Sincere, deepest apology to - Roku
No idea what their gigantic corporate footprint is, their political bent and donations are, impact on humanity and environment.
Some years ago in my development I cut the cord of satellite dishes and cable and such, and this is not humble bragging, just my stumbling along my little personal trek not the cosmic journey.
No secret am entirely Low Tech. Like with cars, don't want to think about it just want to get where am going and then bye. But in my electronic odyssey not so easy when having to deal with "Tech Support" for a couple of hours of transferring departments and incomprehensible directions finally ending in granting Remote Takeover whatever.
So a bright spot of cutting the cord was when a friend found Roku stick for me - simple device and setup, incalculably endless venues of things I will never use or need - and never having to think about it beyond changing batteries in distant futures. That was several years ago, and after the first few years I realized I didn't need whatever few different channels or whatever they are and only needed to use YouTube, which is now my sole thing. Everything else is all there, but untouched.
So as tech problems go, eons can pass without a problem but when they happen it's catastrophic, panic time, hours of crisis and mental and physical trauma, inevitably ending in the dreaded Tech Support. But Roku has never been that kind of problem, nothing happening and no need for the dreaded Tech Support.
So always on a weekend, first my very local internet provider service just stopped. Hours of attempting connection stuff and checking back. Provider not available - weekend! So next day, it was back like nothing happened. Fine.
So repeating, YouTube via Roku is my sole everything - history of the Alexander-Roman-history of false religion/mythology, biographical gossip, whatever down the pike. To be clear, all waking time and rolling through sleep time.
So after the internet fracas, guess what happened: The Roku remote in the bedroom stopped responding. The one in the other room worked fine, at first able to control both devices, although later not the bed one. It's an extremely simple device, handful of buttons and of course zero instruction manual things - some buttons completely unknown for use.
Found out from the other remote that I'd been using Roku since 2017. Never a problem. Many hours of trying stuff, finally YouTube videos on the phone, pressing two buttons together for a 20 count, plugging and unplugging, tons of stuff.
My operating principle was that the Remote was worn out. Went to the website and discovered that replacement remotes are readily available, and at incredibly cheap prices ($9), but the kink being different varieties despite all looking alike, with almost all specifying being *only* for Roku TVs. I was getting ready to use the Chat to find out which one was for me.
Then it occurred to me to Search for local retail availabilities, but same thing that everything was for TVs, meaning I still needed to go to Chat. But then it further occurred to me that the Roku streaming stick things are incredibly cheap, so it might just be easier to buy the whole device with its remote locally.
Fine. So was gearing up to go to the retail places, when I acted on a final whim and tried some NEW BATTERIES.
**** Yeah-yeah. Guess what, the remote sprung to life. Yeah-yeah. Thing is that from the start the operating principle had taken over my "mind" that the remote itself was gone and that it wasn't a matter for BATTERIES, which is what is always said to be the first thing to try.
So I had decided that Roku had failed and I was wrong. So, apologies, Roku.
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