Grubb's thoughtspace

(HN inspired update: Movies Anywhere is the thing I was wanting and can't believe it actually exists)

I just bought my first Roku powered TV as an upgrade to the bottom-est bottom tier TV that we bought from Costco a couple years ago. This one is also from Costco, but it's a TCL rather than an Element brand, so it's like the second rung on the ladder. Roku is waaaaay better than the imitation version that was on the Element TV and generally I'm pleased. You can add channels and do all the stuff that I realize now qualifies as the “cord cutting” I've been reading about forever.

We bought an Apple TV probably 4-5 years ago and at some point in the last 12 months it's crapped out on us, so I'm conscripted into plugging my laptop in to the TV to watch any of the dozens of kids movies we've bought on iTunes over that time.

This has always irked me because none of those movies ever worked in the car's DVD player/entertainment system thingy when we go on road trips. It's a shame too, because we've only recently discovered that the headphones that came with the car for the DVD player not only work, but will let Michelle and I listen to Wait, Wait without the loud protestations of the kids (since they can watch a movie while we listen to podcasts). I have to stop at Target and trawl through the discount kid's DVDs for the car.

In many ways the future is damn handy.

But now we got this Roku TV and it comes with Amazon Prime so that's great, but I want to watch one of the movies we bought on iTunes. I don't want to start buying a library of movies on Amazon, because I already have a library of movies on iTunes (that they won't let me watch on anything but an Apple product :| ). Neither of these systems will let me burn to a DVD so we can watch them in the car, and neither of their apps will let me bounce out of my iPhone into the car's V-RCA inputs.

Is it that hard to let things interoperate? Can Apple please just relent and let Roku have an iTunes app? I'm not buying another fucking Apple TV. I'm not. I don't give a shit about games or 4K or an internal drive, I just want to watch the fucking movies I bought (or licensed, fuck you Hollywood). I may as well have to lug around a VHS player to plug in to all these screens, it's absolutely ridiculous and completely anti-customer. You all deserve the eventual death or disruption you suffer.