Roku TVs could one day show ads as soon as you pause playing a game on a connected Xbox, or stop a stream on an Apple TV.

Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.

This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.

  • @[email protected]English
    103•8 months ago

    If a consumer watches something on their Apple TV and then presses the pause button, a Roku TV set could use either audio or video-based content recognition technologies (known in the industry as ACR) to identify what’s being watched, match the current scene to a database and extract relevant information to pair an ad with it.

    Wow somehow their idea is even worse than I imagined, glad I don’t own a Roku now.

    • @MangoEnglish
      16•8 months ago

      Yeah way to fuck 80% of the purpose of pausing. This is basically malware.

      • @piskertariotEnglish
        8•8 months ago

        Do not look away from screen while ad is playing, or playback will be paused for 5 minutes for first offense.

    • @danc4498English
      4•8 months ago

      Yeah, I thought it was no different than what already happens on my fire cube. The screensaver with ads mixed in.

      This is a much bigger invasion of privacy