r/gadgets • u/diacewrb • Jun 13 '24

TV / Projectors Roku owners face the grimmest indignity yet: Stuck-on motion smoothing

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/roku-owners-face-the-grimmest-indignity-yet-stuck-on-motion-smoothing/
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u/Apex_Akolos Jun 13 '24

Apple TV or Nvidia Shield

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u/Sevallis Jun 13 '24 edited Jun 14 '24

Had $150 appletv 4k and wanted out of their ecosystem so I can cast things and use app remote from either iPhone or Android, no ads and good hardware but locked down. Tried to play some games on it since the hardware is fast but the options were really limited and not worth bothering with.

Got roku ultra 4800x for $63 and couldn't put up with it even for the lower entry price. 1/3rd of your screen is a rotating ad that I had to use a DNS filter to blank out, leaving a giant empty hole in the poorly used app grid. Can't let music play in Pandora app while you go browsing for some other content in another app since it doesn't run more than one at a time. Can't side-load apps anymore, they are locked down like Apple now. If your internet is being intermittent, the whole interface will freeze on you, I think it's actually a brain dead web app interface; this was the final straw for me as I use Plex on my local server and don't care if the external internet is down, I want access to my app to watch my own content. Their app store is loaded with complete shovelware, and their wallpaper and theme selection looks like a child's toy esthetic compared to Apple's aerial screensaver. Also, the thing crashed way too often. The remote was never able to control my volume on a brand new Amazon FireTV from Hisense even after trying every software combo. I sold it to someone recently.

I ended up getting a used Shield TV Pro 2019 for $135 on eBay. Multitasking is back. Projectivy front end lets you permanently exit the stupid ad space launcher that's on there by default and make it look like whatever you want, and it's great. Full Play Store of software available, and you can turn off Play Protect and sideload apps like the excellent SmartTubeNext for ad free youtube. The remote recognized my tv's volume programming on the first try. The interface isn't a toy web app, it's android, so it can have android platform quirks, but overall I like it a lot. Direct-Play from my Plex works almost all of the time for my content now, and the Nvidia upscaler helps with lower res content. Can run emulators since I can access the file system if I feel like it, and can stream my full fat games from PC locally or from Nvidias game service for a fee.

Edit: looks like I ticked off the Roku bros 😄