TV was a gift from my wife’s dad. I wish he didnt. I already have a perfectly decent flat-screen I have hooked a computer up to.
TV was a gift from my wife’s dad. I wish he didnt. I already have a perfectly decent flat-screen I have hooked a computer up to.
That’s what I’m doing now, but I have to go through the Roku part to get to it. Also roku scans everything coming through the HDMI ports to try and recognize media so it knows what ads to give you
We have an older curved 55" Samsung “smart” TV that I put in the basement for the kids. Mounted high up on the wall, out of reach of little destructive fingers.
Turns out it can be configured with a default input. When I moved it to kid duty, I cleared out all the wifi credentials (I think I just factory reset it), disabled all the “smart” garbage I could find, then stuck a Roku stick in it and set that input as default. The Roku remote handles TV power and volume, and the Samsung remote is put away with the rest of my tech
hoardstuff. Pi-hole on my network removes the Roku’s ability to show ads at all. I always forget that there’s a big ad spot on the home page.You can turn off the scan, which by the way is that it takes a screenshot every so often and checks if it matches known content so as to make you watch through their platform. Really recommend changing that setting.
Secondly, block *.logs.roku.com with a pihole was my solution. That TV is the single most banned traffic on my network still.
Fucking seriously. The two Rokus in my house are the two most-blocked devices.
Because it’s blocked it keeps retrying. Not saying to allow it but it is trying more then it would if it made connection.
That is going straight to a pawn shop, holy shit.
Yes Roku tvs are the worst piece of tech ever…
Have you tried doing a factory reset and not connecting it to the internet?
Normally thats a good option but my wife really likes watching Disney+, Dropout, and football on the NFL app, so if I did that I think I would be sleeping on the couch. Besides, I don’t mind the ads, they’re all in Spanish anyway
Two thoughts:
I can definitely relate to #2 😁
Knowing Roku, they probably automatically re-enable that setting after an update.
I’m definitely expecting this at some point, but it hasn’t happened to me yet. I’ve had the TV for a couple years now.
You can also just not attach the TV to the internet, but “obviously” doing things like reordering home screen apps requires an Internet connection.
Of course, because why wouldn’t a checkes notes entirely local operation require an internet connection?
That’s what I did with the curved Samsung TV that I put in the basement for the kids. Factory reset with no internet, default input set to a specific HDMI, and a Roku (with Pi-hole handling adblocking). Roku remote also handles TV power/volume. Haven’t had any issues with it.
Man I would graciously thank the gifter but decline. I wouldn’t put that shit in my house.
Maybe there’s an app that can inject junk into the signal to spam it and fuck up the data collection.
I mean, their algo might be shit already. All its ads for me have been in Spanish for a while now. I do not speak Spanish nor do I have any interest in telenovellas lol
I…feel like my Roku tv does not do this? But I haven’t move it to my new place yet, and I don’t remember. It’s also a couple years old, but it was a decent model.