Joe
Admin 1 years ago
Welcome to the Community Page!
This community is for members and visitors who want to get help with their OTT and Live Streaming needs, or they want to help other members with Live streaming, OTT, and TV Channels on Roku Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV channels!
Joe
Admin 2 months ago
Why Is Roku Disabling TVs?
Here's a closer look at the company's new "dispute resolution terms" and what you can do to opt out
In recent weeks, about 80 million Roku users in the U.S. who tried to watch TV were met with an ultimatum: Consent to the company’s new “dispute resolution terms” or find something else to do—read a book, perhaps.
Roku customers are furious because the company had essentially disabled their sets.
Indeed, when we turned on a Roku TV in our labs, we couldn’t access the menu to select a program without first clicking “agree” on the pop-up notice announcing the update.
The freeze also has an impact on Roku soundbars, smart home devices, and even security products. That’s right: The products you bought to keep your family safe are being blocked from working, too. The same applies to TVs from brands like Hisense, JVC, Sharp, and TCL that run on Roku’s operating system.
Roku declined to answer specific questions about the move but did send this statement: “Like many companies, Roku updates its terms of service from time to time. When we do, we take steps to make sure customers are informed of the change.”
People can opt out of the terms, the company says, by quickly writing and mailing a physical letter—see details below—but only after agreeing to them in the pop-up notification if they want to use their TV. And many consumers are taking to Reddit and Roku user forums to express outrage that their TVs simply don’t work, even a little, until they cave.
Meanwhile, questions remain, including: What’s lurking in the small print? Why is Roku forcing consumers into forced arbitration agreements? And will Roku replace any busted remote controls people may have thrown across the room in frustration? Here are some answers.
Can I Get My Roku to Work Without Clicking on ‘Agree?’
In short, no. But you can write a letter to then undo the agreement if you act quickly.
So What Did I Just Agree To?
Here’s a hint: The word “arbitration” appears 75 times in the dispute resolution terms, often preceded by “binding.”
A binding arbitration clause requires consumers to agree in advance to resolve any potential legal disputes not in an open courtroom under long-enshrined rules designed to ensure fairness but instead in a private forum where corporate adversaries have many advantages.
These days, most arbitration agreements also expressly forbid consumers from banding together in class-action lawsuits. That’s important, because few people would find a lawyer to sue a company on their own; the dollar amounts involved would just be too small. According to some advocates, blocking those lawsuits is the real aim of arbitration clauses.
But Hasn’t Arbitration Been Around for a Long Time? What’s Different Now?
Yes, mandatory arbitration agreements have grown ubiquitous across the consumer landscape in recent decades. In fact, Roku users had already been required to agree to one to use the company’s products.
But Roku’s latest version adds new language. It appears to be aimed at preventing a relatively new legal tactic, known as mass arbitration, that some consumer-side lawyers have used to fight arbitration clauses and bring disputes back into the sunlight.
In mass arbitration, plaintiffs’ lawyers simultaneously file hundreds or thousands of arbitration claims on behalf of consumers. It’s not the same as a class-action suit because each claim has to be handled individually. But the result is that the defendant company can quickly be hit with millions in up-front fees.
This tactic has effectively been used to push corporate defendants into favorable settlements, and some companies—including Amazon—have eliminated their arbitration clauses altogether as a result.
New arbitration agreements like Roku’s attempt to shift the balance of power back to corporations by making mass arbitration less expensive for companies and more burdensome for consumers. In this case, the updated language breaks up the arbitration process into many stages, stretching it out interminably and taking the teeth out of the mass arbitration effort.
“The rules are cynically tailored to give Roku all the benefits of arbitration that corporations like—no class actions, no jury, and no appeals—but would deny consumers the efficiency and speed they were previously promised in individual arbitration,” says Warren Postman, whose law firm is among the pioneers of mass arbitration but isn’t involved in a dispute with Roku. “Roku’s lawyers have clearly spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the process slow, complex, and burdensome for consumers in the hopes that they will give up on pursuing their rights.”
These policies are currently being challenged in courts around the country. In the meantime, Postman says, they appear designed to have a chilling effect on the ability of consumers to find lawyers to take their cases.
Did You Say That I Can Opt Out?
Yes, there’s a way to opt out—a burdensome one.
First, you have to agree to the updated terms if you want your TV or player to continue working.
Then you have 30 days to mail—yes, an actual written letter, in a stamped envelope—a notice of your decision to opt out to the following address:
General Counsel, Roku Inc.
1701 Junction Court, Suite 100
San Jose, CA 95112
The letter must include your contact info; the specific product models, software, or services you’re writing about; the email address you used to create your Roku account; and a copy of your receipt “if applicable.”
The agreement says that the letter has to be received “within 30 days of you first becoming subject” to these terms. The opt-out clock starts ticking once you receive an email notification from the company, which started going out in late February. It’s not clear if those who opt out will receive a notice that their request has been processed.
We asked Roku if the dispute resolution language changes were made to discourage mass arbitration filings and why it requires consumers to mail a letter instead of simply opting out digitally. The company declined to answer.
Information above is found here : https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/tvs/why-is-roku-disabling-tvs-a1111833568/
Derek Weller
Is anyone opting out or just agreeing to it? Is this an issue for international users?
Joe
Admin 2 months ago
Beware of other channel software offering new improved upgrades that want you to pay additional monthly payments on top of your other paid membership to add categories to your channels and everything we already have!
Joe
Admin 4 months ago
We are still waiting for the developers of our platform to finish their work with the SDK add-on! It has been a bumpy ride and a lot of work for them and their development team to get all the work done with the changes that have been going on over at Roku. As you know I am not the owner of the platform and only provide the service so I have to wait just like you but my fingers are crossed!
Joe
Admin 4 months ago
I have been evaluating and working with a piece of software that the Developer creator Michael Harnad has created for the use of converting Direct Publisher channels to Scenegraph SDK Channels! His work has been amazing and a time saver for those of us hand-coding our SDK Channels! He has made amazing improvements and his software will make your SDK Developing channels a very easy process! I will report more on the software and give all the details for you to use it! You can get the software here and also get support on his GitHub page! https://github.com/rrirower/DP2SceneGraphWizard/releases/latest
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