
Story of the Roku Player (2013) - funkaster
https://www.fastcompany.com/3004709/inside-netflixs-project-griffin-forgotten-history-roku-under-reed-hastings
======
andrewla
Roku has made, in my mind, a horrible mistake by trying to be more than a
hardware vendor. My first Roku was great -- select the app you want, play
video. A lot of the streaming services were very immature and had terrible
UIs; Netflix's was particularly good and Amazon remains one of the worst. They
had a headphone jack on the remote (genius!) so that I could listen to content
while other people in my household slept.

Then on the next generation, they started requiring a credit card on
registration (boy did I have to hunt to find out how to set it up without
that). I am perfectly capable of getting credentials for the services in
question, why would I ever put my credit card information with a service where
I never expect to use it?

Then they started peppering the UI with ads. The net effect here was basically
just to make the interface less navigable by wasting a bunch of space
advertising channels and programs on a device I paid for?

Finally they added a bunch of buttons to the remote to take you to specific
services, which I only every use mistakenly, and of course includes "Rdio",
where all I get when that button gets mashed is a message saying "this service
no longer exists". Their interface with the big tiles is very well done; I
don't need these shortcuts.

I would gladly pay extra for a version of the Roku that cut all of these
features; like Amazon hardware and the "with sponsored content" where I can
pay an extra $20 to get the vanilla version. It's still the best of the
devices I've used (Amazon Fire Stick/Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast) but it's a
shame they keep trying to suck more ongoing revenue out of it.

~~~
sithadmin
It seems like nobody is content to maintain a commercial product that does one
thing: play media well. Plex Media Server is now going down the same path:
They're trying to do their own streaming services, be a portal for podcasts,
have a partnership with TIDAL, etc. They recently hijacked the home screen UI
to shill their library of completely awful TV shows and movies that nobody
wants to watch (though it can be disabled easily). Seriously considering a
move to Emby at this point.

~~~
293984j29384
Well, at least in Plex's case I'd assume it's to generate a reoccurring
revenue stream to continue development. I question how sustainable the "Plex
Pass" feature is with so many people (at least that I know) who bought a
lifetime subscription ages ago. I personally bought a Plex Pass for like
$49.99 around 6 or 7 years ago and hasn't given them a cent since then. I
support their efforts like Tidal and ad-based TV and Movies if it means I get
new features without having to move to a monthly or yearly based subscription
service.

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hijp
I 'upgraded' my parents Roku 3 with the Apple TV 4K, but they ended up going
back to the Roku exclusively.

The remote on the Roku is much more intuitive and the d-pad allows them to
select what they want with confidence. The apple tv's remote with its touchpad
is unwieldy by comparison.

~~~
dynamite-ready
The Roku remote is an unsung example of great design. You can tell the parts
are cheap, but it feels great, and is very easy to use. My partner is a
luddite... It took roughly 30 seconds to teach her how to use it. She barely
knows how the TV itself works!

~~~
klodolph
Great design but poor implementation? My remote randomly stops working, there
is often a long delay when I press a button, and it uses up batteries very
more quickly than anything else.

It’s easily the worst remote I have ever used, although there are no problems
with its design.

~~~
haggy
I've owned 6 roku premiers and have never had any of those issues with any
remote. Maybe you got a dud?

~~~
klodolph
Different models of Roku use different technology for the remote. Since some
of them use WiFi, they can suffer from connectivity problems like WiFi does in
general. This will depend on the location and RF environment.

Maybe you got IR remotes? Maybe you live in a location with low levels of
interference? Maybe your model doesn’t suffer from the design flaws that mine
does?

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wlesieutre
I had a Roku. Replaced it with a second hand Apple TV after software updates
stuck ads all over the menu.

Pretty shit thing to do to paying customers, and one of the main reasons I’m
so hesitant about IoT gizmos in general. Might start out great, but the
provider can turn it to shit at a moment’s notice with no recourse.

And it looks like this continues to get worse since I bailed:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902423/roku-tv-
interact...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902423/roku-tv-interactive-
pop-up-ads-automatic-content-recognition)

They made a “more ways to watch” feature to automatically find when content is
available on a streaming service, and then two years later gunked it up with
advertising that you can’t disable short of turning off the feature entirely.
Cool.

Makes you wonder if the real reason they built that feature in the first place
was as an excuse to monitor everything you watch and monetize that data.

~~~
HumblyTossed
Investors want to see a recurring revenue stream. Almost all hardware you'll
eventually be able to "buy" will have some sort of avenue for recurring
revenue stream. I recall reading something about the people who made LynQ
(portable GPS thing) and investors wanted to know how they intended to keep
getting money out of the people who bought it.

The future is going to suck.

~~~
robotnikman
Probably best to buy hardware from privately owned companies then if your
worried about this kind of thing. I don't mind paying an extra premium for
hardware if it means I wont be bombarded by ads or be spied on.

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jweir
I had one of the first generation Roku boxes. And all it did was play Netflix
movies. Which was why I bought it.

But then one day I turned on my TV and the Roku has upgraded itself. Now I
could watch Amazon, Netflix and other channels.

It was a very pleasant surprise.

~~~
01100011
Roku has, until recently, tried to support _all_ of their devices with current
software updates. It's very refreshing to see a company not abandon their
devices. It's likely so they can maximize the number of clients, but it's
still a nice gesture.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
This is why I bought a RokuTV. Every other smart TV vendor has multiple
generations of abandoned platforms under their belt.

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mwexler
I continue to love my Roku and some of the oddball niche channels. But their
ad serving is really immature. From seeing the same ad 3 times in a row to
Overt aggressive insertions to sometimes freezing on an external ad feed to
the rampant ad scams, it becomes frustrating to watch anything but The no-ad
subscription channels which may not have that culty flic.

I don't mind supporting folks with ad viewing, but I also expect some variety,
freq capping, and a bit of targeting. On the plus side, when all those Spanish
ads come on, I can recognize almost half the words now.

~~~
asix66
I also like my Roku. Recently upgraded to an Ultra so I could take advantage
of a free year of AppleTV+.

WRT advertising, I run a Pi-Hole and it does a great job blocking such things.

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indymike
I've bought TVs with Roku built-in, Chromecast built-in and other weird tries
at streaming built-in. All but the Roku are basically worthless as the
manufacturers did not ship upgrades, basically making what was a smart tv,
just a tv. The Roku TV happily updates itself, and seems to have more and more
channels and apps every week.

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adim86
I had no idea Roku was born from Netflix, they did a good job at distancing
themselves. I think this origin story also speaks to Reid fully understanding
what he set out to do with Netflix, which is to stream entertainment over the
internet. From the name to this move it seems very clear that's has taken that
mission VERY seriously. It is really hard to invest in something so much and
when you realize it is wrong viciously distance yourself from it. very few
companies rarely pivot from their original mission. The only thing I would
have done differently would be to open-source the hardware and Software of the
Roku, basically creating a ton of competitors but at the same time pushing the
mission of streaming movies further and getting Netflix to more screens. It
still worked out regardless

~~~
karatestomp
No-one could have competed on hardware price without placement and ad deals
anyway. Those are why the hardware can be so cheap.

~~~
andrewla
The hardware initially was cheap, and had no placement ad deals. Possibly they
were selling at a loss, who knows?, but for sure at one point their business
model was to sell a hardware device that was good at streaming.

~~~
karatestomp
Did the early models not bundle apps for any services?

From what I’ve seen in the space, consumers want to spend $30-50, retailers
want a giant percentage to put you on their shelves, and that doesn’t leave
much for hardware assuming you want _any_ profit. Then there’s support, design
& R&D... A few ad deals or some sponsorship for placement/bundling and
suddenly hitting an acceptable price seems _almost_ feasible.

[edit] and of course price expectations are so low because the competition’s
selling at-cost and making money on the side deals. You’re on the shelf next
to something with ads but that doesn’t go on the price sticker.

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andrewla
The decision to separate out the hardware from the streaming was prescient --
no need to cannibalize deals with other hardware vendors, and get support for
Netflix to be universal.

I only wish that Netflix had been as prescient about its original content
division. If they had spun that out as another company, then it would have
been possible for Netflix to continue to score content deals, instead of
steadily losing content.

~~~
aidenn0
Spinning out the content might have staved off losing content for a year or
so, but pretty much every single one of their 3rd party content providers has
their own streaming service now, so the writing was on the wall for content
deals even before their original content division started.

~~~
andrewla
We don't have access to the alternate universe where this didn't happen. But
Netflix was king of streaming -- other services had to bring themselves up in
order to avoid being killed off by Netflix promoting their own content above
those of other providers.

If Netflix had made it clear that they were not going to compete in content,
then maybe those services would not have to exist.

Then again, maybe the move in this direction was inevitable; if the FTC had
put its foot in to get something like the consent decree [1] with movie
theaters and studios, then we would probably be in a world where streaming
services had to differentiate on the quality of their streaming, platform
support, application, funding model, etc. instead of just basically competing
on the content, while steadily getting worse at everything else.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

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johnpowell
My main beef with the roku is the sluggishness of the UI. And I have a few of
them in the house (ultras or whatever the top of the line one was as of six
months ago. Amazon had a sale and I bought a few). I also have a bunch of
Apple TV 4Ks.

Say I am watching Plex and then want to switch to Netflix and then maybe go
over to Channels to watch some News on MSNBC. The Apple TV can do this without
reloading the app or losing my place in the video. It is nearly instant. The
Roku has to reload the entire app taking a minute and losing my place.

But I do like the Roku remote. So there is that.

~~~
baddox
Interesting. I have the 4K Apple TV and sometimes apps feel extremely
sluggish. Netflix clearly has some sort of compounding problem (maybe a memory
leak) where simply scrolling through the app gets progressively slower until
it’s nearly completely unusable. Killing and restarting the app fixes it
temporarily.

~~~
johnpowell
I haven't noticed that in Netflix. But 80% of my use of the Apple TV is plex
and a little app I wrote that reads directories on my computer running Apache
and shows everything in a directory structure. And a bash script that runs
through everything calling HandBrakeCli (if needed), generates thumbnails with
ffmpeg, and then creates the xml.js file the app reads.

It took around six hours to build and I had zero experience with any tvos or
ios development. Just a fun covid-project.

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technotarek
Original? I had the Roku Sound Bridge. It was purely for music. It hardwired
to your stereo and could connect to your iTunes library by WiFi. You
controlled it via a remote and the box’s display. _When it worked_ , it was
great.

[https://images.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageHandler/trim/620/3...](https://images.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageHandler/trim/620/378/products/2004/593/x593M1000-o_MT.jpeg)

Seems like it should have been part of the origin story, no?

I still have it actually. Someday I’d like to figure out if it’s possible to
re-purpose it.

~~~
AgloeDreams
It's complex and weird, Roku was started in 2002 by Anthony Wood, but then
eventually he ended up a VP at Netflix? Reed I think saw a need for someone
with a little distance and hardware experience (Wood founded ReplyTV) but not
too much such that they couldn't own the experience.

All that said, the Roku streaming player by `Roku` is the first product they
called the `Roku` so it's a fair way to title it.

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chungus
It seems that the name Roku curses your product (or programming language) into
not being used.

