I have used Google TV, Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku. I have used Roku both as a separate device and built into a TV. Out of them all I prefer to use the Roku. I even sold an Apple TV which was given to me and used part of the sale to replace it with a Roku Premiere+ which I found to be a much better experience.
I've used them all as well. I've found the best to be a rooted android TV box. idk if they still make them like they used to, but the Nexus player was by far the best TV box I've used after installing Kodi, adblock, and rooting.
I would love a dumb TV with one of these lil boxes again, but finding dumb TVs is hard and they're usually expensive and for commercial use from what I've found
Apple TV's touch remote is a travesty. Their UI is equally annoying when you realize they advertise the Apple stuff first, and you have to click Home again to get to your main apps. Compare any of them to Roku, and Roku is a barebones, works as expected, channel choosing device.
> you have to click Home again to get to your main apps
Both of these are changeable via settings (if you’re talking about the current generation remote, if the old one an Apple TV can be trained to use any other remote). I have a bunch of Roku devices and an Apple TV and typically prefer the Apple TV: the apps are of higher quality, Airplay is a great added feature and most importantly: no ads. Roku used to have barely any but they’re adding more and more and it’s getting obnoxious.
Also there's no software configuration to change that terrible touch remote into something usable. Rewinding to catch a missed line is always "I hope it works" moment.
My experience with Apple TV was that Apple advertised their own apps regularly. Also most Roku devices released in the last couple of years including Roku TVs support Airplay.
My experience reflects OP's as well. It's not "ads", but things like searching using the SEARCH button inside a non-Apple app returns results from the Apple store.
If one uses it in a search box inside the app, it works in the local context. Imagine having to teach one's elderly parents what the difference is when the remote only has something like 5 buttons and one of them doesn't work how it's supposed to in a consistent manner. Local context vs. global context in searches is an absurd concept in the purview of the average consumer. Hell - I can't understand it half the time because it's so counterintuitive.
That's shady behavior and prioritizes Apple's own services over EVERY competitor.
Besides its terrible remote (the gen I have, at least), the usability constraints are insulting.
Roku has other severe limitations, but they don't outright manipulate their UI and their user experience in such an underhanded manner.
I'm confused by this too, and prefer Apple TV because it doesn't display ads. In my experience Roku does continue to display "special" ads, even if you turn off all user-controllable options.
I think parent commenters are referring to how the Apple TV app — which is great, but can be avoided by using the Home screen — aggregates all available content, and has a dedicated Apple TV+ tab. In other words, the Apple TV app is also the Apple TV+ app.
I have the latest and most expensive Roku that was available as of a year ago.
The thing struggled to keep sound and video in sync every time I disable or enable captions and then requires a restart to fix the issue.
That’s literally the most basic function this device is supposed to support and it cannot. I have never seen such a problem with any other device I’ve used, including a variety of chrome casts, a fire stick, an Apple TV, an XBox/XBox One, and even XBMC (installed on the original XBox), a variety of RPi solutions, etc.
I have used a Roku Express, Roku Premiere+ and now have 2 4k TCL Roku TVs. I have never had an app crash and use Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max regularly.
On my 4K TCL TV, I've had quite a few issues with the Roku Netflix and Hulu appa... occasionally in Netflix it will just show garbled data whenever you try and play something, or on Hulu it will just refuse to actually start a show (I've noticed this happens mostly with only very specific series...) Solution is usually to restart the TV. Never had any issues while it's actually in the middle of playing anything though.
My second Roku from many years ago (first angry birds one) will crash occasionally using Netflix, will crash hard and reboot itself. Probably a thermal issue. Pretty anemic performance too. I think the software now just stresses the old hardware to the max. But to their credit, it was still receiving updates and worked. Finally retired it and replaced with new version and haven’t had it crash yet.
Are you sure it’s a crash? I used to think my apps were crashing until my remote batteries ran out and I was too lazy to replace them using the phone app instead.
And I noticed the “crashes” disappeared. Turns out there’s a bug with my remote that seems to automatically send a home signal to the device. But it’s also strange because it affected different apps differently.
I rarely saw it with Netflix. But YT was almost guaranteed.
I've experienced the use of about three different Roku TV's and they have a tendency to crash regularly with Netflix. I'm guessing Netflix is sucking up all the limited ram available on these TV's As the App is unbearably sluggish to use.
It is a bit ironic that Roku, which started life as a “Netflix Box” and developed this limited development ecosystem in order to perform on cheap hardware (they always wanted to keep the price under $100) now crashes using Netflix on underpowered devices. Note: as stated above Netflix uses non-public C APIs to run their own engine.
I have used Google TV, Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku. I have used Roku both as a separate device and built into a TV. Out of them all I prefer to use the Roku. I even sold an Apple TV which was given to me and used part of the sale to replace it with a Roku Premiere+ which I found to be a much better experience.