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Roku TV bricked until agreeing to new terms of service (self.technology)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by DaleGribble88 to c/[email protected]

304 comments fedilink hide all child comments

See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn't use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don't agree to their terms, then I don't get access to their new products. That sucks, but fine - I don't use their services except for the TV itself, and honestly, I'd rather by a dumb TV with a streaming box anyway, but I can't find those anymore.

Anyway, the new terms are about waiving your right to a class action lawsuit. It's weird to me because I'd never considered filing a class action lawsuit against Roku until this. They shouldn't be able to hold my physical device hostage until I agree to new terms that I didn't agree at the time of purchase or initial setup.

I wish Roku TVs weren't cheap walmart brand sh*t. Someone with some actual money might sue them and sort this out...

EDIT: Shout out to @[email protected] for recommending the brand "Sceptre" when buying my next (dumb) TV.

EDIT2: Shout out to @[email protected] for recommending LG smart TVs as a dumb-TV stand in. They apparently do require an agreement at startup, which is certainly NOT ideal, but the setup can be completed without an internet connection and it remembers input selection on powerup. So, once you have it setup, you're good to rock and roll.

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[–] nullPointer 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

use the search terms "commercial display" to find dumb tvs

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Except if you care about anything having to do with picture quality, brightness, contrast ratio or features such as HDR etc, then it's going to be a really shitty TV. They're made for the menus at McDonald's, not a device for modern media.

[–] nullPointer 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

not quite. here's one for ya

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Nice find!

I'd be curious to see RTINGS do a review of the panel on it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And be careful, a lot don't have built in speakers either. Don't just expect to get a TV out of a commercial display.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Eh, the built-in speakers on most TVs these days are all pretty trash across the board. You pretty much need a sound bar at the very least, these days.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

a lot don't have built in speakers either

Good. They won't fuck up videos you keep in front of the TV.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Except if you care about anything having to do with picture quality

I still use 30 y/o CRTs to avoid all this "smart" bullshit. I very much do not.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do you still use a VHS player too? What sort of things do you watch on your CRT TV, genuinely curious?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Do you still use a VHS player too?

Only on roadtrips. It has it's own screen. This assumes you are intentionally making a distinction between VCP and VCR.

Something can be a VHS player and not be a VCR, something can be a VCR and unable to accept VHS, something can be a Video Tape Recorder that is unable to interact with any cassette.

What sort of things do you watch on your CRT TV, genuinely curious?

Depends which one, but in my view anything worth watching.

Yeah, that's videos of whatever format. Gaming systems of whatever stripe. Discs, be they DVD, VCD, CD-V, Vinyl (if I can get the belt running; Daj Boże), laserdisc (technically already mentioned). Blu-ray if I have to but I hate when filmmakers release exclusively to that format because I have to use a downstepper to convert the HDMI output they're only putting on the damned players these days and at that point just sell me a DVD. The picture quality would be comparable* and superior in the realms of ease of connecting to a computer more easily (you priced external BR drives? yeesh) and ease of watching. How many Blu-Ray players is a person liable to have, the one? Another? I hope you feel like watching it wherever they're set up. DVD you can throw in a a €9 external drive, any laptop made after 2007 and before you started needing external drives, any of a dozen cheap DVD players you may have haven't thrown away, a Playstation2, a hacked Wii, that karaoke machine you keep in your kitchen. They made mad portable players as I recall; you could watch your DVD film in a park

Also DVD menus don't utilize java. Fuck off. Much as I'm wont to point out ain't no tape ever told me [OPERATION PROHIBITED], no DVD has ever tried to connect to the internet while I watched it. Bad Disc!

*I haven't actually tested this but with the number of film sets sold with both editions and an RCA triswitch I easily could.

And yeah, you can get amassed cultural production and contemporary films on both DVD and VHS, but the great thing about analog signals is they're agnostic. You can convert the hell out of them. Convert Display to VGA then convert VGA to RCA then set your display port as a second monitor and you can wirecast anything you could watch through your display port (silverlight used to be snooty about that). Invideous tube instances, films off Archive.org, Vimeo, Peertube, Tubi, probably flash animations if you had a legacy player. Basically whatever the kids are watching these days you can A-hole out to the kind of TV Sonic would smash rings out of.

There are some media that just don't work, usually that utilizing really fine lines such as small text.

I view that as a failing of the media maker and not my viewing habits.
Make you lines thicker you want I should read them.

Most stuff (especially older but even most modern) looks fine-to-fantastic

Of course you don't have to "watch" anything as such. You can plug in a camcorder directly into a TV and pretend you're a news anchor.