of it as soon as possible—and I would never buy another Roku-branded product ever again.
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…and if, in the future, all TVs are Roku-branded? (The Netflix button has already been called “omnipresent“.)
Personally, I don’t really get why all TVs have to be gigantic now. Computer monitors are larger and better than all the TVs I and my siblings grew up with. Okay, monitors generally don’t come with a shitty infra-red remote to switch inputs, but do people need to do that often?
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I’m not sure who calls the Netflix button “omnipresent”, but it isn’t. Why would Roku be any different?
The solution to the problem of “nobody is offering an acceptable product” is “then don’t buy”. We’re talking about a luxury item here, not food, clothing, or shelter. Hell, just use a computer monitor. The one I’m using as I type this is bigger than the TV I had as a kid and has none of the features you’re worried about.
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Follow the link: it’s Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge that called it that. I can’t evaluate the claim as I’ve never been in the market for a TV or bought one—computer monitors seem good enough, and these days a TV is just a large monitor that maybe cuts off the edges of the video signal and has ads.
Still, family members give me shit about using a monitor, making it sound like a “TV” is an absolute necessity. While bitching about theirs. And here’s Karl saying complaining all products on the market suck, and I just can’t relate. As a child, my family gathered around a 20-incher when my eyes were terrible but I didn’t yet know I needed glasses, and I was jealous of the home theater people who spent thousands of dollars to get 40- and 50-inchers. Now I can see better, and 65 inches and 4K and HDR has apparently become some kind of minimum standard? I’ve still got some old 512×384 DivX DVD-rips from the 1990s, and while a bit more resolution is nice, I don’t see it being particularly important for TV shows.
(I would like higher pixel density for computer stuff, so as to make anti-aliased font rendering rendering obsolete—it never looks quite right. And faster updates to eliminate blurring. MicroLED looks promising.)
Re: Re: Re:2
Takes like this are simply wild. Surely it’s not that difficult to develop the self-awareness to understand why most people want a bigger TV, why most people want a remote, why most people want something that makes it simple to just watch things, and in general why your hardcore nerd solutions aren’t suitable to the general public.
Re: Re: Re:3
As I said, I once wanted a huge TV, but I grew out of that. And it’s not even the desire per se that’s surprising; just the shit that people are willing to put up with to get those sizes. It’s not hard to find monitors in the 30-to-40-inch range, and I don’t think 10 to 20 extra inches is worth dealing with all the stuff Karl and others are mentioning.
That remains a bit of a mystery, because most people I know do not commonly use their TV remote.
Cable TV requires a box at each TV, and it’s that remote that people use. Except maybe if they need to switch inputs, or if that remote can’t control their TV’s volume (but someone that picky about picture quality probably wants good 5.1 sound too, which means they’re not using the TV’s sound anyway).
And you’re missing the bit about the remotes being shitty. The last good infra-red remote I used was circa 1990; it took a 9-volt battery, responded instantly, and was bright enough to control the TV with no line of sight (even with my hand tightly covering the emitter, or from other rooms). Modern infra-red remotes seem slow and unreliable by comparison, so I’ve been using a radio-based remote for the last couple decades—just not for a “TV”. There are also Bluetooth remotes, which TV manufacturers would’ve presumbly switched to long ago if they didn’t hate their customers.
Meh. My mother’s hardly been able to easily work the TV since the cable company forced them to upgrade to digital service. Also see the adjacent story about Bell screwing over their DVR subscribers.
It’d be nice to have something simple and good, and I get why people want it. But the market’s just not providing that and hasn’t been for quite some time. So either they get nerdy, or switch to books, or become resigned to hating themselves and paying for shitty products and services from people who are working against them. (Like Netflix, now a MAFIAA member whose “suggestions” are mostly the stuff that’s cheap to license. If you don’t have a personal recommendation from someone and just want to browse, you’d better have something like IMDb open on the side, because the ratings on most of what they suggest are shockingly low.)
Re: Re: Re:4
I guess it really is that difficult to develop basic self-awareness. Huh, who knew?
Re: Re: Re:5
I don’t think that means what you think it means. I’m aware of my own desires; it’s other people I don’t understand. It doesn’t help that nobody’s explaining it.
The whole situation sucks. There should be easy and good products, but I don’t see any practical way to get there (the complete abolition of copyright might work, but isn’t currently practical). I don’t think that continuing to throw money at those making it suck, and then bitching about it, will work.
Re: Re: Re:5
I also don’t know what he’s bitching about either. I have a smart TV and use 0% of the features and suffer 0% of the supposed hassles. It’s not even connected to the Internet.
And, due to the wonderful world of CEC, my shield controls my TV volume and on/off, so can use just.one remote. It’s also Bluetooth, so I get the features there he was talking about.
And, ironically, I’m getting subsidized by everyone else. Moat TV manufacturers sell TVs at or under cost, and get kickbacks for the data they sell.
Re: Re: Re:4
whens the last time you used a remote? 1970? they’ve been instantaneous for decades now. I’m 46 and i barely remember remotes using 9 volts, and they certainly weren’t from 90s tvs unless it was a 3rd party universal. Even then, you’d have to specifically find one, since they almost all went to AAA and AA back in like, 85.
in fact, 90% of your post sounds like Archie Bunker tried and failed to come outta his chair to complain on “Those darn interpipes the kids use!”
Try some recent tech, ya know, from this century at least.
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> The solution to the problem of “nobody is offering an acceptable product” is “then don’t buy”. We’re talking about a luxury item here, not food, clothing, or shelter.
It’s a safe bet that most people interested in this article and it’s comments can in fact afford those things *and* also a TV, so they can have a valid opinion about modern TV’s being a bit shit.
Re: Re: Re:2
A member of my family still has a 40-something-inch “dumb” TV—got it almost a decade ago, and it still works and looks fine. The snappiness of switching inputs from cable to the Roku stick they have is amazing compared to the slog of waiting for my TV to go back to the home screen so I can switch to another service (or my Blu-ray player). I would much rather have that “dumb” TV instead of my “smart” one. I suspect a lot of other people would agree with that assessment.
Re: Re: Re:3
I know as of a couple years ago you could still find up to 48″ non-smart TVs fairly easily. Anything larger was significantly harder though.
Re: Re: Re:2
I don’t see what affordability has to do with it. I could afford to hire someone to repeatedly punch me in the face, but I don’t. I do still have an opinion on it: It seems like it would be unpleasant.
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Then I shall do without TV. I don’t actually need one, after all.
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Join me on the Dark Side. Feel the power coursing through you as you avoid advertisements, reality TV, entertainment that claims to be “news”, and made-for-TV movies that are seen only as ways to keep your eyeballs on the ads….
Re: Re: Re:2
Cool. I’ve got plenty of DVDs and Blu-rays, so as long as I have a monitor that accepts HDMI input, I’m all good. And there’s always my book collection to read through otherwise.
Re: Re: Re:3
IMHO the best thing TV’s are (were) good for is large hires(but only in a brief window of time) monitors, or screens for console. Anything more intelligent than, “put these pixels here, and able to adjust the brightness/contrast on a simple slider” is a detraction from actually using it.
Further more: if the SFC is successful in their GPL/contract suite against Vizio, there may be a bit of hope. Being able to run a non-vendor OS on your “smart” TV would let you uncripple it.
Re: Re: Re:4
I guess you mean in the early days of 4K displays? 1920×1080 on a TV-sized screen would be pretty horrendous as a computer monitor, with the gigantic pixels.
Re: Re: Re:3
You are stealing your attention from the advertisers, though.
Re: Re: Re:4
Who gives a shit? They’re advertisers.
Re: Re: Re:4
How is it stealing if one, the attention was mine to start with, and two, it’s up to me what I do with that attention?
Go down this road of advertisers being entitled to the attention of my eyeballs, and soon there’ll be corporations who think they’re entitled to my money.
Re: Re: Re: all future TVs will not be anything branded
How could any company corner the market on something as easy to copy as a TV? Roku’s market is CHEAP TVs. There will be ones without a bunch of adware for sale, probably at a higher price.
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Projector master race checking in. My home theater is a 4K, ceiling-mounted projector connected to a mini-computer. Good luck to Roku on their attempt at television dominance; some of us are already immune.
Yes, it costs a little more. But as the author points out, the lack of fuckery is worth paying for. (Bonus: 120″ screen)
And no, I’m not remotely worried about all projectors becoming Roku-branded, because they’re not racing to the bottom like televisions.
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Aren’t projectors kind of in the same market as “commercial signage displays”? That is, I see them as mostly targeted toward businesses, and therefore mostly free of bullshit (except possibly that horrible “rainbow effect” on some cheap DLP models). But Karl seems to have already ruled out the idea of paying extra to not be screwed.
I think people read too much into patent filings as an indicator of business direction. A lot of time, especially when in house council is available, it’s just a thing that is done when someone comes up with an idea that could by used by anyone. This way they can license it out, and someone get’s to put it on their resume/accomplishments for the year.
But, I will campaign for Roku to do something: package Proton with RokuOS and make a set top box that gives me both gaming and media in a single stop. I’d throw out my shield immediately.
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I, on the other hand, don’t want to get my gaming into my media (or vice versa). That’s where you’re already at, if you have a “Roku TV” that has an internet connection, and you connect your game console to it. That’s precisely where this patent sits.
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The media on games ship sailed an Xbox/PS3/Wii/pc ago. I just want that convenience for PC games on the big screen.
The last TV I had was in 1998. After that, I switched to computer monitors — first, paired to a HiFi VCR (which had a tuner and a cable-in line built-in), then later I just kept an AV computer hooked up with a DVD drive and video-in card. That eventually switched to dropping the DVD drive and AV input, and just having a monitor with HDMI in, and hooking whatever up to it that needed video output.
I suppose I could plug in something like a Fire TV, but I’ve never really seen the need — there’s plenty of streaming content accessible via a web browser, and you can get a decent miniPC these days that connects to the back of a monitor for $200. And then you get not only a streaming box that YOU control, but you can use it as a general computer as well if you want, or even a retrogaming console, all without more hardware.
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So yes, my miniPC runs Proxmox, which hosts my web browsing Linux VM, my retrogaming VM, and a Jellyfin VM for videos, a NextCloud VM for data services, and a Calibre VM for eBooks. They all run happily together, providing a multimedia monitor for watching stuff, and intranet services to my mobile devices, so I can easily read a book on my iPad, look at photos on my phone or watch a movie on my laptop or iPad if I don’t want to sit down in front of the “TV”. And all of that sits behind an ad-blocking proxy, which means streaming without the ads and trackers alongside the locally cached/stored content.
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As long as you don’t want the highest resolutions; I’ve heard that some services will only serve 4K video if you enable DRM, thus giving up some control.
Re: Re: The point of no return
That’s the point past which you start raising parrots as a hobby.
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Arr, matey.
Once again, only the paying customers are affected, because the “alternate suppliers” seem to have little trouble releasing 4K HDR videos.
I've seen this on Louis Rossmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=narqU0RruJY
There is absolutely no legitimate reason for any ad-related software/stuff should check what is on the TV screen. Do you want such a system to check your screen while you are logging in via a password? (Yes, I know most login GUIs would display dots instead of a string entered by a user, but it is hinting some parts of information about your password, the character length) This is just as bad as keyloggers.
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Never mind the password-scanning potential. The underlying principle is, one of the main perks of purchasing legal hardware and subscriptions – expensive hardware and subscriptions, at that – is to avoid advertising. I don’t need a system that randomly scans the content I’m watching to deliver targeted ads. That shit was funny when it happened with Psycho Mantis but not in present day.
And if it’s done without consent, as Louis puts it, that’s just “rapey” behavior.
Is it wrong, that I initially read this as “simplicity, quality, and piracy”? I mean, I don’t know about you, but that looks like where my handbasket is headed.
Fun fact: I own a Roku smart TV. I blocked all the Roku domains it tries to contact via my router, and guess how many times a day it tries to phone home?
Over 20,000
Ad Injections
Criminalize Ad Injections. Make everyone pay for their draconic errors.
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Because this country doesn’t already have enough pointless chickenshit laws police can use to harass us.
Stop asking men with guns to solve every problem in your life. If ads bother you, don’t watch TV. That’s what I did and it works flawlessly.
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Those guns are what’s keeping the problem alive. If not for them, we’d be able to download all this stuff from archive.org without the ads and DRM and other bullshit.
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Jeebuz…
The men with guns aren’t the ones making laws.
The men with guns aren’t the ones who would enforce an advertising rule.
Enhance your calm.
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That’s exactly how it would work. Ignore the law, and a default judgment will be entered against you. Ignore that, and eventually people with guns (“sheriffs” in the USA) will show up and forcefully take enough of your stuff to pay the bill.
Re: Re: Re:2
re default judgement,
afaik, one needs to be informed of the court case and dates otherwise there is no default judgement.
I remember reading about some scammers who purposefully interfered with the serving process in order to get their default judgements because they knew they would lose in court.
Re: Re: Re:3
Sure, but then what? One would still need to go to court, or else the people with guns would show up. That’s the threat that gets people into court; it wouldn’t work if people thought it was an empty threat.
Re: Re: Re:2
Who is this “you” you speak of? The suggestion, silly as it was, was to criminalize ad injections. Are you going to be injecting ads into other people’s TV’s? Why would anyone be coming for you?
The man isn’t coming for you. You’re not that important.
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Except for all the congresscritters who take guns into the Capitol, e.g. https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/11/colorado-capitol-gun-don-wilson/
Why can't we all get along?
Evil is as evil does… I imagine someone somewhere reading every article on this and getting upset. That same someone is wondering what he did to deserve all this.
In their eyes, All he had to do was exist. All he wanted was to live freely and happily, He can’t even get that because the world wants to unravel themselves.
Nobody cares enough to stop it. Or they do care, they just argue about how to stop the unraveling.
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Get rich and that attitude will change.
Get richer and that attitude will disappear.
Maybe this is already a thing and I don’t know it, but if this enshittification of our hardware continues, I wonder if we’ll start seeing custom OSS firmware for these TVs
No wonder they want the binding arbitration.
Reminds me of the person who posted they had paused their AppleTV to go get a drink and they helpfully shrunk down the video so they could use half the screen to display an ad.
Roku Eyes Patent That Would drive customers to their competitors
Way to sink your company into oblivion!
Wait, roku is still around?
lol not for long
10 years ago I cancelled cable and went looking for a streaming device to replace it. Nearly every article and review was unanimous: buy a Roku. So I did, and it sucked. It literally has ad buttons built into the remote. The interface was slow, clunky, disorganized, and also riddled with ads. They’re so dependent on ad revenue that they’d often get new streaming apps last, despite having the largest market share, simply because they had to negotiate ad and data collection deals with those platforms. After only a few months of owning what was basically a brand new device, Roku announced a new major OS update that current devices would not get. After less than a year we’d suddenly get no further updates. Users revolted and they were pressured into changing their plans, but I still replaced my garbage Roku with an Apple TV, a far better device in every way.
Roku has been an atrocious company from the very beginning and yet somehow was the darling of the tech media and their every product met with universally positive reviews. I’m honestly glad they finally took their mask completely off enough for others to finally notice how awful this company is, but I still can’t make sense of why it took so long.
Gave away my Roku TV after they bricked it with an unskipple agree button that took away my ability to sue them. I owned that tv for 5 years, and they broke it. FUROKU
So, sue Roku.
Well, be lucky they aren’t going after the “Dumb” tv Industry. If it was successful, they’ll find a way to screw that up too. (you must agree to watch, spy via power button, etc)
Look at the bright side
At least the technology does not presently exist to display ads on the inside of your eyelids.
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Don’t give them ideas.
So it's come to this
As a consequence of Cory Doctorow’s enshittification principle, it follows that all of the good technology has been invented and all future technology is only capable of producing fees or turning everything into advertising.
Really hard to force ads on me if my tv never connects to the internet.
Simply don’t setup the wifi connection on your TV people. raspberry pis can run most of the streaming services better anyway!