My blender manufacturer has retroactively revoked my ability to make smoothies, and my auto manufacturer says I am no longer able to transport groceries.
People are saying Roku printed it on the box, said it in ads, etc. If that's true, then surely it was Roku's decision. And if Roku promised something pre-sale that they can't deliver post-sale, who cares why? That's Roku's problem, not the buyer's problem.
OTOH, a big part of me is tempted to mention a little consumer common sense: proprietary streaming was made to be broken. It can't be generally interoperable, because that would defeat the whole point! When you abandon convention and standards, you should expect things to become iffy. If you want a set top box that works reliably and for a long time, then instead of looking to see if it supports Google, Netflix, etc, you should look at whether it supports NFS, SMB/CIFS, DLNA, etc. But I guess, at some point, this stuff stopped being obvious to laymen anymore.
So if we're not going to "blame victims" for believing promises which they should have known couldn't be kept, go ahead and blame the promiser. But who knows, maybe when I see a picture of what Roku wrote on the box, there will be a winking smiley next to the compatibility claim, acknowledging its unbelievability or at least the ephemeralness.
Set top boxes and such are marketed to the general public like those that bought DVD and VCRs that couldn't figure out how to fix the flash 12:00.... no way they would know what NFS, SMB/CIFS, DLNA, etc.is...
However I doubt the ROKU box guaranteed "for life" or even for region. For example I bought mine and it had a "Prime" button and it printed on the box... Prime was not available via ROKU in Canada... did the box support it? Yup, if I VPN it would work. Due to stupid rules it wasn't allowed in Canada fo
A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions
that make it fail. -- Jerry Ogdin
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This. It was sold with that capability clearly advertised on the actual box. Implied that it would be for the functional life of the product.
Class action waiting to happen. And hopefully this will sort out anyone else trying the same shit.
Re: (Score:1)
Who do you sue? ROKU? It wasn't their decision. They can't stop it. Google? Was it Google that promised lifetime support on ROKU?
However this means I will not be using google as all I have is a ROKU and Apple TV box.
Re:In other news (Score:2)
People are saying Roku printed it on the box, said it in ads, etc. If that's true, then surely it was Roku's decision. And if Roku promised something pre-sale that they can't deliver post-sale, who cares why? That's Roku's problem, not the buyer's problem.
OTOH, a big part of me is tempted to mention a little consumer common sense: proprietary streaming was made to be broken. It can't be generally interoperable, because that would defeat the whole point! When you abandon convention and standards, you should expect things to become iffy. If you want a set top box that works reliably and for a long time, then instead of looking to see if it supports Google, Netflix, etc, you should look at whether it supports NFS, SMB/CIFS, DLNA, etc. But I guess, at some point, this stuff stopped being obvious to laymen anymore.
So if we're not going to "blame victims" for believing promises which they should have known couldn't be kept, go ahead and blame the promiser. But who knows, maybe when I see a picture of what Roku wrote on the box, there will be a winking smiley next to the compatibility claim, acknowledging its unbelievability or at least the ephemeralness.
Re: (Score:1)
Set top boxes and such are marketed to the general public like those that bought DVD and VCRs that couldn't figure out how to fix the flash 12:00.... no way they would know what NFS, SMB/CIFS, DLNA, etc.is...
However I doubt the ROKU box guaranteed "for life" or even for region. For example I bought mine and it had a "Prime" button and it printed on the box... Prime was not available via ROKU in Canada... did the box support it? Yup, if I VPN it would work. Due to stupid rules it wasn't allowed in Canada fo