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As a long-time[1] customer of Roku I am tentatively extremely pessimistic. I have always been unhappy with Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content

As a long-time[1] customer of Roku I am tentatively extremely pessimistic. I have always been unhappy with Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content at all, because it could potentially cut into their service-agnostic architecture. Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware, but way worse when they are actively competing with streaming services. And now it looks like it has happened -- a large content provider wants to buy the company, and while I hope that they can at least notionally continue to be service-agnostic, the temptation to cheat to favor your own services will always be there an when cost cutting and belt tightening is on the table, that is surely what will happen. [1] My order for the "Netflix Player by Roku": "CustomerID# 1162 Thank you very much for your Roku order. Your order number is 2472, placed 5/20/2008 at 10:01AM."

WarmWash 4mo ago
There is the long standing problem that if you build a road for others, and others get unfathomably rich using that road, you end up looking pretty dumb.
- kbelder 4mo ago
  And yet, advancement of civilization depends on that.
  - account42 4mo ago
    In fact it used to be that we recognized the usefulness of roads and banded together to fund roads that are specifically there for others to use. Somehow the same is unthinkable for virtual roads.
dylan604 4mo ago
> Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware I mean, of course they did. If you were running a company and had to choose between a one-time relatively small fee vs a life time of near constant ad driven income per user, which would you choose?
- andrewla 4mo ago
  Obviously preferences vary, but I would prefer to accumulate the goodwill rather than the ad fees. I'm not a saint and I would probably try to have some sort of "buy the roku streamer v7, now with <some new feature that I don't backport>". In the end the tradeoff is pretty rough; judging by alternatives, keeping the cost of the stick low requires that they do the ad thing. I say that I would pay more for an ad-free version but I never went out there and bought the nvidia shield for example even though I'm told it's a good experience.
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    You have to realize that you are not in the same financial situation as the vast majority of people (based on the hoity-toity nature that HN readers are all well paid). The vast majority of people just accept ads as part of life and do not care one bit about the evils of the adTech world. If they are able to get a service essentially for free or at least a significant discount, they don't mind ads. Most people don't even notice them. If an ad free paid for service was the only option, I'd suggest that a lot of the user numbers would drop. I'm a weird person in that I'm not anti-ads, but I am anti-adTech. Commercials on OTA broadcasts are good times to get up and get a refill, go to the restroom, are just hit the mute button. The days of DVRs were glorious as well as you could just fast forward through the ad breaks. Streaming platforms are the absolute best thing that ever happened to adTech. They cannot be skipped. That guarantees to the ad buyer that they will get their air time which helps adTech push ad buy rates. The money made from advertising is not to be dismissed. It can be very significant to bottom lines, just ask Vizio* where they make more money on data than they do from the hardware sold used to collect that data. *https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-advertising-inscape-data-privacy-q3-2021 https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
    - nemomarx 4mo ago
      A lot of average people will also pirate if it's cheap and the UI is good. There was a pretty brisk business selling cheap hacked firetv sticks to people for that
bmelton 4mo ago
I was also super-early Roku customer, but frankly I have been mostly disappointed with Roku for the past year or so. The hardware on the top tier devices doesn't seem to keep up. Interacting with it is slower and more laggy than it originally was. They've tried to keep them unobtrusive, which I appreciate, but the mere existence of ads is disappointing. I almost give the Roku City ads a pass, because frankly that's clever, and mirrors the real world enough that it seems logical to me -- but ads in menus is grating. CEC has been super flaky with the latest revisions as well, so for the past couple of weeks I've been relegated to using either the Roku remote or my phone instead of my TV's remote. I'm a big fan of waiting to see before prejudging, but I can't imagine anything gets better post-acquisition, and I was already on my way out the door. I guess I'm buying an Apple TV now? Are there any other recommendations? I haven't kept up with the space at all, so if anyone has suggestions I am super happy to receive them.
- andrewla 4mo ago
  The lagginess is a puzzle to me; one big selling point of the Roku (vs. e.g. the Amazon Fire Stick) is that it is so much more responsive, but newer models have been getting worse instead of better. The last time I used Apple TV I was disappointed, and since they are a streaming provider themselves I expect this to get worse rather than better. Even very basic UI things like "what block in the UI is the cursor currently selected" are painful, and the navigation flow mirrors the navigation flow of the Apple TV app on Roku, which is already pretty bad -- navigating the a series page from a single episode is a tortuous multi-step process that involves getting the incantations exactly right or being reverted back to the main screen and losing all context. The moat here is mostly just having widespread and maintained support for streaming services, which is a question of scale; that's why so many "Smart" TVs get stale after a year or so while Roku stays fresh. In 2008 I paid (in 2008 dollars) $99 for the Roku. The price now is much lower but I would probably be willing to pay that amount for a fresh device that is performant and agnostic to streaming services and no ads (including those remote buttons) and has a straightforward UI.
  - bmelton 4mo ago
    Thanks for the response. As a lifetime Plex passer, I am inured to having to re-learn the navigation UI with every new release, so that part can't be too bad. But yes, I would be thrilled to just pay $250-300 for a hardware device that just did quickly did what it was supposed to do and didn't look too ugly in doing it.
Noaidi 4mo ago
Yes, let the enshitification begin. I have never seen a mergre like this not lead to anything but a money grab. They will no doubt remove things like PlutoTV, which is free, and substitutte it with more subscription apps and more data collection
- mleo 4mo ago
  Begin? I haven’t heard anything positive about Roku in 10 years or so. They had to race to the bottom to compete with Amazon and Google. And maybe they mostly survived til now, but all I hear is complaints about ads.
  - legitster 4mo ago
    I think the complaint about ads is mostly a knee-jerk reaction by certain online communities. The ads are not particularly obnoxious - they are always off to the side and don't interfere in navigation in any way. Furthermore, I'm on a Roku looking for content and the ads highlight content. It's not that different than seeing posters on the way to a movie theater.
    - pavon 4mo ago
      On my Roku the ads aren't just off to the side. When I go to the home screen there are now "recommended" shows above and below my channels, and they are initially selected, so I have to scroll down past them to get to my actual channels.
      - saratogacx 4mo ago
        Every one of those sections can be trivially turned off in the settings. Mine just have the list of apps I installed on my device.
        hydrogen7800 4mo ago
        Yes, which you have to do repeatedly after every software update when they change your settings.
tmaly 4mo ago
I have been reading these threads where people are patching firmware with AI. I am wondering if there is a way to fix some of the privacy issues on Roku tvs given this deal.
- Valord 4mo ago
  go on...
jimt1234 4mo ago
Roku hasn't been 'agnostic' since RokuTV or the Roku Channel, or whatever-the-fuck it's called. I watch with a GoogleTV device, connected to my Roku television through HDMI. A few months ago I started seeing these weird popups, saying something like, "I see you're watching 'The Goonies'. Why not watch on RokuTV?" It was bizarre, and a little creepy considering I wasn't using the Roku platform at all. As it turned out, Roku added a 'feature' for doing content recommendations. I disabled that 'feature', but it was still weird, like, "These guys are watching what I'm watching, even when I'm not on their platform!"
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449198-smart-tvs-take-snapshots-of-what-you-watch-multiple-times-per-second/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449198-smart-tvs-take-...
- orev 4mo ago
  Smart TVs are always monitoring what you’re watching by taking screenshots and processing them. This is a known thing for at least several years now. The only safe way to use a smart TV is to never connect it to the network, and use another streaming device. That separate device will spy on you too, but at least you’re making the choice.
thayne 4mo ago
Are there any alternatives that are independent of streaming services?
- nemomarx 4mo ago
  Google and Apple seem like the best competition and they do have streaming services, although Google's is just their bad YouTube tv thing and very ignorable. I'm not sure Amazon is even in the running now. The Nvidia shield used to be a decent streaming box?
  - timeinput 4mo ago
    They (ETA nvidia shield) added ads many years ago. Really left a bitter taste in my mouth after paying for an ad-free "premium" device to have them shoved out there.
    - tmp10423288442 4mo ago
      Who is they?
      - horsawlarway 4mo ago
        Assuming the nvidia shield. I'll also echo my general disappointment with the direction of these devices. A decade ago, they were one of the best streaming devices you could buy. then a couple years back it was "there's a new discover tab, filled with ads! Don't you love it?" then it was "not enough people are viewing the discover tab, so we're merging the discover tab with the home tab! Don't you love it?" --- They're still decent hardware for a streaming device (although somewhat dated at this point), but now you have to go out of your way to make the software not shitty. Removing the stock launcher helps a lot, but requires ADB access. (easy enough, and [insert llm of choice] can both generate a minimal replacement launcher and install it for you for about $10 worth of tokens, so technical users are fine, but I can't really recommend them to non-technical family anymore.)
        4mo ago
freeAgent 4mo ago
Ironically, I think the Apple TV is the best streaming box out there. Of course, Apple is both the manufacturer and a streamer in their own right. And they definitely privilege their own store and streaming over other services. However, everything else already sucks so much with UIs chock full of ads that Apple wins anyway. It’s awful.
- rhubarbtree 4mo ago
  Can confirm Apple is best but Roku is amazingly good number 2. In some ways its UX beats Apple.
  - pseudosavant 4mo ago
    Especially because you can get TVs with Roku built-in. I would guess most Roku users aren't using a box these days.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - ilinx 4mo ago
      With Roku built in as well as whatever ad pipeline(s) the TV manufacturer wants. These days my AppleTV is allowed to talk to the internet. My television is not.
      - cebert 4mo ago
        I have a Samsung TV that I intentionally didn’t connect to the Internet for that reason. I occasionally get an annoying pop-up randomly, encouraging me to connect it to Wi-Fi.
    - solid_fuel 4mo ago
      Eh those TVs are a dubious value proposition. I grabbed one and wound up returning it because it won't even let you use the TV as a damned TV without connecting it to the internet and creating a roku account so they can track you.
everdrive 4mo ago
Services are really never safe. Or at best, they should be considered temporary. If you like what they provide, know that what they provide could become worse and/or more expensive. This is the likeliest scenario. At best, you should use services on a temporary basis and never allow yourself to get entrenched. Once you're locked in, you are part of the product to be sold to advertisers. The "install base" that is used as leverage for these sorts of shenanigans.
freeAgent 4mo ago
Ironically, I think the Apple TV is the best streaming box out there. Apple is both the manufacturer and a streamer in their own right. And they definitely privilege their own store and streaming over other services. However, everything else already sucks so much with UIs full of ads that Apple wins anyway. It’s awful.
prepend 4mo ago
I was an early roku user and ditched them because they’ve sucked for 10+ years. Their players have been trash and had poor support. Amazing they got $22B and tivo must be really kicking itself.
bsimpson 4mo ago
> Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content at all As I recall, it was originally a Netflix product that was spun out due to its potential to cause a conflict of interest in their main business. They didn't want devices like Chromecast and AppleTV to see Netflix as a competitor, and be reluctant to bundle the Netflix streaming app on their devices.
bradfitz 4mo ago
2008? I had the Roku HD1000 [1]. :) My email search: "Welcome to the "Roku-tech" mailing list" ... "Tue, Dec 2, 2003, 10:48 AM" Not sure how I ended up on the mailing list a month before their product was released. There must've been buzz about it for a few months before release. [1] https://photos.app.goo.gl/bMGBqm4mTmfUNJG39 https://photos.app.goo.gl/bMGBqm4mTmfUNJG39
- andrewla 4mo ago
  Well, color me impressed -- my understanding was that Roku was formed as a spinoff from Netflix around the release of their first streaming player. This is sort of confirmed by the Roku wikipedia article, which does not, for example, mention the HD1000 at all! I guess Wood founded Roku but it was basically semi-defunct when we went to work for Netflix, and then the "spinoff" was basically letting Wood poach his team from Netflix over to his existing company to staff up and sell the first streaming device.
Grombobulous 4mo ago
My other concern is the highly partisan nature of the Fox company. This isn’t a content company that caters to viewers across the political spectrum or purely focuses on entertainment first, this is a company that almost exclusively runs right-leaning political media outlets. Your Roku already has advertisements and other content nudges on the Home Screen, and now those are going to be very one-sided and potentially politically motivated.
Postosuchus 4mo ago
You might have missed the memo, but Roku's main business has been advertising for quite a while. It is just shrouded in streaming and platforms. But it is advertising nevertheless. Being a platform, Roku benefits from advertising 3 ways - by running its own ads in some apps and on home screen; by exercising carriage rights on 3p apps that show ads (getting a cut as a platform); and by building and selling audiences for targeting. For all I know, Fox has zero interest in platforms or technology. But they are fairly sophisticated when it comes to adtech and this is purely an adtech play.
prasadjoglekar 4mo ago
No different than a tech platform expanding into content. Like YouTube, Amazon and Apple. I understand your complaint, but those two worlds are intertwined beyond redemption now.

WarmWash 4mo ago

There is the long standing problem that if you build a road for others, and others get unfathomably rich using that road, you end up looking pretty dumb.

kbelder 4mo ago
And yet, advancement of civilization depends on that.
- account42 4mo ago
  In fact it used to be that we recognized the usefulness of roads and banded together to fund roads that are specifically there for others to use. Somehow the same is unthinkable for virtual roads.

dylan604 4mo ago

> Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware I mean, of course they did. If you were running a company and had to choose between a one-time relatively small fee vs a life time of near constant ad driven income per user, which would you choose?

andrewla 4mo ago
Obviously preferences vary, but I would prefer to accumulate the goodwill rather than the ad fees. I'm not a saint and I would probably try to have some sort of "buy the roku streamer v7, now with <some new feature that I don't backport>". In the end the tradeoff is pretty rough; judging by alternatives, keeping the cost of the stick low requires that they do the ad thing. I say that I would pay more for an ad-free version but I never went out there and bought the nvidia shield for example even though I'm told it's a good experience.
- dylan604 4mo ago
  You have to realize that you are not in the same financial situation as the vast majority of people (based on the hoity-toity nature that HN readers are all well paid). The vast majority of people just accept ads as part of life and do not care one bit about the evils of the adTech world. If they are able to get a service essentially for free or at least a significant discount, they don't mind ads. Most people don't even notice them. If an ad free paid for service was the only option, I'd suggest that a lot of the user numbers would drop. I'm a weird person in that I'm not anti-ads, but I am anti-adTech. Commercials on OTA broadcasts are good times to get up and get a refill, go to the restroom, are just hit the mute button. The days of DVRs were glorious as well as you could just fast forward through the ad breaks. Streaming platforms are the absolute best thing that ever happened to adTech. They cannot be skipped. That guarantees to the ad buyer that they will get their air time which helps adTech push ad buy rates. The money made from advertising is not to be dismissed. It can be very significant to bottom lines, just ask Vizio* where they make more money on data than they do from the hardware sold used to collect that data. *https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-advertising-inscape-data-privacy-q3-2021 https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
  - nemomarx 4mo ago
    A lot of average people will also pirate if it's cheap and the UI is good. There was a pretty brisk business selling cheap hacked firetv sticks to people for that

bmelton 4mo ago

I was also super-early Roku customer, but frankly I have been mostly disappointed with Roku for the past year or so. The hardware on the top tier devices doesn't seem to keep up. Interacting with it is slower and more laggy than it originally was. They've tried to keep them unobtrusive, which I appreciate, but the mere existence of ads is disappointing. I almost give the Roku City ads a pass, because frankly that's clever, and mirrors the real world enough that it seems logical to me -- but ads in menus is grating. CEC has been super flaky with the latest revisions as well, so for the past couple of weeks I've been relegated to using either the Roku remote or my phone instead of my TV's remote. I'm a big fan of waiting to see before prejudging, but I can't imagine anything gets better post-acquisition, and I was already on my way out the door. I guess I'm buying an Apple TV now? Are there any other recommendations? I haven't kept up with the space at all, so if anyone has suggestions I am super happy to receive them.

andrewla 4mo ago
The lagginess is a puzzle to me; one big selling point of the Roku (vs. e.g. the Amazon Fire Stick) is that it is so much more responsive, but newer models have been getting worse instead of better. The last time I used Apple TV I was disappointed, and since they are a streaming provider themselves I expect this to get worse rather than better. Even very basic UI things like "what block in the UI is the cursor currently selected" are painful, and the navigation flow mirrors the navigation flow of the Apple TV app on Roku, which is already pretty bad -- navigating the a series page from a single episode is a tortuous multi-step process that involves getting the incantations exactly right or being reverted back to the main screen and losing all context. The moat here is mostly just having widespread and maintained support for streaming services, which is a question of scale; that's why so many "Smart" TVs get stale after a year or so while Roku stays fresh. In 2008 I paid (in 2008 dollars) $99 for the Roku. The price now is much lower but I would probably be willing to pay that amount for a fresh device that is performant and agnostic to streaming services and no ads (including those remote buttons) and has a straightforward UI.
- bmelton 4mo ago
  Thanks for the response. As a lifetime Plex passer, I am inured to having to re-learn the navigation UI with every new release, so that part can't be too bad. But yes, I would be thrilled to just pay $250-300 for a hardware device that just did quickly did what it was supposed to do and didn't look too ugly in doing it.

Noaidi 4mo ago

Yes, let the enshitification begin. I have never seen a mergre like this not lead to anything but a money grab. They will no doubt remove things like PlutoTV, which is free, and substitutte it with more subscription apps and more data collection

mleo 4mo ago
Begin? I haven’t heard anything positive about Roku in 10 years or so. They had to race to the bottom to compete with Amazon and Google. And maybe they mostly survived til now, but all I hear is complaints about ads.
- legitster 4mo ago
  I think the complaint about ads is mostly a knee-jerk reaction by certain online communities. The ads are not particularly obnoxious - they are always off to the side and don't interfere in navigation in any way. Furthermore, I'm on a Roku looking for content and the ads highlight content. It's not that different than seeing posters on the way to a movie theater.
  - pavon 4mo ago
    On my Roku the ads aren't just off to the side. When I go to the home screen there are now "recommended" shows above and below my channels, and they are initially selected, so I have to scroll down past them to get to my actual channels.
    - saratogacx 4mo ago
      Every one of those sections can be trivially turned off in the settings. Mine just have the list of apps I installed on my device.
      - hydrogen7800 4mo ago
        Yes, which you have to do repeatedly after every software update when they change your settings.

tmaly 4mo ago

I have been reading these threads where people are patching firmware with AI. I am wondering if there is a way to fix some of the privacy issues on Roku tvs given this deal.

Valord 4mo ago
go on...

jimt1234 4mo ago

Roku hasn't been 'agnostic' since RokuTV or the Roku Channel, or whatever-the-fuck it's called. I watch with a GoogleTV device, connected to my Roku television through HDMI. A few months ago I started seeing these weird popups, saying something like, "I see you're watching 'The Goonies'. Why not watch on RokuTV?" It was bizarre, and a little creepy considering I wasn't using the Roku platform at all. As it turned out, Roku added a 'feature' for doing content recommendations. I disabled that 'feature', but it was still weird, like, "These guys are watching what I'm watching, even when I'm not on their platform!"

toomuchtodo 4mo ago
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449198-smart-tvs-take-snapshots-of-what-you-watch-multiple-times-per-second/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449198-smart-tvs-take-...
orev 4mo ago
Smart TVs are always monitoring what you’re watching by taking screenshots and processing them. This is a known thing for at least several years now. The only safe way to use a smart TV is to never connect it to the network, and use another streaming device. That separate device will spy on you too, but at least you’re making the choice.

thayne 4mo ago

Are there any alternatives that are independent of streaming services?

nemomarx 4mo ago
Google and Apple seem like the best competition and they do have streaming services, although Google's is just their bad YouTube tv thing and very ignorable. I'm not sure Amazon is even in the running now. The Nvidia shield used to be a decent streaming box?
- timeinput 4mo ago
  They (ETA nvidia shield) added ads many years ago. Really left a bitter taste in my mouth after paying for an ad-free "premium" device to have them shoved out there.
  - tmp10423288442 4mo ago
    Who is they?
    - horsawlarway 4mo ago
      Assuming the nvidia shield. I'll also echo my general disappointment with the direction of these devices. A decade ago, they were one of the best streaming devices you could buy. then a couple years back it was "there's a new discover tab, filled with ads! Don't you love it?" then it was "not enough people are viewing the discover tab, so we're merging the discover tab with the home tab! Don't you love it?" --- They're still decent hardware for a streaming device (although somewhat dated at this point), but now you have to go out of your way to make the software not shitty. Removing the stock launcher helps a lot, but requires ADB access. (easy enough, and [insert llm of choice] can both generate a minimal replacement launcher and install it for you for about $10 worth of tokens, so technical users are fine, but I can't really recommend them to non-technical family anymore.)
      - 4mo ago

freeAgent 4mo ago

Ironically, I think the Apple TV is the best streaming box out there. Of course, Apple is both the manufacturer and a streamer in their own right. And they definitely privilege their own store and streaming over other services. However, everything else already sucks so much with UIs chock full of ads that Apple wins anyway. It’s awful.

rhubarbtree 4mo ago
Can confirm Apple is best but Roku is amazingly good number 2. In some ways its UX beats Apple.
- pseudosavant 4mo ago
  Especially because you can get TVs with Roku built-in. I would guess most Roku users aren't using a box these days.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ilinx 4mo ago
    With Roku built in as well as whatever ad pipeline(s) the TV manufacturer wants. These days my AppleTV is allowed to talk to the internet. My television is not.
    - cebert 4mo ago
      I have a Samsung TV that I intentionally didn’t connect to the Internet for that reason. I occasionally get an annoying pop-up randomly, encouraging me to connect it to Wi-Fi.
  - solid_fuel 4mo ago
    Eh those TVs are a dubious value proposition. I grabbed one and wound up returning it because it won't even let you use the TV as a damned TV without connecting it to the internet and creating a roku account so they can track you.

everdrive 4mo ago

Services are really never safe. Or at best, they should be considered temporary. If you like what they provide, know that what they provide could become worse and/or more expensive. This is the likeliest scenario. At best, you should use services on a temporary basis and never allow yourself to get entrenched. Once you're locked in, you are part of the product to be sold to advertisers. The "install base" that is used as leverage for these sorts of shenanigans.

freeAgent 4mo ago

Ironically, I think the Apple TV is the best streaming box out there. Apple is both the manufacturer and a streamer in their own right. And they definitely privilege their own store and streaming over other services. However, everything else already sucks so much with UIs full of ads that Apple wins anyway. It’s awful.

prepend 4mo ago

I was an early roku user and ditched them because they’ve sucked for 10+ years. Their players have been trash and had poor support. Amazing they got $22B and tivo must be really kicking itself.

bsimpson 4mo ago

> Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content at all As I recall, it was originally a Netflix product that was spun out due to its potential to cause a conflict of interest in their main business. They didn't want devices like Chromecast and AppleTV to see Netflix as a competitor, and be reluctant to bundle the Netflix streaming app on their devices.

bradfitz 4mo ago

2008? I had the Roku HD1000 [1]. :) My email search: "Welcome to the "Roku-tech" mailing list" ... "Tue, Dec 2, 2003, 10:48 AM" Not sure how I ended up on the mailing list a month before their product was released. There must've been buzz about it for a few months before release. [1] https://photos.app.goo.gl/bMGBqm4mTmfUNJG39 https://photos.app.goo.gl/bMGBqm4mTmfUNJG39

andrewla 4mo ago
Well, color me impressed -- my understanding was that Roku was formed as a spinoff from Netflix around the release of their first streaming player. This is sort of confirmed by the Roku wikipedia article, which does not, for example, mention the HD1000 at all! I guess Wood founded Roku but it was basically semi-defunct when we went to work for Netflix, and then the "spinoff" was basically letting Wood poach his team from Netflix over to his existing company to staff up and sell the first streaming device.

Grombobulous 4mo ago

My other concern is the highly partisan nature of the Fox company. This isn’t a content company that caters to viewers across the political spectrum or purely focuses on entertainment first, this is a company that almost exclusively runs right-leaning political media outlets. Your Roku already has advertisements and other content nudges on the Home Screen, and now those are going to be very one-sided and potentially politically motivated.

Postosuchus 4mo ago

You might have missed the memo, but Roku's main business has been advertising for quite a while. It is just shrouded in streaming and platforms. But it is advertising nevertheless. Being a platform, Roku benefits from advertising 3 ways - by running its own ads in some apps and on home screen; by exercising carriage rights on 3p apps that show ads (getting a cut as a platform); and by building and selling audiences for targeting. For all I know, Fox has zero interest in platforms or technology. But they are fairly sophisticated when it comes to adtech and this is purely an adtech play.

prasadjoglekar 4mo ago

No different than a tech platform expanding into content. Like YouTube, Amazon and Apple. I understand your complaint, but those two worlds are intertwined beyond redemption now.