
Ask HN: Why Roku? doesn't everyone own smart TVs? - RocketSyntax
Smart TVs are like $200 now. Why does Roku even exist? Their stock is $175 right now.
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justrudd
As other have stated - Roku content update cycles are much faster than TVs.

But for me (I use AppleTV vs. Roku), it's because TVs are SLOW (IME). Clicking
on Netflix takes about 5 to 10 seconds to open. Clicking down on the remote
takes 2 to 3 seconds. It's even worse now that Netflix does that live preview
when the cursor sits for a spell on a title. And finally Netflix crashed on my
TV 3 or 4 times during the week that I tried to use it.

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paulrpotts
No, not everyone owns smart TVs.

I looked long and hard to find the best option for a dumb TV without Wi-Fi,
without Alexa, without Siri, without any of that, because I don't actually
want to stream anything to it and I don't want my television to be a hackable
portal between my home and family and any hacker able to exploit bad firmware.
No regrets.

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troydavis
Which model did you choose? I looked for a large, modern (4K, HDR) dumb TV and
couldn’t find one. I’d pay a premium for this, or at least for a device that
considers “dumb mode” a first-class use case.

In addition to trusting Apple (Apple TV) more than any TV or TV OS maker,
models and firmware seems to be abandoned quickly. I’d rather decouple the UI
upgrade cycle from the hardware upgrade cycle. Roku seems to support devices
longer than the other TV OS makers, but they have “features” that I’d pay to
not have (like ACR and
[https://support.roku.com/article/360021142813](https://support.roku.com/article/360021142813)).

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Finnucane
Obviously, not everyone has or wants a tv with Roku built in, or is going to
rush out to buy one. Obviously, TV makers don't want you to have much choice
in the matter. I was cjust thinking about getting a Roku box for my mother,
because for $40 it's way less work and expense than getting her a new tv.

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JoeAltmaier
Add in the cost of educating her in the use of two remotes.

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Piskvorrr
Doesn't HDMI-CEC solve that?

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davismwfl
Sort of. The problem being the Roku remote is sadly missing a few key basic
functions, like primarily mute. So frustrating when you want to mute something
and you can't cause you only have vol up/down on the Roku remote.

And it is so easy to hit the ESPN or 3 other "app" buttons on the remote so
that can be annoying if you aren't careful picking up the remote or setting it
down.

But overall yes, HDMI-CEC solves the remote issue overall except for the fact
Roku poorly designed the remotes IMO.

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Finnucane
Do you want to know how much my mother is going to care about any of that?

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Piskvorrr
Smart TVs are anything but. Slow, bloated, and hey look, a bunch of unpatched
and actively exploited vulnerabilities with no way to patch, as the anemic
computer driving it is already beyond vendor support, but locked down. Yeah.
That's _exactly_ what I want: a crypto miner bot in my living room. The only
"smart" part of "smart TV" is "hey, we can charge much more if we stick a $5
compute module inside!" /s

Personally, I have a RPi running Kodi, plugged into $anytv (quite literally,
no idea what the model is, as long as it supports HDMI).

TL;DR: because not everybody is you (i.e. has same requirements and
preferences). Deal with it.

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davismwfl
Roku is more than the box. We have Roku boxes and a couple of smart TV's. Roku
is also a gateway service IMO, and Roku is adding content all the time. So I
think the companies value is in the number of eyes looking at content over
just how many boxes/tv's got sold.

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enz
I guess it can be good for people owning a great monitor which is not a TV.

