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.
I’m thinking of buying one of these after ditching two Roku TVs. I bought LG OLEDs instead and am just using the apps for now, but who knows how long it’ll be before WebOS follows Roku down enshittification avenue?
I quit with apps on LG after whatever I was watching or doing would cut out with an error message saying that the TV was out of memory. It was particularly egregious when I was playing video games. Now I have a Roku sound bar, but look where that’s gonna get me.
My SHIELD would just randomly restart itself until eventually it stopped coming back online.
I definitely got my monies worth out of it, but didn’t like that a device with no ads all of a sudden became a device with ads (and this is a Google thing not an Nvidia one, but still)