15 ms·

Dear Roku, you ruined my TV

174 points by some-guy 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40879492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40879492
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
karmakaze 2y ago
I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. It's like the frame interpolation that some TVs had to generate 120p frames from 60p. I actually prefer the original 24p (or 24p double-exposed to 48 like cinema projectors do) for films. What really bugs me are the "Remastered" versions of songs on Spotify that sound like they were produced with today's audience in mind and doesn't sound like the original recording of the time, which has way more character and inherent texture by the artists without the soulless robo-producer repaint job. That would all be fine, except that they remove the original non-Remastered versions.
- pimeys 2y ago
  For the second part, 100%. I started years ago already collecting my own flac files, and I'm quite careful on picking the best mastering if possible. In 2024, finally, some of the latest remasters are great (like the new Steely Dans from Bernie Grundman). But between 2000-2015 or something a remaster of an album was usually just compressed to the maximum and made very _loud_. For some of my favorite albums I have multiple masters available, because they can be very different how they sound and sometimes I can't choose the best one. Oh, and for most of the people none of this really matters...
  - m348e912 2y ago
    Where do you find masters? I only know of stems ripped from games like Rock Band.
    - bloomingeek 2y ago
      Mp3Caprice
      - m348e912 2y ago
        The site seems to sell high quality 320kpbs mp3s but as far as I can tell none of them are seperate multi-channel recordings (aka masters)
    - pimeys 2y ago
      There is nothing official available. There may or may not be services in the internet that meticulously archive every possible master and of course you can go to discogs to buy a physical copy of a certain version of the album if somebody still has it. This is for me over two decades of hard work and deep interest into music. I highly value my collection.
  - mrob 2y ago
    Earache Records released several remasters of classic metal albums with increased dynamic range: https://bandcamp.com/search?q=full+dynamic+range&item_type=a&from=results https://bandcamp.com/search?q=full+dynamic+range&item_type=a... (also finds some other high dynamic range albums)
- neuralRiot 2y ago
  > I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. A simple description would be: It makes film movies look like direct-to-video productions, so basically everything looks like a soap opera. Horrible indeed.
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    Yeah that's what I'd feared--I hate that soap opera effect. It makes fictional escapes into film look like every day life or a TV newscast. I suspect that the mode was originally made for large screen TVs that mostly sold well for watching sports.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I've even commonly heard it referred to as "soap opera mode".
  - redwall_hp 2y ago
    It butchers animation, which is carefully drawn at certain intervals. There's a reason you can pause anime at any frame and it will look like a defined, static image without blurring and smearing. Motion smoothing absolutely destroys the look of the motion.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Real film does have (effectively—the aperture’s closed half the time so you don’t see a smear of moving film) a blacked out every-other-frame which makes the perceived motion smoother (some digital projectors can replicate this, though it halves the effective brightness so you need a really bright one for it to work ok) but yeah, I’d take a little judder over faked digital smoothing. It looks awful. [edit] I just mean that an actual film projector does achieve smoother motion than most TVs displaying 24 fps the best they can “naturally”, but a TV’s natural best is still far better than the alternative of alien-looking digital motion smoothing.
- xur17 2y ago
  > It's like the frame interpolation that some TVs had to generate 120p frames from 60p. I actually prefer the original 24p (or 24p double-exposed to 48 like cinema projectors do) for films. I realize that I might just be the exception here, but I honestly really like it.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I'm glad other systems offer it as an option for people who enjoy it. I can't fathom the decision process that permanently enabled it for everyone.
    - adamomada 2y ago
      They made the feature, they’re gonna enable it or nobody would use it and it would have been a waste of time making You’re really gonna hate the fact that 99% of people think this is what stuff on their digital television is supposed to look like. (Which is exactly why Roku did it)
      - kstrauser 2y ago
        That's just not true. My non-Roku TV has this as an option alongside dozens of others I can turn on and off. I'm gonna need to see some data on that. The nearly universally description I hear from regular, non-techie people is "my TV started looking weird", especially when they're watching content they're familiar with. If a brand new movie or show looked like this and that's the only way I'd ever seen it, fine, so be it. I remember seeing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in soap opera mode on our then-new TV and thinking "WTF is this and how do I turn it off?". That's not what Indiana Jones movies are supposed to look like.
        adamomada 2y ago
        > I'm gonna need to see some data on that. It’s enabled by default on all smart TVs. Q.E.D.
      - romwell 2y ago
- hedora 2y ago
  I got an Apple TV 4K a while back to replace my Roku. It sets my ancient sony 1080p TV to 24 fps when playing back 24 fps content. On top of that, it let me recalibrate the colors using my iPhone camera. Anyway, I bought it to reduce ad tracking, and was pleasantly surprised that it was roughly equivalent to buying a new TV.
  - longtimelistnr 2y ago
    Yes that is my favorite part of the apple tv as well, that it adjusts output to the source frames and resolution. As long as you have a good looking panel with nice color you'll never need to get rid of it. 1080 can really look gorgeous even with everything today being 4k
    - lherron 2y ago
      My 2013 Panasonic plasma is still going strong with AppleTV as the primary input source.
      - devilbunny 2y ago
        Well, short of Pioneer Kuro units, the Panasonic plasmas were the best screens of their time and are still very, very good.
        karmakaze 2y ago
        I was sad both to hear that Pioneer got out of the plasma TV business, and also to let go of mine. It was funny how Pioneer basically perfected the form then promptly exited--true to name I guess. Panasonic bought Pioneer's TV biz, so that was the upside.
      - jnaina 2y ago
        Same here. I have a Panasonic Plasma hooked to the AppeTV 4K in the bedroom, and the picture quality is awesome.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
- christkv 2y ago
  The loudness war has ruined a lot of music on streaming services for me. Remasters where you lose the ability to distinguish instruments. No way to listen to the original version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war So it's back to digging out and ripping my old cds.
- MarkLowenstein 2y ago
  It makes things in the foreground have very sharp edges and seem brighter than the things in the background. They call it "soap opera effect" because it reminds you of the way those sets and people are lit. But also--never seemingly noticed--the technology leads to very crisp changes in direction of the camera panning. So you see a very smooth pan, stopping with no deceleration period, and then a quick new pan in a different direction, with no acceleration. It's disorienting and makes everything look fake. IMO this is the most annoying part, but it's hard to identify and articulate.
- K7PJP 2y ago
  > What really bugs me are the "Remastered" versions of songs on Spotify that sound like … [a] soulless robo-producer repaint job. Spotify serves up a stereo version of The Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You" that completely destroys the atmosphere of the song. It's nearly criminal.
- RichardCA 2y ago
  For the music listening use case, if you can get your hands on a CD and rip it to FLAC that's the way to go. When the CD format first took hold in the early/mid 80's, it was common for the record labels to push out CD's that were just straight digital transfers of the original analog mastering that was used to create the vinyl LP. Now we're here 40 years later, and you can still find those CD's on Ebay and rip them using a program like foobar2000, and the result is basically flawless for all the common playback use cases (I'm not here to make the audiophile argument). I'm also impressed that the 80's and 90's era CD's are not going bad on me. Boomers and Gen-X-ers will always have that box full of treasured CD's, and not a single one of them has failed on me so far.
- blessedwhiskers 2y ago
  Another thing that annoys me endlessly: a few months ago, Apple Music introduced animated cover art and then proceeded to animate album covers that shipped decades before Apple Music existed. If modern artists want to use this for their new albums, or if an artist wants to rethink the album artwork for a remaster, fine. But, Apple deciding to do a shoddy job of moving the Beatles to another layer and having it pulse in and out on the cover of Abbey Road? Fuck that.
bigjimmyk3 2y ago
Earlier this year my roku-enabled TV started showing some new Terms Of Service, and it wouldn't let me watch anything unless I agreed to them. ...or unplugged it from the network. Now, it sounds like they may have done me a favor.
- ncallaway 2y ago
  The fine print of that TOS allowed you to opt out if you mailed a letter to a specific legal department at Roku within a certain time frame. Also, that should be a crime.
  - bloomingeek 2y ago
    Yes! Because they are treating you as if you don't own your TV.
HenryBemis 2y ago
"If it ain't broke, don't fix/update it." That's my moto. Apart from Firefox, my banking apps and Signal, I don't update anything, ever. Not the TV, not the media-box, nothing. Eventually it leads to tragedy and discomfort. Sometimes I custom update my Win machines for Security patches, but anything that has to do with usability, UI, function, etc. I leave it as is. (I firewall all my apps in my machine anyway).
- criddell 2y ago
  Not a problem if you buy a Sony Bravia TV. I bought one and it only took a little over a year before they stopped shipping updates to it.
- recursive 2y ago
  I don't even give my TV the wifi password. I'm paranoid that it's going to update something without my consent. I fear the day they come with cellular modems and bypass the wifi entirely.
  - criddell 2y ago
    I used to worry about cellular modems, but now I think it will be just plain old wifi they use. There's Comcast Xfinity, Amazon Sidewalk, and probably other companies that turn their device into a communal wifi hotspot.
  - rolph 2y ago
    HDMI can be used to move tcp/ip packets [HEC], all it takes is one media device with connectivity, and a firmware that provides tunneling capability, and your TV will leak over the HDMI connector. one pin [pin14] on the HDMI connector allows this to happen; disable it and that problem wont exist until specs & standards revision happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI
    - hagbard_c 2y ago
      That is why you connect it to a source which does not have direct internet access. Use an adversarial mindset when dealing with commercial services, they are out to get you after all.
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
I have a TCL with what I assume is Roku TV, and I'll never connect it to the internet for this exact purpose.
Zaskoda 2y ago
My next TV purchase will be a dumb TV.
- x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
  Good luck finding one, but this has nothing to do with Smart TVs, and everything to do with what you hook up to a TV.
  - partdavid 2y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by this, but the device the story is complaining about is a TV, not a Roku device. > On June 6th, my TCL TV’s Roku OS was updated to version 13.0.0.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - azinman2 2y ago
    Disable wifi on the TV and use an AppleTV.
    - hagbard_c 2y ago
      Better still, use Kodi or Jellyfin on whatever you have lying around - Kodi works fine on a Raspberry Pi 3 - so you're not swapping one spy for the other.
      - azinman2 2y ago
        AppleTV doesn’t spy. Downstream whatever apps you do will, but they already know what you’re playing anyway. It’s mostly diff use cases for if you have media already or use streaming platforms.
        hagbard_c 2y ago
        What do you base your trust in Apple on? I don't trust them any more than I trust Google or Microsoft or Amazon or whatever other data-hungry corporate entity you may think of.
ryandrake 2y ago
> Not long after the update rolled out, other Roku TV owners (mainly TCL, but Hisense, too) began posting about the issue in Roku’s community forum and on Reddit. Since I work at The Verge, I told our team about my issue. We reached out to Roku for comment and got no response. We wrote about the problem. Commenters on that post agreed: it sucks. Still, there was radio silence from Roku. They're probably working on some slimy PR excuse for why they feel the need to force-feed you an unwanted feature, how it's actually for your own good, and subtly insult you for not liking it. That seems to be the standard pattern for when a tech company arrogantly pushes a feature that people don't want or like and provides no way to turn it off.
- Root_Denied 2y ago
  Another excerpt from the article that is worth pointing out: > What you probably should avoid is weeks of customers flagging the same issue with no meaningful feedback or updates. Possibly even more important, your support infrastructure shouldn’t be difficult to navigate or have their own bugs that hinder their use. In this case, there’s both. This is probably an intentional design choice - make it as difficult as possible to report any kind of issue, thus cutting down the number of issues that actually get reported and reducing the number of support staff needed. The point where I would have given a giant corporation the benefit of the doubt that this was not intention is long past.
sandworm101 2y ago
Lol, my TV. That thing on your wall, that thing you paid thousands for, is controlled by the software. You don't own that software. It is owned and controlled by other people. You have paid for a service, that service being the privilege of calling yourself owner of a thing. Your privileges are temporary and may be revoked at any time. In the meantime, any perceived changes are for the benefit of those who actually own the software. Any impact of said changes on renters like yourself is very much secondary.
bearjaws 2y ago
This is why I buy my TV and never connect it to the internet. Between the invasive conversation monitoring and ad spots on the menu, it's much better to buy an Apple TV / Nvidia Shield.
- StanislavPetrov 2y ago
  Nvidia Shield was one of the best purchases I ever made. I also never made the mistake of updating it like the author of the above article. If something works, and does everything you want it to do, you should never "update" it unless it is absolutely necessary. More often than not these "updates" only serve to restrict the device you own or inject more ads and spyware.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    > If something works, and does everything you want it to do, you should never "update" it unless it is absolutely necessary. More often than not these "updates" only serve to restrict the device you own or inject more ads and spyware. The fact that I agree makes me feel sad.
- skiexperte 2y ago
  My lg works great. No additional remote, no extra cable.
  - bearjaws 2y ago
    LG has opt out monitoring, check your menus for it, it defaults to "on" for several models including $1200 OLEDs Just wait until earnings line goes down, then they will make pay to play probably.
    - skiexperte 2y ago
      I have my lg on a vlan, if it wants to send out data thats fine for me tbh. As soon as it becomes shitty, i add a chromecast
diego_sandoval 2y ago
What would be the downsides of simply buying a big computer monitor instead of a TV? It seems to me like an easy way to avoid all the crapware that comes with Smart TVs.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  It's hard to use a computer comfortably from the couch
  - diego_sandoval 2y ago
    That's what Chromecasts and its competitors are for. You may say that that's the same as a Smart TV, and chromecasts come with their own crapware, but the big advantage is that they're separate devices. The Chromecast has no way to infect your monitor through HDMI. If the Chromecast or whatever starts misbehaving, you throw it away and replace it with something else. You lost $50 instead of the $300+ that your Smart TV costs.
    - ianburrell 2y ago
      Large monitors are rare. I found Dell 55" for conference rooms. They don't have the features like HDR. They are expensive, the Dell is $1000, and cheap 55" are $300, decent $500, and good $1000. For lots of people, the builtin speakers and apps are fine. I also got the impression that TVs have gotten faster and UI are less sluggish. Why spend $50 for Chromecast when TV already has Android TV, and cost $200 cause going in spare room? Don't have to use the smarts of smart TV. I never use the apps on my TV, it displays HDMI. I could stop applying updates or unplug the Ethernet and it wouldn't change.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    I use a computer pretty comfortably from the couch. The computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Kodi/LibreELEC. It works just dandy. I usually use CEC to control it, though sometimes I instead use a cheap Logitech K400 compact keyboard/trackpad combo. Both input methods are convenient (CEC even uses the regular TV remote), and both were plug-and-play. It doesn't seem hard to use this computer from the couch at all, and it lets my dumb TV remain dumb while still accomplishing much of the functionality that I want from a video system that lives across the room from the sofa. (And for everything else, there's Chromecast and friends.)
60secs 2y ago
Per the law of enshittification, soon only monthly subscribers will gain the ability to disable motion smoothing.
einarfd 2y ago
If you live in the right jurisdiction consumer protection laws might be able to force the seller to get this defect fixed or have them take back and refund the tv. Where I live (Norway), there is a five year warranty on long lived products, which a tv is, and if it breaks during that period, the seller needs to fix or replace the product. Motion smoothing that can't be turned off seems a serious breakage, and if they seller pushes back, you can point out that Tom Cruise and a bunch of other movie luminaries think motion smoothing ruins movies. Not sure what the rules are with software updates after the tv is out of warranty. But I do suspect the seller would still be in hot water, if the update breaks important functionality.
- paulcole 2y ago
  > Motion smoothing that can't be turned off seems a serious breakage, and if they seller pushes back, you can point out that Tom Cruise and a bunch of other movie luminaries think motion smoothing ruins movies. Is this the standard in Norway, where the consumer can just call something they personally dislike "serious breakage" and demand their money back? Does this work? Would you actually invoke your Tom Cruise argument and expect that to change anyone's mind? Or is the culture there just so passive and avoidant that they'll give you your money back just so you go away and stop bothering them? Whole thing seems wild to me.
  - ribosometronome 2y ago
    Fundamentally altering the way the picture is shown without anyway to revert to the original functionality is obviously a severe deviation from how the product was originally sold. It's akin to not having blue anymore.
    - paulcole 2y ago
      But it's not akin to not having blue anymore. Not having red anymore is akin to not having blue anymore. Having the video play in a way you personally dislike is perhaps upsetting to you, but it's a TV and the video still plays.
globular-toast 2y ago
I gave up on TVs. Luckily I watch very little TV anyway so it's no big deal. I remember my friend buying a TV for thousands a few years ago and seeing just how laughably bad the interface was compared to Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 2 that I've been running close to 10 years now. Literally it's been on almost that whole time (just had to replace the power supply once). Not only does it play everything on my NAS, I can stream to it and control it from my phone etc. I never update it because it just continues to work. I use a projector instead of a screen because it's better and thankfully they are still dumb. Oh and a huge sound system. And all of that costs less than that one shitty "smart" TV...
Waterluvian 2y ago
I hated my stupid TCL Roku TV so I got a TCL Android TV and it’s worse. The terrible incompetence of the team who manages to make a UI that lags out by multiple seconds when trying to cursor to the OFF option is frustrating. But I’m sure it makes their Project Manager overlords happy because it’s easy to supply ads to. If anyone here wants to solve a real problem and get rich doing so: start a company that makes dumb electronics. I’ll pay a premium.
- qubitcoder 2y ago
  I will never buy an Android TV again after a horrible experience with a high-end Sony TV. It was extraordinarily laggy. Even changing the volume was a nightmare. Quite possibly the worst UI experience ever. Pro-tip: Go with higher-end LG OLEDs. They are fantastic, super fast, and designed for cinephiles. You can often get "certified excellent" open-box deals at Best Buy for a very reasonable price. They're equivalent to brand new. People on Hacker News love to complain about ads. I hate them too, and go to great lengths to block them. To be clear, they're referring to the "suggested content" on the Home screen, which I'm not sure many people use. Either way, all of that is easily disabled in the settings. If used with an Apple TV, set top box, or, best of all, 4K Blu-ray, it's a premium experience where you're in control of all the picture settings. Check out @hdtvtest on YouTube for in-depth dives.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  > start a company that makes dumb electronics. I’ll pay a premium. That'd just make you a useful idiot for those sellers. Better use the thing in whatever 'dumb' mode it offers, never connect it to the internet but only expose it to a restricted local network. That way you don't have problems with auto-updates, you don´t get ads, you're not being spied upon, etc. Of course all bets are off if there is an open wifi network around for the thing to connect to but those tend to be rare. There are bakers tales about devices having their own cellular access built-in but I have yet to see proof of something like that - and will abuse the hell out of it when I find it.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    I’ve never connected them. They’re still terrible. Because they’re designed as Android devices and not just fricking TVs.
cjk 2y ago
I used to work at Roku (audio team). I left in late 2020, but I know that many of Roku's best and brightest were shitcanned as part of the several rounds of layoffs that happened recently, in an effort to cut costs. It would not _at all_ surprise me to learn that this was a mistake, and that there's no one left that knows how to fix it.
- tomrod 2y ago
  Geez, add this to the crummy way they've been rolling out no-opt-out "features" and regressions like automatically showing your recently watched series. Yes, I really _didn't_ want my 7 year old to stream the Walking Dead, thanks for the nightmares Roku!
  - olyjohn 2y ago
    Yeah they keep adding garbage to the home screen, and putting it between the things that I actually use. Smells like desperation.
jes5199 2y ago
I'm in a subculture where people mostly don't own televisions (I do watch shows on my laptop, occasionally) but so I have never seen motion smoothing - is there a demo, online, like on youtube or something, that can give me a sense of what you are talking about?
- cm2012 2y ago
  It looks like a 90s/2000s soap opera, like Days of our Lives. I always turn it off on TVs I use.
  - ghewgill 2y ago
    I still don't understand what that means. I've never sat down to watch a soap opera, so I have no idea what they look like.
  - jes5199 2y ago
    I've heard that before and it just sounds so strange - why would interpolated frames on a HDTV remind people of the production values from standard definition televisions?
    - recursive 2y ago
      It's the frame rate. People are accustomed to seeing video at ~30fps. But old soap operas were somehow at ~60fps, among other things. I think this motion interpolation thing looks significantly worse than the old soap operas, because the interpolated frames break down when there's too much movement, which is exactly when they could have the most value, if you believed they had any value proposition at all.
    - axus 2y ago
      I've seen those soap operas and it's true. I'm having trouble finding an online source that really shows what it looked like. The number of people who've never had to watch an old soap opera is increasing.
- callerun 2y ago
iamleppert 2y ago
I hate to break it to you, but you are only a tiny fraction of the users of something like Roku. The software isn't developed for individual users, it's developed according to a product roadmap, which is itself driven by the behavior of the largest and most profitable cohort of users. If you don't fall into that category, you don't have a choice. Things that may be irritating or upsetting to you, if they make money or drive some number that helps a manager get a promotion internally, you're simply out of luck when it comes to software. Products aren't built for individual users, they are built for massive collections of users that generate revenue.
- pseudosavant 2y ago
  A ton of people ask me for TV recommendations. Rokus were my goto, but not anymore. I won’t buy one. Their response so far suggests this isn’t on accident (it’s a feature!) and they won’t change it back. I’ll probably have to not hook up the internet on my next TV. Use a steaming box instead.
  - devilbunny 2y ago
    I have a TCL Roku TV. It is not, has never been, and will never be connected to the Internet. I have to restart it periodically because there’s a strange sound system bug that makes the audio insanely quiet, but it sure was cheap. It gets its video from a TiVO or an AppleTV box. I’m not using the internal software for anything - I don’t trust it at all. You might think the same of Apple, and that’s fine, but I’m posting this from my iPad, I have an iPhone and an Apple Watch and a Mac; they could screw me any time they wanted to, but other than pushing out strange UI they haven’t.
    - pseudosavant 2y ago
      Agree on Apple, they could screw up over but they really do look at users as the customers because we give them most of their revenues. Consumers are at best the #3 most important customer, after advertisers and TV manufacturers, for Roku. They have incentive to not care about consumers.
- 2y ago
poikroequ 2y ago
I used to like my Roku TV. It has a pretty straightforward interface, just tiles of all your apps, and the ads are to the side, out of the way. I love the simple ergonomic remote control. But their actions recently have gotten me looking for a new TV. First the thing with forcing new terms of service on everyone. Now this. My Roku TV has gotten way slower in the past year or so, to the point where many apps are nearly unusable. And I guess they'll be pushing video ads soon.
rewgs 2y ago
Does anyone want or like motion smoothing? It’s seemingly universally hated by a majority of those who care (myself included), and a minority of those who don’t. Why are TV manufacturers so dead-set on shoving it down our throats?
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Maybe it is good for tracking the ball in sports? (Note: A hypothesis. I don't watch sports ...)
  - ipsento606 2y ago
    it's good - or at least, fine - for stuff that you want to look as true-to-life as possible. Sports, nature documentaries, news coverage (if you're into that) it's absolutely awful for everything else
    - recursive 2y ago
      I don't think it's even fine for anything. In all the implementations I've seen, as soon as the action gets too big/complicated, the interpolated frames are dropped. Right when you need the intermediate frames most, it seems to drop to the source frame rate. (maybe just for part of the screen?)
- nh23423fefe 2y ago
  I prefer it. When I go to other people's houses their tv looks worse to me. The motion looks jittery and stulted to me.
bigmattystyles 2y ago
Can you be a film purist and buy a Roku TV? I mean come on - Snark aside, the mistake was thinking the TV was yours as opposed to an advertising vehicle for its makers to use to extract further value from you. Don't feel bad, I was the victim of the same with the Nvidia Shield. Looking at you Android TV.
- strunz 2y ago
  I felt the same way reading this, though I felt like a patronizing douche. If you buy a TCL or bottom rung TV and expect it to cater to cinephiles, you're just begging to be let down. (Not that there's any excuse for this shitty anti-consumer behavior from Roku)
themadturk 2y ago
We have a Samsung "smart" TV, with smarts not connected to the Internet. We hook it up to a Roku box. When we turn the TV on it splashes a banner encouraging us to connect. It disappears after 15 seconds or so. I have no problem with the Roku box, but this makes me happy I didn't buy a Roku TV, and that I've never attached the TV itself to the Internet. My next streaming box will be an Apple TV, but as of now I'm in no hurry.
mikeocool 2y ago
FWIW I have a TCL Roku TV running 13.0.0 and don’t seem to be impacted by this. Motion smoothing is definitely not enabled when watching Hulu/Netflix/HBO. If I go to picture settings, I see the option for Roku Smart Picture, but it’s not enabled.
pugworthy 2y ago
The article says... > If you’re someone who doesn’t notice motion smoothing or doesn’t particularly care about it... This basically is me. It then proceeds to describe a number of things that would be blatantly obvious and asks you to imagine if you couldn't turn them off. Yes, if my Kindle's fonts all went 3x size, I'd both notice and probably care. But this "logic" fails to work with that previously quoted sentence. Yes, I would care about something I noticed or cared about. But why should I care about something I don't notice or don't care about?
- recursive 2y ago
  No one's asking you to care. Some people wouldn't notice tripled text size, even though it's similarly hard for me to imagine. I usually notice motion interpolation within a second of watching. I also find it to be intolerable. Maybe people like you can come out ahead on the newly reduced prices on these RokuTV's with recently reduced market value.
  - pugworthy 2y ago
    I think I got my first Roku device in 2008? So far quite happy.
- ranger207 2y ago
  It's asking you to empathize with users who can notice motion smoothing by imagining that you suffer a major noticable annoyance. The logic flows perfectly well in that sentence.
chuckadams 2y ago
I have a Roku stick, and volume on the remote only works with Roku sound bars. My Amazon stick and Apple TV remotes handled it no sweat. Then there’s the constant screwing around with the home screen. I think I’ll be going back to AppleTV next time around.

174 points by some-guy 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40879492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40879492

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

karmakaze 2y ago

I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. It's like the frame interpolation that some TVs had to generate 120p frames from 60p. I actually prefer the original 24p (or 24p double-exposed to 48 like cinema projectors do) for films. What really bugs me are the "Remastered" versions of songs on Spotify that sound like they were produced with today's audience in mind and doesn't sound like the original recording of the time, which has way more character and inherent texture by the artists without the soulless robo-producer repaint job. That would all be fine, except that they remove the original non-Remastered versions.

pimeys 2y ago
For the second part, 100%. I started years ago already collecting my own flac files, and I'm quite careful on picking the best mastering if possible. In 2024, finally, some of the latest remasters are great (like the new Steely Dans from Bernie Grundman). But between 2000-2015 or something a remaster of an album was usually just compressed to the maximum and made very _loud_. For some of my favorite albums I have multiple masters available, because they can be very different how they sound and sometimes I can't choose the best one. Oh, and for most of the people none of this really matters...
- m348e912 2y ago
  Where do you find masters? I only know of stems ripped from games like Rock Band.
  - bloomingeek 2y ago
    Mp3Caprice
    - m348e912 2y ago
      The site seems to sell high quality 320kpbs mp3s but as far as I can tell none of them are seperate multi-channel recordings (aka masters)
  - pimeys 2y ago
    There is nothing official available. There may or may not be services in the internet that meticulously archive every possible master and of course you can go to discogs to buy a physical copy of a certain version of the album if somebody still has it. This is for me over two decades of hard work and deep interest into music. I highly value my collection.
- mrob 2y ago
  Earache Records released several remasters of classic metal albums with increased dynamic range: https://bandcamp.com/search?q=full+dynamic+range&item_type=a&from=results https://bandcamp.com/search?q=full+dynamic+range&item_type=a... (also finds some other high dynamic range albums)
neuralRiot 2y ago
> I don't know what this looks like but I probably hate it. A simple description would be: It makes film movies look like direct-to-video productions, so basically everything looks like a soap opera. Horrible indeed.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  Yeah that's what I'd feared--I hate that soap opera effect. It makes fictional escapes into film look like every day life or a TV newscast. I suspect that the mode was originally made for large screen TVs that mostly sold well for watching sports.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I've even commonly heard it referred to as "soap opera mode".
- redwall_hp 2y ago
  It butchers animation, which is carefully drawn at certain intervals. There's a reason you can pause anime at any frame and it will look like a defined, static image without blurring and smearing. Motion smoothing absolutely destroys the look of the motion.
vundercind 2y ago
Real film does have (effectively—the aperture’s closed half the time so you don’t see a smear of moving film) a blacked out every-other-frame which makes the perceived motion smoother (some digital projectors can replicate this, though it halves the effective brightness so you need a really bright one for it to work ok) but yeah, I’d take a little judder over faked digital smoothing. It looks awful. [edit] I just mean that an actual film projector does achieve smoother motion than most TVs displaying 24 fps the best they can “naturally”, but a TV’s natural best is still far better than the alternative of alien-looking digital motion smoothing.
xur17 2y ago
> It's like the frame interpolation that some TVs had to generate 120p frames from 60p. I actually prefer the original 24p (or 24p double-exposed to 48 like cinema projectors do) for films. I realize that I might just be the exception here, but I honestly really like it.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I'm glad other systems offer it as an option for people who enjoy it. I can't fathom the decision process that permanently enabled it for everyone.
  - adamomada 2y ago
    They made the feature, they’re gonna enable it or nobody would use it and it would have been a waste of time making You’re really gonna hate the fact that 99% of people think this is what stuff on their digital television is supposed to look like. (Which is exactly why Roku did it)
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      That's just not true. My non-Roku TV has this as an option alongside dozens of others I can turn on and off. I'm gonna need to see some data on that. The nearly universally description I hear from regular, non-techie people is "my TV started looking weird", especially when they're watching content they're familiar with. If a brand new movie or show looked like this and that's the only way I'd ever seen it, fine, so be it. I remember seeing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in soap opera mode on our then-new TV and thinking "WTF is this and how do I turn it off?". That's not what Indiana Jones movies are supposed to look like.
      - adamomada 2y ago
        > I'm gonna need to see some data on that. It’s enabled by default on all smart TVs. Q.E.D.
    - romwell 2y ago
hedora 2y ago
I got an Apple TV 4K a while back to replace my Roku. It sets my ancient sony 1080p TV to 24 fps when playing back 24 fps content. On top of that, it let me recalibrate the colors using my iPhone camera. Anyway, I bought it to reduce ad tracking, and was pleasantly surprised that it was roughly equivalent to buying a new TV.
- longtimelistnr 2y ago
  Yes that is my favorite part of the apple tv as well, that it adjusts output to the source frames and resolution. As long as you have a good looking panel with nice color you'll never need to get rid of it. 1080 can really look gorgeous even with everything today being 4k
  - lherron 2y ago
    My 2013 Panasonic plasma is still going strong with AppleTV as the primary input source.
    - devilbunny 2y ago
      Well, short of Pioneer Kuro units, the Panasonic plasmas were the best screens of their time and are still very, very good.
      - karmakaze 2y ago
        I was sad both to hear that Pioneer got out of the plasma TV business, and also to let go of mine. It was funny how Pioneer basically perfected the form then promptly exited--true to name I guess. Panasonic bought Pioneer's TV biz, so that was the upside.
    - jnaina 2y ago
      Same here. I have a Panasonic Plasma hooked to the AppeTV 4K in the bedroom, and the picture quality is awesome.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
christkv 2y ago
The loudness war has ruined a lot of music on streaming services for me. Remasters where you lose the ability to distinguish instruments. No way to listen to the original version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war So it's back to digging out and ripping my old cds.
MarkLowenstein 2y ago
It makes things in the foreground have very sharp edges and seem brighter than the things in the background. They call it "soap opera effect" because it reminds you of the way those sets and people are lit. But also--never seemingly noticed--the technology leads to very crisp changes in direction of the camera panning. So you see a very smooth pan, stopping with no deceleration period, and then a quick new pan in a different direction, with no acceleration. It's disorienting and makes everything look fake. IMO this is the most annoying part, but it's hard to identify and articulate.
K7PJP 2y ago
> What really bugs me are the "Remastered" versions of songs on Spotify that sound like … [a] soulless robo-producer repaint job. Spotify serves up a stereo version of The Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You" that completely destroys the atmosphere of the song. It's nearly criminal.
RichardCA 2y ago
For the music listening use case, if you can get your hands on a CD and rip it to FLAC that's the way to go. When the CD format first took hold in the early/mid 80's, it was common for the record labels to push out CD's that were just straight digital transfers of the original analog mastering that was used to create the vinyl LP. Now we're here 40 years later, and you can still find those CD's on Ebay and rip them using a program like foobar2000, and the result is basically flawless for all the common playback use cases (I'm not here to make the audiophile argument). I'm also impressed that the 80's and 90's era CD's are not going bad on me. Boomers and Gen-X-ers will always have that box full of treasured CD's, and not a single one of them has failed on me so far.
blessedwhiskers 2y ago
Another thing that annoys me endlessly: a few months ago, Apple Music introduced animated cover art and then proceeded to animate album covers that shipped decades before Apple Music existed. If modern artists want to use this for their new albums, or if an artist wants to rethink the album artwork for a remaster, fine. But, Apple deciding to do a shoddy job of moving the Beatles to another layer and having it pulse in and out on the cover of Abbey Road? Fuck that.

bigjimmyk3 2y ago

Earlier this year my roku-enabled TV started showing some new Terms Of Service, and it wouldn't let me watch anything unless I agreed to them. ...or unplugged it from the network. Now, it sounds like they may have done me a favor.

ncallaway 2y ago
The fine print of that TOS allowed you to opt out if you mailed a letter to a specific legal department at Roku within a certain time frame. Also, that should be a crime.
- bloomingeek 2y ago
  Yes! Because they are treating you as if you don't own your TV.

HenryBemis 2y ago

"If it ain't broke, don't fix/update it." That's my moto. Apart from Firefox, my banking apps and Signal, I don't update anything, ever. Not the TV, not the media-box, nothing. Eventually it leads to tragedy and discomfort. Sometimes I custom update my Win machines for Security patches, but anything that has to do with usability, UI, function, etc. I leave it as is. (I firewall all my apps in my machine anyway).

criddell 2y ago
Not a problem if you buy a Sony Bravia TV. I bought one and it only took a little over a year before they stopped shipping updates to it.
recursive 2y ago
I don't even give my TV the wifi password. I'm paranoid that it's going to update something without my consent. I fear the day they come with cellular modems and bypass the wifi entirely.
- criddell 2y ago
  I used to worry about cellular modems, but now I think it will be just plain old wifi they use. There's Comcast Xfinity, Amazon Sidewalk, and probably other companies that turn their device into a communal wifi hotspot.
- rolph 2y ago
  HDMI can be used to move tcp/ip packets [HEC], all it takes is one media device with connectivity, and a firmware that provides tunneling capability, and your TV will leak over the HDMI connector. one pin [pin14] on the HDMI connector allows this to happen; disable it and that problem wont exist until specs & standards revision happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    That is why you connect it to a source which does not have direct internet access. Use an adversarial mindset when dealing with commercial services, they are out to get you after all.

knowaveragejoe 2y ago

I have a TCL with what I assume is Roku TV, and I'll never connect it to the internet for this exact purpose.

Zaskoda 2y ago

My next TV purchase will be a dumb TV.

x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
Good luck finding one, but this has nothing to do with Smart TVs, and everything to do with what you hook up to a TV.
- partdavid 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by this, but the device the story is complaining about is a TV, not a Roku device. > On June 6th, my TCL TV’s Roku OS was updated to version 13.0.0.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- azinman2 2y ago
  Disable wifi on the TV and use an AppleTV.
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    Better still, use Kodi or Jellyfin on whatever you have lying around - Kodi works fine on a Raspberry Pi 3 - so you're not swapping one spy for the other.
    - azinman2 2y ago
      AppleTV doesn’t spy. Downstream whatever apps you do will, but they already know what you’re playing anyway. It’s mostly diff use cases for if you have media already or use streaming platforms.
      - hagbard_c 2y ago
        What do you base your trust in Apple on? I don't trust them any more than I trust Google or Microsoft or Amazon or whatever other data-hungry corporate entity you may think of.

ryandrake 2y ago

> Not long after the update rolled out, other Roku TV owners (mainly TCL, but Hisense, too) began posting about the issue in Roku’s community forum and on Reddit. Since I work at The Verge, I told our team about my issue. We reached out to Roku for comment and got no response. We wrote about the problem. Commenters on that post agreed: it sucks. Still, there was radio silence from Roku. They're probably working on some slimy PR excuse for why they feel the need to force-feed you an unwanted feature, how it's actually for your own good, and subtly insult you for not liking it. That seems to be the standard pattern for when a tech company arrogantly pushes a feature that people don't want or like and provides no way to turn it off.

Root_Denied 2y ago
Another excerpt from the article that is worth pointing out: > What you probably should avoid is weeks of customers flagging the same issue with no meaningful feedback or updates. Possibly even more important, your support infrastructure shouldn’t be difficult to navigate or have their own bugs that hinder their use. In this case, there’s both. This is probably an intentional design choice - make it as difficult as possible to report any kind of issue, thus cutting down the number of issues that actually get reported and reducing the number of support staff needed. The point where I would have given a giant corporation the benefit of the doubt that this was not intention is long past.

sandworm101 2y ago

Lol, my TV. That thing on your wall, that thing you paid thousands for, is controlled by the software. You don't own that software. It is owned and controlled by other people. You have paid for a service, that service being the privilege of calling yourself owner of a thing. Your privileges are temporary and may be revoked at any time. In the meantime, any perceived changes are for the benefit of those who actually own the software. Any impact of said changes on renters like yourself is very much secondary.

bearjaws 2y ago

This is why I buy my TV and never connect it to the internet. Between the invasive conversation monitoring and ad spots on the menu, it's much better to buy an Apple TV / Nvidia Shield.

StanislavPetrov 2y ago
Nvidia Shield was one of the best purchases I ever made. I also never made the mistake of updating it like the author of the above article. If something works, and does everything you want it to do, you should never "update" it unless it is absolutely necessary. More often than not these "updates" only serve to restrict the device you own or inject more ads and spyware.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  > If something works, and does everything you want it to do, you should never "update" it unless it is absolutely necessary. More often than not these "updates" only serve to restrict the device you own or inject more ads and spyware. The fact that I agree makes me feel sad.
skiexperte 2y ago
My lg works great. No additional remote, no extra cable.
- bearjaws 2y ago
  LG has opt out monitoring, check your menus for it, it defaults to "on" for several models including $1200 OLEDs Just wait until earnings line goes down, then they will make pay to play probably.
  - skiexperte 2y ago
    I have my lg on a vlan, if it wants to send out data thats fine for me tbh. As soon as it becomes shitty, i add a chromecast

diego_sandoval 2y ago

What would be the downsides of simply buying a big computer monitor instead of a TV? It seems to me like an easy way to avoid all the crapware that comes with Smart TVs.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
It's hard to use a computer comfortably from the couch
- diego_sandoval 2y ago
  That's what Chromecasts and its competitors are for. You may say that that's the same as a Smart TV, and chromecasts come with their own crapware, but the big advantage is that they're separate devices. The Chromecast has no way to infect your monitor through HDMI. If the Chromecast or whatever starts misbehaving, you throw it away and replace it with something else. You lost $50 instead of the $300+ that your Smart TV costs.
  - ianburrell 2y ago
    Large monitors are rare. I found Dell 55" for conference rooms. They don't have the features like HDR. They are expensive, the Dell is $1000, and cheap 55" are $300, decent $500, and good $1000. For lots of people, the builtin speakers and apps are fine. I also got the impression that TVs have gotten faster and UI are less sluggish. Why spend $50 for Chromecast when TV already has Android TV, and cost $200 cause going in spare room? Don't have to use the smarts of smart TV. I never use the apps on my TV, it displays HDMI. I could stop applying updates or unplug the Ethernet and it wouldn't change.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  I use a computer pretty comfortably from the couch. The computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Kodi/LibreELEC. It works just dandy. I usually use CEC to control it, though sometimes I instead use a cheap Logitech K400 compact keyboard/trackpad combo. Both input methods are convenient (CEC even uses the regular TV remote), and both were plug-and-play. It doesn't seem hard to use this computer from the couch at all, and it lets my dumb TV remain dumb while still accomplishing much of the functionality that I want from a video system that lives across the room from the sofa. (And for everything else, there's Chromecast and friends.)

60secs 2y ago

Per the law of enshittification, soon only monthly subscribers will gain the ability to disable motion smoothing.

einarfd 2y ago

If you live in the right jurisdiction consumer protection laws might be able to force the seller to get this defect fixed or have them take back and refund the tv. Where I live (Norway), there is a five year warranty on long lived products, which a tv is, and if it breaks during that period, the seller needs to fix or replace the product. Motion smoothing that can't be turned off seems a serious breakage, and if they seller pushes back, you can point out that Tom Cruise and a bunch of other movie luminaries think motion smoothing ruins movies. Not sure what the rules are with software updates after the tv is out of warranty. But I do suspect the seller would still be in hot water, if the update breaks important functionality.

paulcole 2y ago
> Motion smoothing that can't be turned off seems a serious breakage, and if they seller pushes back, you can point out that Tom Cruise and a bunch of other movie luminaries think motion smoothing ruins movies. Is this the standard in Norway, where the consumer can just call something they personally dislike "serious breakage" and demand their money back? Does this work? Would you actually invoke your Tom Cruise argument and expect that to change anyone's mind? Or is the culture there just so passive and avoidant that they'll give you your money back just so you go away and stop bothering them? Whole thing seems wild to me.
- ribosometronome 2y ago
  Fundamentally altering the way the picture is shown without anyway to revert to the original functionality is obviously a severe deviation from how the product was originally sold. It's akin to not having blue anymore.
  - paulcole 2y ago
    But it's not akin to not having blue anymore. Not having red anymore is akin to not having blue anymore. Having the video play in a way you personally dislike is perhaps upsetting to you, but it's a TV and the video still plays.

globular-toast 2y ago

I gave up on TVs. Luckily I watch very little TV anyway so it's no big deal. I remember my friend buying a TV for thousands a few years ago and seeing just how laughably bad the interface was compared to Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 2 that I've been running close to 10 years now. Literally it's been on almost that whole time (just had to replace the power supply once). Not only does it play everything on my NAS, I can stream to it and control it from my phone etc. I never update it because it just continues to work. I use a projector instead of a screen because it's better and thankfully they are still dumb. Oh and a huge sound system. And all of that costs less than that one shitty "smart" TV...

Waterluvian 2y ago

I hated my stupid TCL Roku TV so I got a TCL Android TV and it’s worse. The terrible incompetence of the team who manages to make a UI that lags out by multiple seconds when trying to cursor to the OFF option is frustrating. But I’m sure it makes their Project Manager overlords happy because it’s easy to supply ads to. If anyone here wants to solve a real problem and get rich doing so: start a company that makes dumb electronics. I’ll pay a premium.

qubitcoder 2y ago
I will never buy an Android TV again after a horrible experience with a high-end Sony TV. It was extraordinarily laggy. Even changing the volume was a nightmare. Quite possibly the worst UI experience ever. Pro-tip: Go with higher-end LG OLEDs. They are fantastic, super fast, and designed for cinephiles. You can often get "certified excellent" open-box deals at Best Buy for a very reasonable price. They're equivalent to brand new. People on Hacker News love to complain about ads. I hate them too, and go to great lengths to block them. To be clear, they're referring to the "suggested content" on the Home screen, which I'm not sure many people use. Either way, all of that is easily disabled in the settings. If used with an Apple TV, set top box, or, best of all, 4K Blu-ray, it's a premium experience where you're in control of all the picture settings. Check out @hdtvtest on YouTube for in-depth dives.
hagbard_c 2y ago
> start a company that makes dumb electronics. I’ll pay a premium. That'd just make you a useful idiot for those sellers. Better use the thing in whatever 'dumb' mode it offers, never connect it to the internet but only expose it to a restricted local network. That way you don't have problems with auto-updates, you don´t get ads, you're not being spied upon, etc. Of course all bets are off if there is an open wifi network around for the thing to connect to but those tend to be rare. There are bakers tales about devices having their own cellular access built-in but I have yet to see proof of something like that - and will abuse the hell out of it when I find it.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  I’ve never connected them. They’re still terrible. Because they’re designed as Android devices and not just fricking TVs.

cjk 2y ago

I used to work at Roku (audio team). I left in late 2020, but I know that many of Roku's best and brightest were shitcanned as part of the several rounds of layoffs that happened recently, in an effort to cut costs. It would not _at all_ surprise me to learn that this was a mistake, and that there's no one left that knows how to fix it.

tomrod 2y ago
Geez, add this to the crummy way they've been rolling out no-opt-out "features" and regressions like automatically showing your recently watched series. Yes, I really _didn't_ want my 7 year old to stream the Walking Dead, thanks for the nightmares Roku!
- olyjohn 2y ago
  Yeah they keep adding garbage to the home screen, and putting it between the things that I actually use. Smells like desperation.

jes5199 2y ago

I'm in a subculture where people mostly don't own televisions (I do watch shows on my laptop, occasionally) but so I have never seen motion smoothing - is there a demo, online, like on youtube or something, that can give me a sense of what you are talking about?

cm2012 2y ago
It looks like a 90s/2000s soap opera, like Days of our Lives. I always turn it off on TVs I use.
- ghewgill 2y ago
  I still don't understand what that means. I've never sat down to watch a soap opera, so I have no idea what they look like.
- jes5199 2y ago
  I've heard that before and it just sounds so strange - why would interpolated frames on a HDTV remind people of the production values from standard definition televisions?
  - recursive 2y ago
    It's the frame rate. People are accustomed to seeing video at ~30fps. But old soap operas were somehow at ~60fps, among other things. I think this motion interpolation thing looks significantly worse than the old soap operas, because the interpolated frames break down when there's too much movement, which is exactly when they could have the most value, if you believed they had any value proposition at all.
  - axus 2y ago
    I've seen those soap operas and it's true. I'm having trouble finding an online source that really shows what it looked like. The number of people who've never had to watch an old soap opera is increasing.
callerun 2y ago

iamleppert 2y ago

I hate to break it to you, but you are only a tiny fraction of the users of something like Roku. The software isn't developed for individual users, it's developed according to a product roadmap, which is itself driven by the behavior of the largest and most profitable cohort of users. If you don't fall into that category, you don't have a choice. Things that may be irritating or upsetting to you, if they make money or drive some number that helps a manager get a promotion internally, you're simply out of luck when it comes to software. Products aren't built for individual users, they are built for massive collections of users that generate revenue.

pseudosavant 2y ago
A ton of people ask me for TV recommendations. Rokus were my goto, but not anymore. I won’t buy one. Their response so far suggests this isn’t on accident (it’s a feature!) and they won’t change it back. I’ll probably have to not hook up the internet on my next TV. Use a steaming box instead.
- devilbunny 2y ago
  I have a TCL Roku TV. It is not, has never been, and will never be connected to the Internet. I have to restart it periodically because there’s a strange sound system bug that makes the audio insanely quiet, but it sure was cheap. It gets its video from a TiVO or an AppleTV box. I’m not using the internal software for anything - I don’t trust it at all. You might think the same of Apple, and that’s fine, but I’m posting this from my iPad, I have an iPhone and an Apple Watch and a Mac; they could screw me any time they wanted to, but other than pushing out strange UI they haven’t.
  - pseudosavant 2y ago
    Agree on Apple, they could screw up over but they really do look at users as the customers because we give them most of their revenues. Consumers are at best the #3 most important customer, after advertisers and TV manufacturers, for Roku. They have incentive to not care about consumers.
2y ago

poikroequ 2y ago

I used to like my Roku TV. It has a pretty straightforward interface, just tiles of all your apps, and the ads are to the side, out of the way. I love the simple ergonomic remote control. But their actions recently have gotten me looking for a new TV. First the thing with forcing new terms of service on everyone. Now this. My Roku TV has gotten way slower in the past year or so, to the point where many apps are nearly unusable. And I guess they'll be pushing video ads soon.

rewgs 2y ago

Does anyone want or like motion smoothing? It’s seemingly universally hated by a majority of those who care (myself included), and a minority of those who don’t. Why are TV manufacturers so dead-set on shoving it down our throats?

rightbyte 2y ago
Maybe it is good for tracking the ball in sports? (Note: A hypothesis. I don't watch sports ...)
- ipsento606 2y ago
  it's good - or at least, fine - for stuff that you want to look as true-to-life as possible. Sports, nature documentaries, news coverage (if you're into that) it's absolutely awful for everything else
  - recursive 2y ago
    I don't think it's even fine for anything. In all the implementations I've seen, as soon as the action gets too big/complicated, the interpolated frames are dropped. Right when you need the intermediate frames most, it seems to drop to the source frame rate. (maybe just for part of the screen?)
nh23423fefe 2y ago
I prefer it. When I go to other people's houses their tv looks worse to me. The motion looks jittery and stulted to me.

bigmattystyles 2y ago

Can you be a film purist and buy a Roku TV? I mean come on - Snark aside, the mistake was thinking the TV was yours as opposed to an advertising vehicle for its makers to use to extract further value from you. Don't feel bad, I was the victim of the same with the Nvidia Shield. Looking at you Android TV.

strunz 2y ago
I felt the same way reading this, though I felt like a patronizing douche. If you buy a TCL or bottom rung TV and expect it to cater to cinephiles, you're just begging to be let down. (Not that there's any excuse for this shitty anti-consumer behavior from Roku)

themadturk 2y ago

We have a Samsung "smart" TV, with smarts not connected to the Internet. We hook it up to a Roku box. When we turn the TV on it splashes a banner encouraging us to connect. It disappears after 15 seconds or so. I have no problem with the Roku box, but this makes me happy I didn't buy a Roku TV, and that I've never attached the TV itself to the Internet. My next streaming box will be an Apple TV, but as of now I'm in no hurry.

mikeocool 2y ago

FWIW I have a TCL Roku TV running 13.0.0 and don’t seem to be impacted by this. Motion smoothing is definitely not enabled when watching Hulu/Netflix/HBO. If I go to picture settings, I see the option for Roku Smart Picture, but it’s not enabled.

pugworthy 2y ago

The article says... > If you’re someone who doesn’t notice motion smoothing or doesn’t particularly care about it... This basically is me. It then proceeds to describe a number of things that would be blatantly obvious and asks you to imagine if you couldn't turn them off. Yes, if my Kindle's fonts all went 3x size, I'd both notice and probably care. But this "logic" fails to work with that previously quoted sentence. Yes, I would care about something I noticed or cared about. But why should I care about something I don't notice or don't care about?

recursive 2y ago
No one's asking you to care. Some people wouldn't notice tripled text size, even though it's similarly hard for me to imagine. I usually notice motion interpolation within a second of watching. I also find it to be intolerable. Maybe people like you can come out ahead on the newly reduced prices on these RokuTV's with recently reduced market value.
- pugworthy 2y ago
  I think I got my first Roku device in 2008? So far quite happy.
ranger207 2y ago
It's asking you to empathize with users who can notice motion smoothing by imagining that you suffer a major noticable annoyance. The logic flows perfectly well in that sentence.

chuckadams 2y ago

I have a Roku stick, and volume on the remote only works with Roku sound bars. My Amazon stick and Apple TV remotes handled it no sweat. Then there’s the constant screwing around with the home screen. I think I’ll be going back to AppleTV next time around.