No one was more excited than I to see that the ACC Digital Network had created a Roku channel. And my excitement lasted just long enough to download the channel and fire up highlights of former Duke basketball player Mike Dunleavy. Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ended.
Where to start? With the video quality? Horrific. How about the overall selection of clips? Lame. And then there’s my favorite: the advertising.
You see, the ACC Digital Network has partnered with a company called adRise, which describes itself as “the largest content distribution and advertising monetization engine for streaming and connected TV devices.” The “monetization engine” throws up an advertisement before every single clip available on the ACC channel. It doesn’t matter if the clip is 30 seconds, or if you exited out of a clip and are trying to return to resume play. There’s an ad. And not just any ad, but the same ad, over and over and over. (Thanks, Progressive lady.)
It’s 2013. Streaming video companies should know by now not to over-saturate content with pre-roll ads, or to stock only a single commercial in the ad inventory. That’s not monetization. It’s scaring your audience away.
In good news, however, the ACC network says it plans to expand from the Roku to other streaming boxes and smart TV platforms. I can’t wait.
That’s disappointing. I haven’t played around with the ACC iOS app too much, do you know if it has the same content w/o the ads?
And if you’re looking to watch Dunleavy’s 3s vs Arizona, check out http://vault.ncaa.com/. Good stuff.
Roku is still on the market? My wife and I tried that overhyped overpriced POS years ago. First major problem was getting it to locate and read the wireless signal from our modem. The instructions looked as if they had been translated into English from Chinese via Klingon. No help with the printed “instructions” so on to the tech support line… errrmmm, yeah! Two hours on the phone with a “tech support” fool who sounded as if he failed his ESL class twice and we were no closer to experiencing the magic of Roku than we were at the beginning of the phone call. Googling to a third party site with no connection to Roku was the only way to get comprehensible instructions. So, after a mere five hours of fu###ng around, we were connected. It took us almost a whole minute to realize something else: Roku is a great deal like basic cable providing hundreds of channels of garbage – with one major difference: We discovered that “basic Roku” was perfect if one wished to learn either Punjabi or Spanish by total immersion because that was all that turned up on our channel scans. Hundreds and hundreds of foreign language channels… oh yeah, there *was* one channel with English programming. It was showing ancient grade Z movies and TV shows which had never seen or heard the hand of a digital restoration so every splice, every pop, every film scratch was faithfully transmitted to our HDTV and audio system. Fun? NO! All the video sites we can instantly access on our computers don’t turn up on Roku: YouTube, Motion Empire, Blinkx, Warner Brothers, CBS, nothing. You can’t even access free Hulu! But try and use a debit card to pay for any content worth spending time on and get the card number thrown back at you with digital contempt. I couldn’t return that stupid Roku box fast enough to satisfy me. You’ll never convince me that any positive review for that garbage isn’t factory-distributed propaganda created by Roku.
Bent Ears, get bent. The Roku is still around, and a market leader in the space. Your experience is atypical, and sounds like you aren’t really the target market for an IPTV device. It also sounds like you don’t know WTF you’re talking about.
OK, I really couldn’t care less about ACC TV on Roku. Just felt like punching a troll.
Yes, there are lemon Roku’s and lemon Roku experiences, but overall it had MANY converts and ardent lovers including some of the most trusted and respected institutions and individuals on the web. It it TOPS for a reason, and is even, I would suggest, the most RELIABLE of all the streaming devices out there. I am sorry you had a bad experience, but even TiVo, and great DVR’s can give you a lemon experience, but over all, there is a reason why TiVo (well, excepting the Premier :))and Genie and Hopper have believers and promoters. Further, any experience witn WiFi is far more likely to be a lemon experience. Roku is #1 among all streamers in sales. That should tell us something.
Roku 3 is currently my favorite box… despite the vast majority of the 1000+ channels sucking. If only they could add a USB tuner, like WDTV Live and maybe a 20 minute buffer for live TV pausing. That’d be the greatest. Then again, I’m awaiting Aereo here in DC. I’m told picture quality isn’t the greatest, but cloud DVR convenience could trump pq? Hm.
Watchespn would be infinitely more useful than the ACC channel. Is it just for clips? With espn3 you could watch just about every ACC game in football and basketball that aren’t carried locally.