Ugh. Roku was one of the platforms with fewer ads.
- Roku will be adding more ads to the home screens of its devices and TVs in the near future.
- The ads will be interactive and ‘shoppable’ and will cover a range of industries, including restaurants and cars.
- Roku already has a significant amount of ads on its home screen, and it is unclear if users will be able to change their preferences for the new ads.
PiHole Domain regex blacklist:
(ads|logs|cloudservices).roku.com$And there it is, folks.
I added the Roku and Samsung TV servers to my blocklist months ago, (maybe even years ago, at this point?) My three smart TVs are the most blocked devices on my network, by far. It’s not even close. Here are today’s stats from my pihole:
For reference, my phone (my most used device) is number four on that list. My three smart TVs (two Rokus and a Samsung) are numbers 1, 2, and 3. I haven’t even watched TV today. These blocked requests are simply from the TVs idling. Smart TVs are hilariously, mind-bogglingly invasive, and you should block them ASAP.
Why did you black out your private IP addresses?
Old habits. Just as a general rule, I black out most IPs, even when private. I used to deal with a lot of horribly insecure devices at work, with default passwords that couldn’t be changed, no port security (so anyone who found the wrong Ethernet port could connect to the network,) etc…
So anyone on the network could fuck things up if they were on the wrong wifi and tried to reconfigure something they shouldn’t be touching. It was only an issue a few times, since the vast majority of people using said network were other techs who knew what they were doing. But there were a few times that someone screenshotted something, it got passed around to all the managers, and someone who didn’t know what they were doing got curious and went digging when they saw the IPs.
It was never anything catastrophic since the network wasn’t even connected to the internet, and we had backups of any important settings. But it was just a practice that we all eventually picked up, to prevent random employees from sniffing around. Because it always sucked to come into work the next morning, and discover that a particular piece of gear wasn’t working properly because someone decided to tick a stray checkbox or change a polling rate.
I, for one, appreciate that someone called @PM_Your_Nudes_Please understands the value of good OPSEC. You go ahead and fiercely guard any electronic data you might happen to have, neighbor.
He doesn’t wanna get hAcKeD duhhhhh
They are called private for a reason!
What does it look like on your tv after blocking the ads
Not the guy you replied to, but my LG webos TV worked just fine after I added a whole bunch of domains to my pihole blacklist. Got rid of A LOT of crap from the “homepage”. Made it a hell of a lot cleaner and overall more usable. There are compiled lists of domains per brand and per region. Just find one that fits your bill.
I use past tense because last week I finally created a kodi box and took the TV offline entirely. Now it’s even better.
Did you add the expression by the user you are replying to?
Does it just block the Roku / Samsung spam, while leaving the platform otherwise in tact?
Step one.
Buy a thing. It is a good thing.
-
Oops, now it only works if you pay monthly. Ok maybe they’re doing some upkeep.
-
Now there’s ads. You’re paying them money, but they want even more so now you’re the product.
-
Haha it broke! My family tech guy says it’s literally impossible to fix without the cheat codes.
Final step. Don’t buy the thing again. Don’t buy anything with “terms may be altered. Pray I do not alter them further.” Probably stick to open source.
Me after getting those dumbass Canary cameras that cost $200 a piece then they completely wrecked the free tier then started giving them away for free to get more subscribers.
Wyze cams with wz_mini_hacks firmware offline in a VLAN with Frigate and Home assistant from here on out!
-
For those with Roku TVs or any of their products, I found that a PiHole blocks the ads on the home screen so far. Hoping I could pick up an ONN box in the future so I can just not deal with this shit lol.
A pihole is a whole “home” adware/malware/spyware blocker. It runs on a raspberry Pi but can also run on a physical/virtual install of several different Linux distributions. Not only can it block ads on your computer but can also block ads on technology that you can’t (easily) block ads on (“Smart” TV / stock cellphone / IoT devices / etc). In addition, with some easy to instal additional (free) software you can block ads even when not at “home”!
Pihole also has a docker distribution, so it’ll also run easily on “appliance” NAS solutions with minimal effort
Thank you for the explanation. I felt very out of the loop on this whole thread. I’ll look into pihole.
NO problem.
Any issues, let me know :-)
Not sure if the PiHole team is on Lemmy yet.
Yeah, DNS blocking is quite effective for not just ads, but also telemetry on Roku.
Personally, I use nextdns until I can can a good pihole setup going.
You can comfortably run pihole, unbound, and a VPN like wireguard on a pi zero or zero 2. You can find entire zero 2 kits for under $35 if you’re patient
Very true. Mostly just haven’t had the time. Also want to set up a little home server to play around with Proxmox and move Jellyfin off my main PC.
I can confirm that I’m blocking all the Roku ads with adguard now. You just plug this list in: https://oisd.nl/
I use roku…I might have to try a pihole…or switch to something else. Damn shame just about everything gets ruined by greed.
Thank you Roku, a step forward towards self hosting and self managing of every service
How are you going to self-host streaming hardware? A HTPC for every TV in the house along with a mouse and keyboard?
I was already thinking of upgrading my old Roku to a $20 Onn (Walmart brand) Google TV box (which I’m told is hackable), but this will only accelerate that decision.
I have one of these on every TV in my house and they’re great!
yes they are. you can put lineage and degoogle these
Small SBCs and keyboard/remote combos. That’s what we do.
Yes I have a thinclient attached to my TV running linux mint
No need for HTPC, just a small USB device with HDMI output and DLNA support. You use your phone as a DLNA controller, a server running Jellyfin as DLNA provider, and the device attached to the TV as DLNA renderer. And sometimes TVs have DLNA support built-in (my Toshiba does).
On Android there’s an amazing app called BubbleUPnP that can source media from a wide variety of places, make playlists, and cast to DLNA devices as well as proprietary protocols like Chromecast.
It works but it isn’t family friendly.
Jellyfin supports DLNA too, if you have a DLNA rendering device on the network it will just appear in the cast menu. Or if you want something that works with a remote directly on the TV you can install Kodi. There’s really no point nowadays in getting tied up into proprietary stuff.
Use Android TV with an alternate launcher like FLaunchee
Jesus, I hate that word, “shoppable”. It just sounds dystopian.
it’s not as brutal a construct as the other Sales-Bro trash we see: ‘the ask’, ‘the spend’, etc. It’s too bad that no matter how much we mock the soulless people who parrot that crap, it’s just our dumber friends who won’t learn anyway.
They’re out to
stomp pressure oner, maximize value proposition from your “pain points” with their ad-sponsored boots. (Uggs maybe idk)
Anyone jailbreaking these damn things yet?
Rokus are not worth the effort. Nvidia literally publishes dev roms for the shield tv boxes.
Are the dev roms fully compatible with Netflix & Co.? I’m running a shield and the one thing that kept me from rooting it was compatibility with hardware DRM. Have since cancelled all my subscriptions after they locked my family out and tried to hike the prices, but I’m still following the developments out of interest.
I’m not sure, actually. If they do have DRM issues, I imagine it would be precisely the same issue as (and therefor would have the same workarounds as) any other custom android rom… which probably involves some shady APKs & instructions from XDA forums.
I love the RF remote, the functionality, and the responsiveness.
I just recently started using my Samsung TVs as dumb screens because they’re slow as shit, but a nice side effect is zero ads.
ONN 4k streaming box for $20 at Walmart.
Install a custom launcher.
Install a button remapper for the remote.
Install SmartTubeNext for YouTube (no ads, SponsorBlock).
Install whatever other apps you need (Plex, etc).FAR better experience. Turn the TV on and it’s ready to go in a few seconds, not the ~60-90 seconds it takes the Tizen nonsense to “warm up.”
It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better. Can recommend, especially for only $20.
(Plex, etc)
Just get started on the move to Jellyfin now.
Seriously, people, use some pattern recognition here. Plex is already on its way down the enshitification pipeline, you’ll be sick of it in a couple years too, just like Roku. Why wait?
Jellyfin is definitely on my radar, and I’d love to make the switch. One thing that’s important to me and my family, however, is the library sharing between accounts. To my knowledge, Jellyfin doesn’t support this.
Just picked up the Onn box and did all that. Also installed RetroArch and so far the SNES era stuff all plays good with my bluetooth controller though there is a slight input lag or i just need to adjust lol.
Bluetooth does have latency issues, but setting your TV to Game mode (if available) will provide extremely noticeable improvement.
Ah at the moment its connected to a 144hz portabble monitor via usbc.
Any guides/links on setting up my Onn box like that? It’s been great for the $20 but removing ads and deeper customization sounds amazing
Directly from the play store, you can install alternative launchers. Some people like FLauncher; I did not. I went with Projectivy. Highly customizable, very clean.
You can also grab a button re-mapper there. I went with tvQuickActions Pro - it’s paid, but quite powerful.
For SmartTubeNext, I followed this guide.
Much appreciated!
SmartTubeNext might be the greatest thing about AndroidTV just for the sponsor block. It’s so amazing.
Your comment inspired me, so I picked one up today for my Roku TV, and I had it running in under an hour! We really don’t know how many ads we’d been seeing until we stop seeing them. I already had a PiHole on my network, but getting SmartTube running is so nice.
I’m glad you’re having a better time with it! Honestly, if you watch any amount of YouTube on your TV, it’s well worth the $20 just for SmartTubeNext. Such a massive improvement to skip all the sponsor, promotion, intro, etc segments.
Thank you! For me, that’s half of it. The other half is removing everything that’s not my subscriptions on the home page so I’m not seeing a bunch of “the algorithm”. And then being able to boot to the subscriptions page too is so nice.
Yes, this is what the people want! More ads! Skip the content, just show ads 24/7! That will definitely keep people from pirating out of sheer frustration.
And dont forget about that ad space on the remote control too.
Can these ads be blocked with pi-hole?
I block logs.roku.com and cloudservices.roku.com on my pihole without impacting any functionality.
Is there a good resource to learn how to install that kind of a system for a person who’s tech knowledge ends at one semesters worth of C++?
A semester of programming is more than you need. The hardest part would be installing the OS on the raspberry pi. https://pi-hole.net/
I set one up. My IT skills begin and end with being a millennial that had to troubleshoot what I wanted to get to work before App stores.
You’ll be fine in general searching “Pihole setup (insert OS here)”. Some minor troubleshooting was necessary in my case, could be an ID10T issue though.
Yes setting up a Pi-Hole should be pretty doable for someone like you. I can’t recomend a specific tutorial off the top of my head, but there should be plenty to find.
You mainly need a pi running raspbian or a pc running some debian based distro.
Anyone can set them up, it’s just running an app
You can alternatively install Adguard too which will happily sit in a Docker container on a regular server if you’re aware of how to do that.
what info is sent to these domain?
Yea my Adblock Home (pihole alternative) blocks the ads on my Roku home screen. Now it’s just a big blank box.
I do wonder how long it’s going to take for these device manufacturers to get wise and start hard coding their own host file on these devices with the addresses they use.
Then we switch from DNS and look to good old firewall blocks.
Update to say device is ‘offline’ unless it can reach these IPs? Local NAT to direct the traffic to a basic ping box.
Game keeps being played until someone quits.
Yes.
What domain list(s) are you using? Mine are still showing up with pihole. I do think some are being blocked, but not all.
Firebog.net Ticked lists as a collective, over 10^6 domains long now. Firebog have lists organised by how likely it is to impact general browsing, ticked being least likely (basically do you want to be black listing or white listing).
Thank you. And good advice about over-doing it. I’ve had people complain about “the internet being broken” on my wifi because of an overly-restrictive pi hole.
PiHole blocks the current ads. Hopefully these new ones too.
Google is already doing this with their default Android TV launcher. I tolerated their home screen ‘recommendations’ for a while as they occasionally highlighted something interesting to watch, but one day I switched on the TV and was greeted with a huge advert banner for a fucking watch on the home screen.
At that point I spent a few hours setting up FLauncher on all my ATV devices.
I did the exact same thing. Also blocked androidtv updates in case Google starts pulling shit regarding custom launchers.
It’s gross how ads are being crammed in every little nook of our lives. Not like the ShieldTv was a cheap device either.
Pretty sad to see Roku going down the same road. Guess forcing a third of the screen devoted to ads just wasn’t enough.
I prefer projectivy launcher. It’s got a few more features and feels a little more polished.
This launcher looks super cool, does anyone bychance know if it works on FireTVs? I was ok with the FireTV launcher up until they made it autoplay ads with sound everytime you turn the damn thing on.
Same! I recently found this “feature” can be disabled in the preferences, along with a bunch of creepy tracking options.
I can’t speak from experience as I don’t own any Amazon devices, but I have read reports that it seems to work fine with the FireTV variant of Android.
The dev has only tested it against Chromecast with Google TV, with that said I’m using it on a Shield TV and a Shield Pro and it runs fine on both.
That’s the reason I’ve been using Roku. I couldn’t stand all the suggestions and ads on my Google TV. If Roku does that, too, then there’s nothing good to distinguish them.
I like that I can install custom apps on Google TV, but Roku beats them in UI IMO.
Chromecast 2. No ads ever. Just send stuff from your device to your TV.
Hey, nice, I get to build an HTPC again and check out the latest streaming shit for Linux.
I’m not even being ironic. Tired of this corporate hellscape and finding joy in returning to the kind of hobbyist tech I grew up on.
corposhit used to at least be worth paying for with all it’s flaws but they’re shitting it up so bad it’s increasingly not even worth it in the slightest
Yep. There was a little while there where things coulda maybe been fine but the greedy psychopaths decided they wanted to fuck it up.
Enshittification strikes again!
Why won’t anyone make a privacy focused premium streaming box with no ads? I’d pay so much for this thing that will never exist.
Apple TV is a premium streaming box without ads. The privacy aspect is less clear, but probably better than Samsung, Google and Roku that are all harvesting data.
An open source solution would be better.
The privacy aspect is less clear, but probably better
I love how dividing by an unknown somehow makes a bigger number for you. The bias is leaking.
Apple chargers more and isn’t openly selling data (Samsung) or openly selling ads (Google). The commercial activity provides some insight here, that suggests Apple is better for privacy.
IMHO, for a quick out-of-the-box solution, the AppleTV is still the better streaming box.
Performant, tight software experience, large software catalog, proactively asks about blocking tracking data, and no ads all over the place.
It does advertise Apple content but its not too bad.
You can turn that off. If you don’t want the TV app to show new TV+ shows when it’s highlighted in the dock, you can set it to display recently watched content. And recently watched content will be app agnostic.
The feature is a little buried, but it’s a nice experience upgrade that is worth switching over to.
It still clutters on OS upgrades.
Can you elaborate? Mine has remained set to show “up next” for several OS upgrades. That feature has never switches itself off.
Hmmm, maybe I need to dig in settings. When Apple Arcade became a thing I found new apps on the Home Screen. I still think it’s the only streaming box outside of a shield that is appropriately powered amass doesn’t serve ads. And unlike the shield, Apple tv has a clear future.
Ahh. Yeah, when Apple adds a new app to an OS, they love to throw that thing right in the dock so you can see it. I usually end up moving a lot of those things out and I put my preferred apps in that dock.
I thought you meant it was changing your preferences for “settings > apps > tv > homescreen” after you installed OS updates. Sorry, I was confused.
Mainly because the major streaming services wouldn’t allow their platforms to run on it.
I don’t use major streaming services. I just want something that runs NewPipe and Jellyfin. Lol
We need a fediverse streaming service.
Until then, a Raspberry Pi or SFF PC will do the job just fine. They even work with remotes if you get an IR receiver for them.
How do you set up the IR receiver? I would like to use Linux if possible. It’s often such a pain to set up things like this. Took me forever to get my Xbox controller to pair.
I’ve used LIRC in the past. Takes a bit of setup, but it works well once you get it going.
Thanks for that. Were you ever able to get something like this to power a device on from a full shut down?
Edit: power on using the remote.
Because people won’t pay for it. We are in the minority.
Well time to replace my roku TV with a Goodwill special TV because fuck that shit. Fuck smart tvs in general and what they have become. They used to be neat little editions added on for value on your TV back when Netflix made sense. But now they don’t especially with the ads that automatically get shoved into your face depending on what you are doing that have started to interrupt your viewing experience. It’s not like I’ll be downgrading at all when just using a computer with a TV using Stremio and AllDebrid.
After reading so much about this, I’m definitely going to start reading up on running a Pihole at home
I’d like to ask for suggestions on FAQs or guides that’d help me get started.
TIA!
Your don’t need to run your own pihole anymore, unless your goal is to not share your dns history of course
Controld.com and many others has free dns which blocks ads
That (and PiHole) will only work as long as Roku doesn’t start using DoH.
The Department of Holes!?? Gosh… I knew PiHole’s time was limited but it’s too soon 😥
Using DoH is fine (good), hardcoding a specific server less so.
Well, you know they’re gonna use it to circumvent ad blocking. If they want to play nice they can simply keep doing what they’re doing now and use whatever DNS server they’re told by DHCP.
Not using DoH is simply a leak of data, every client should use it. If they use it maliciously is a different topic but yeah I wouldn’t say its unlikely.
Do you mean leaking on the LAN or on the Internet? Because the former is a whole different kettle of fish.
Normally, LAN clienta should work with the router and let it organize these things. It’s best for example to just let the router advertise itself as DNS and proxy the requests via DoH/DoT, you get a central place where you set the resolver, you can filter ads, you can do caching etc. The router can also intercept (clear) DNS traffic and secure/cache it as needed.
By default devices should expect their requests to go over the internet where DoH is very important. Over LAN much less so ofc.
I’m going to take a look. Thanks!
Is there a free DNS from Controld.com I can just put in my network settings?
I only saw the paid option. - thx
Yeah just click free dns from the menu
Adguard DNS does that for free : https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
Yep I’m using adguard but heard they have new owners of unknown security accountability
