Roku launches Howdy, a $2.99 ad-free streaming service | TechCrunch
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The service features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles.
    • Zier@fedia.io
      19·
      5 months ago

      And then $24.99/mo and no commercial free option ever. Plus they send you spam advertising and sell all your personal data. Cha-ching!

    • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      5 months ago

      What I find funny about this is that often the quality of the shit on the service decreases as the price continues to rise.

      To see the end state, just check out trying to stream all of the NFL games of an out of market team. It’s like $1000 a year to watch mostly beer and truck ads broken up by thirty minutes of “football”.

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        5 months ago

        This is my default mindset now. Anytime I see a relevant “new subscription with great value!”, I just…don’t. Because I already know it won’t last, it’ll get sold or bought out, and everything good about it stripped out and scrapped.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    5 months ago

    $2.99 for now

    ad free for now

    This is step 1 of enshittification, offer a product thats cheaper and higher quality than your competition. Once they have a userbase they’ll start tiering their service.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    The same Roku that added mandatory ads to their home screen after selling the product and promising not to do exactly that?

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    5 months ago

    It’s not the $3/month ad free Tubi type service that is the bad part. It is the part where it is attached to Roku. That company has proven the kind of trash they are already.

  • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    not that I’m going to use this service, considering roku’s sleazy history of thrusting ads into anything they build, but looking at the content: eh, lots of solid b material… but half of it has $ next to the title.

    what the fuck is the point of showing you THE CATALOG if half the shit requires more money? I despise this on Amazon as well. If it’s not on the service i’m already subscribed to why the fuck are you cluttering up the UI?

    sure, if people want that, let them turn it on, but by default? scumfucks.

  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    Jellyfin/Plex with the *Arr stack is still the better option. A little bit of setup, but then blissful ad-free self-hosted streaming.

  • network_switch@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    I’m not negative on this. Streaming apps are easy to cancel and move to something else. Roku will probably raise the price someday and when it’s too high, shift off. I checked Roku originals on Wikipedia and they have barely anything significant. A small amount of feature films they have distribution rights to. TV shows, nothing original narrative seems like a hit. Then a bunch of reality shows and like cooking shows.

    They’re a very long way away from being able to get subscribers on the basis of their original content. Not even Sony has a general streaming service and under them are a bunch of hit TV shows and movies along with their decades of back catalog. Not planning to sub but if I’m insanely bored, I can sub for a month and find some old TV show comedy to put in the background