Roku LT Operating System open source distribution
blog.roku.com111 points by dpmdpm 15 hours ago
111 points by dpmdpm 15 hours ago
Open source all you want! It doesn't change the fact that they're spying the contents of your screen no matter what input is being used with Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology
Actually they don't want to open source it. This is the result of a lawsuit.
The original idea of open source or rather free software is to bmactually "own" the code in a way that you can modify it to your needs. Guess this is not the case here, then. But I guess also most of android falls in that category that by now. I guess we should be using better,more attributes when describing open source
There's at least:
source available - whether you can read the code
open source - whether you can run (a modified version of) the code on some piece of hardware you own
open hardware - whether the hardware they sell you lets you run modified versions of their code
open contribution - whether they want your modifications
free software - whether your modifications have to be open source too
If it's at least source available, it can have any combination of these.
open hardware to me means that you have access to all of the specifications for building the hardware. Things like when the laptop company Framework posts github repos full of CAD models. Or, initiatives like RISC V.
And, alongside that, there's also open firmware.
Unlocked hardware is maybe what I would call hardware that enables swapping out the software. Although, historically, we didn't even need a term for that, because that was the default aside from outliers like Apple.
"Free software" has always been a misleading term, unfortunately. Maybe calling it "Freedom software" instead would be clearer.
But when you conflate free software with open source, you get confused people cheerleading their own abuse. Android is probably the worst offender here. Google Chrome, VSCode are others that come to mind.
The idea of free software, yes, is to own the code in a way that you can modify it to your needs. The idea of "open source" as a mantra is to confuse and muddle the ideas of free software in order to subvert the ideologists in that camp into supporting and furthering the goals of billionaire corporations. "Open source" as a calling card is intended to kill free software.
you can disable this feature by going to Settings > Privacy > Smart TV Experience.Samsung does that too and use it to sell you stuff, show you ads, and retarget you across devices! (Not saying it’s a good thing, but rather pointing out how common this is)
I'm really sick of the enshittification of smart TV's.
A while after I've had my LG TV, and found every arcane different menu you need to remove all the ads. They started sending me ads via the notification pop-up.
This continued even after finding and removing the consent for advertising (that I'd missed in one of the consent pop-ups.)
I've considered and looked into "dumb" TVs, but I don't think they're for me. I just want one that's not enshittified!
Why not disconnect your smart TV from the internet and use [insert favorite streaming box]?
I use Apple TVs on all my smart TVs and none of them have ever been connected to the internet. No ads with consistent interface across TV brands.
the only good smart tv is one with no network connection. As long as the manufacturer has any control of the compute on your device they will always be pressured to abuse it to grow revenue. You need to budget 200 to 600 additional dollars for a linux box and use that
That's still not good. I recently switched from a Sceptre dumb TV to a top of the line LG OLED model, and it is sooooo slow. Everything takes forever because it's got to wait for the network connection which doesn't exist, play all its stupid animations, run the "AI" bullshit, and attempt an internet connection again.
FWIW I’m pretty happy with my Panasonic OLED (2019 model), it has totally optional smart features (ie it has a Netflix app), works well offline, and turns on instantly.
Is it really enshittification if it was shit from the beginning?
I disagree. I much preferred it when they didn't pretend that TV should be the same as cinema. Even the mistakes are entertaining whereas on modern TV, they tend to stand out.
I just don't bother with television full stop.
I can't say I have either since they tried to change the format to cinema from electronic theatre.
This is not "enshittification". That implies it's gotten worse over time. Smart TVs have been doing this from the beginning.
I disagree. It's definitely gotten worse, notification ads for my TV for example.
LG also didn't used to have home screen ads, but that's a long time ago now.
Smart TVs are the enshittification of regular TVs. An attempt to extract more money from the customer without providing a useful benefit.
Yeahhhh I had to disconnect mine from the internet due to this (I don’t want a display ad on the menu screen when I turn on my TV like WTF, my TV just enshittified itself randomly with an update that added this a year or two ago). Which would be fine but you can’t change the TV menu tile layout if you are disconnected from the internet… Just incredible layers of design stupidity here.
Is this their dongles, TVs, or both?
Both, and the speakerbars. Roku's business model is not selling hardware.
That looks neat, the code appears be mostly in C, seems reasonable documented and is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/rokudev/lt-sdk
I wonder what would make this better (for some use cases at least) than venerable FreeRTOS? Or Zephyr? Or any of the other many, many RTOSes? In particular, the ESP32 comes with top notch documentation and SDKs that will make beginners at least want to stay with Espressif's modified RTOS for a while.
That's also what I was wondering. What problems is this custom RTOS solving that all the other ones don't, or is it in fact just that some Roku engineers decided they needed some job security and having an OS nobody else uses would be a good path to that?
The good thing is, it is not written in Brightscript.
Brightscript could have been worse!
And much, much better, as well
How could it be better? Brightscript is a proprietary language that serves nothing but a low power STB.
> How could it be better?
Personally I'd rather it not exist. Roku would be more pleasant to develop on had they chosen a more popular, existing language as the basis (e.g. Python). Then the task of developing for the platform ~mostly reduces from "learn a new language and a new framework" to just the latter.
I suppose it hasn't inhibited their success, of course.
[1] https://github.com/rokucommunity/brighterscriptOn hackers news a technology focused platform where custom weird languages thrive. You're complaining about a company who the original developer made their own language.
Isn't this exactly how all of the other languages where created?
>that is already used in our industry-changing Roku remote controls.
Why does a remote control require a RTOS?
Roku remotes are sophisticated devices. There are many models, so features vary, but among the possible features are 3.5mm audio output, Bluetooth audio, voice command input, Wi-Fi, infrared, battery charger and other things. Clearly a substantial MCU is present and thus, an RTOS.
Pretty sure they don't have gyroscopes and accelerometers anymore, but they did early on. It was basically a Wii Mote and I played a ton of Angry Birds on my TV.
You can do an IR remote without a RTOS, but as soon as you do BLE you realistically need a RTOS. You have timers for keep-alives, connection states, competing interrupts, CPU-"intensive" tasks that can be preempted (for crypto)
On the topic that will likely pervade this news item: does anyone know the best FOSS TV system
Not sure what exactly you are asking for, but check Jellyfin, it might be part of the answer.
I know it isn't FOSS, but I just plug a $500 Mac mini into my LG TV and use it with a wireless backlit keyboard/trackpad combo I got for $35 off the zon. IINA is a fantastic player. I rarely use the tv os.
I wish they would offer the instruction in text as well rather than only in videos. Videos become stale and can't easily be used as a reference.
Get an AI to transcribe the videos for you and then ask it to create a manual from the transcription.
I don't know if I'm missing something but from what I can see...
They don't seem to have any written documentation online, not even a list of features. They seem to have some doxygen docs on the repo, but they're not built anywhere. The only information ready to check are YouTube videos. The developer forum link they have in the top right doesn't work (I think since January they killed their forums).
It's a chore just to know what does it do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Does this meaningfully allow a person to push a modified version to their own TV without using a screwdriver?
From the front page of the site at least, no. This isn't for the Roku device itself (which is almost certainly running some flavour of Linux), its for peripherals like the remote control which will have much less powerful processors.
Please someone make a Roku remote with a physical keyboard.
You can probably do it with a keyboard paired to a server/RPi that emits the keystrokes to the Roku ECP API, if having that second device is acceptable.
Rokus have a rest api that accept all the navigation and text inputs you'd do with the remote.
This might be possible now. I think the better option is having a hardware device that acts a bridge between a bluetooth keyboard and the Roku.
On my rokus, I am able to use my phone as a remote via the roku app. This includes typing on mobile via my phone's keyboard. Makes logging into things much easier.
AppleTV is like that too. It's nice being able to use the password manager on my phone rather than have try to enter some long complicated password a letter at a time.
[flagged]
[flagged]