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Television Operating Systems

Roku OS 11 Will Let You Set Your Own Photos as a Screensaver (theverge.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the new-OS-releases dept.
Roku device owners will soon have a whole host of new personalization features, including all-new Photo Streams, with the Roku OS 11. From a report: Firstly, when Roku OS 11 rolls out to users in the weeks ahead, they'll be able to change their screensaver to display their own photography or images with Photo Streams. Not only will Photo Streams allow users to display photos from their desktop or mobile device on Roku, but users will also be able to share Streams with other Roku device owners as well. Once a Stream is shared, other Roku owners will be able to add to it, allowing everyone to collaborate on a shared album. Roku OS 11 will also introduce a new "what to watch on Roku" menu, a personally curated hub added to the home screen menu that will suggest popular and recently released TV and movies.
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Roku OS 11 Will Let You Set Your Own Photos as a Screensaver More

Roku OS 11 Will Let You Set Your Own Photos as a Screensaver

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  • Innovation! (Score:3)

    by spacemky ( 236551 ) * <`moc.ifyra' `ta' `kcin'> on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @09:22PM (#62382013) Homepage Journal

    Wow! How innovative! I did this on Windows 3.1.

    • Wow! How innovative! I did this on Windows 3.1.

      If you had a VGA card and a GIF viewer, you could display images with MS-DOS.

      • Don't forget to load ANSI.SYS for that extra character support!

        Now, was that LOADHIGH=ANSI.SYS? I think so but I don't have a spare AUTOEXEC.BAT file laying around.

      • I don't remember any DOS screen savers that could display a GIF (or any other image).

        But back then people ran screen savers to actually save the screen from burn-in. Showing a static image for long periods is especially bad on monochrome. (like MDA/Hercules CRTs, or old POS VGA grayscale displays)

        • "especially bad on monochrome"

            This was likely because monochrome CRTs don't have a shadow mask that absorbs a good percentage of the beam's energy before it hits the phosphors.

            Not that color screens were much more resistant as evidenced by CRTs taken from arcade cabinets where you can clearly see the Pacman mazes forever etched into the screen.

    • Yeah but now this footnote from a Roku press release has been featured on Slashspot, so that makes it important Stuff that Matters and therefore newsworthy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      I use Roku to watch video, not to stare at a screensaver. It looks like Roku may have just entered the "justify your jobs" phase of software development. This is where a product has reached maturity and a bunch of features are then added so the developers, project managers and product managers behind the project can justify their jobs.
      • Or, and I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear this, there are other use cases or preferences that aren't yours. I'm personally right there with you, I couldn't give a shit about the screensaver, but my sister-in-law loves having family photos and shit on whenever it's not streaming.

      • Roku is now an advertising company. This is how they get to know you and other people you know personally. They want you to use personalized features, so they can target you with the right advertising. This is all about ads and profit and nothing more, its about Roku tracking you and your friends to show you all ads.

      • OLED TVs require aggressive screen management. Screensavers are necessary.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Mod parent up. Features should only be added AFTER people are willing to pay for them. (At least that's the idea of the CSB (Charity Share Brokerage).)

      • >"It looks like Roku may have just entered the "justify your jobs" phase of software development. This is where a product has reached maturity"

        They might THINK they are in that mode, but they certainly shouldn't be in it.

        * I still have no way to turn off autoplay.
        * Videos don't say what sound is available nor can that be done in filters (I don't want freaking stereo sound in 2022).
        * Can't use ANY usb keyboards or mice with even the Roku Ultimate. NO EXCUSE for that at all.
        * Can't reuse the "special" but

    • I had purchased a Roku add-in to do this. I am glad that this is becoming part of the core OS.

      However, the problem is that each streaming service has monetized their own screen saver and doesn't use the OS saver.

  • If there's a peak to "interesting" we've reached its nadir. You crest a peak, but I don't know what you do at a nadir. Bottom out?

    • Start digging.

      There's always more room at the bottom. Just get that shovel and...

      E.g. Imagine if this innovation - but it is pay-to-play. There. A new bottom.
      Now imagine being sued over copyright claims on objects in your own photos, like Disney characters in the background, while your photos are uploaded to corporate servers, then leaked everywhere as a part of a broken process of monetization by said corporation(s).

      More room at the bottom. Always.

  • ...I've had the ability to do that since the 80s on my devices.

  • I want a flying toasters screensaver.

  • Chromecasts and Fire sticks have done this for years, minus the collaborative aspect.

  • Must be a slow content day

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )
      I've long since switched to Nvidia Shield TV. Wake me when the Shield TV has hardware support for AV1.

      • The Walmart Onn Android TV device (rebranded Dynalink) is a fully implemented Android TV device for less than $20. It has apps for Roku, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, Disney +, IMDB movies, and many other options from the Google Play store. I even installed Smart Tube so I could watch YouTube content without all the annoying ads.Walmarts Onn android TV review [chromeunboxed.com]

        As long as your TV has an open HDMI port, this is a very inexpensive (some say cheap) version of an android TV device that lets you watch your preferred co

  • Truly we live in the future.

  • Now if they could include an opt-out for the constant spying Roku does.... that would be great. My NVIDIA Shield just turned into a scrap of garbage in my dumpster for the same reasons.

  • ...because that's how long TCL will take to roll this out to their TVs.

  • is the ability to display your own photos a feature.

    This story is telling and sad beyond belief.

  • Maybe they want to match faces with the data collection they already doing?

  • Roku paid /. for binspam

  • why else would this non-news be here?

  • Why don't they work on app load times instead?

  • ... and I'm there!

    That's the next killer feature - the ability to overlay a series of emoji's onto content as you watch it.

    But as we mentioned screensavers, a very 1990's concept, how about releasing hardware with a DVD slot - hell, even better, a slot for VHS tapes?
    Now THAT's innovation! /s

    Until then, I'll continue with my "set and forget" LibreElec driven PVR, that's been happily purring away for 6 years now.

    • I'm running LibreELEC on a 1st gen Pi Zero W. It's 4 years old I think. A couple of years ago I refreshed the install but Kodi would lock up. I recently tried again and it actually runs faster. Plus it's compatible with the latest Kodi plugins. Great to see old-ish hardware still supported.

      • I'm running LibreELEC on a 1st gen Pi Zero W. It's 4 years old I think. A couple of years ago I refreshed the install but Kodi would lock up. I recently tried again and it actually runs faster. Plus it's compatible with the latest Kodi plugins. Great to see old-ish hardware still supported.

        I did try running it on a Pi - I believe an old model B - but it didn't have the power I needed, so I went for a Gigabyte Brix - that was my first real Linux PVR - then we got a 4K TV, so I upgraded to a later Gigabyte Brix, because the first one I got was just totally rock solid.

        The new one is too, well, I say new, but that's 3 years old now, it's been rebooted about 10 times in those years, 5 of which have been power failures.
        Because it's isolated by an internal firewall, from the outside world, I don't e

        • Oh jeez, what am I banging on about - not a PVR at all - it USED to be a PVR, but now, there's absolutely no reason to record any TV - so it's just a store for videos.

          I had a PVR running for a while, with two capture cards in it, which enabled recording 4 different things at once and that was such a damn pain in the ass to keep updated - when it worked, awesome, when it broke ... not so good.

          But yeah, we live in a world now where recording anything from TV is a complete waste of time, because who really wat

  • It would be great if they could just play the subtitles from my dvd rips. It seems everything else will play them except Roku.

    DVD subs are often image-based, so if this great new feature is showing images, so clearly they have the technology to show images on their devices.

    • Roku has a fairly feature complete OS, since it created an offshoot called Brightsign - a digital signage company - running the same OS. It really comes down to the software you're using for playback. Are you using DLNA support built-in, or something like Plex?

      DLNA doesn't really support streaming more than one file. If you are using separate SRT files instead of an embedded subtitle track (like in an .mkv) it probably won't work. There are some proprietary extensions to DLNA that will grab the subtitl

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hazem ( 472289 )

        This is served with a DLNA server but the files are mkv with subs built-in. However, many DVD subtitles are not embedded text but instead embedded images that can optionally be shown or not. In fact, to get an SRT file from them you have to use software that can extract those images and then do OCR on them.

        Apparently some DVDs have text-based subtitles and those will show just fine with Roku.

        Other systems like Kodi or WDTVLive (very old!) will play the subtitles from the DNLA stream for files the Roku won

        • I believe that all DVDs have image-based subtitles (a 16-color paletted image with 1-bit alpha). They went with images because I guess unicode was too hard, but it does allow a lot more control over font and style and placement. But they can also have closed captioning. It's the closed captions that are text-based (what would normally be broadcast on line 21 in the VBI of the analog signal) and can be converted to the standard SRT format.

          That is definitely a missing feature of Roku's Media Player app. Y

  • We'll see a story about how those images are all shared with Roku, who sells them to some nameless company in another country to include in their facial recognition training database.

  • It's the year 2022 and that's their biggest accomplishment?

  • Probably as short a time as it takes for someone to share their dick pics with other users.

  • Find and remove all the porn to avoid the shame.

  • Can we have the RT channel back. This nanny state bullshit needs to stop.
  • As if Roku hadn't already invaded your privacy enough, you can give the company access to your photos for it to mine.

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