In 2018, Terri Else made the kind of routine purchase that millions of Americans make each year: a TCL Roku TV. It probably took twenty minutes to set up a flat screen and a remote on a Saturday afternoon. It had died by 2023. Not sluggish. Not glitchy. Dead. The digital equivalent of a car that just won’t turn over one morning: a white flash, a black screen, and then nothing. She claims that TCL would not uphold the warranty. Thus, she purchased an additional one. That one also stopped functioning within a year.
A proposed class action lawsuit in the Central District of California centers on a small, almost unremarkable story that accuses Roku and TCL of pushing software updates that are so flawed that they brick the very TVs they were intended to improve. The Roku Select, Roku Plus, and TCL’s 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-Series TVs running Roku OS are listed in the complaint, which was submitted earlier this month. For its part, Roku referred to the allegations as “meritless.” TCL remained silent, which speaks for itself.
The story grows if you spend even a short while on Reddit. A TV that functioned properly for a few years, an update that came in the middle of the night, and then the gradual decline into screen flashes, blackouts, and never-ending restart loops are all described in threads with hundreds of comments. A commenter suggested that people do a factory reset and never use the internet again. That’s the current workaround. Purchase a smart TV, then turn it off.
As we watch this develop, it seems like we’ve quietly come to terms with something peculiar about contemporary appliances. In someone’s garage, a 1995 refrigerator is still humming. A lawsuit is required for a 2018 TV to continue operating. Updates to software were meant to increase, not decrease, the lifespan of devices. However, Roku, a business founded on the promise of a straightforward, dependable streaming experience, is now accused of doing the exact opposite to its own hardware.
Roku’s denial is unwavering, and the legal bar for a class action is high. Whether the case will be certified, much less won, is still up in the air. However, the lawsuit is not isolated. Amazon received a nearly identical complaint about its Fire TV devices just a month prior, alleging planned obsolescence as well. Two of the biggest names in American streaming are accused of using code to destroy their own products. It’s difficult not to interpret that as a pattern, or at least the initial form of one.
Naturally, investors will be watching to see if this damages Roku’s reputation. Software dependability has already raised concerns about the company’s stock. The majority of Roku’s revenue comes from platform fees and advertising rather than the TVs themselves, but trust is the unseen currency that keeps the whole thing afloat. If you lose that, the rest will follow.
Else’s TV is currently sitting somewhere, silent and dark, a tiny piece of evidence in a much larger dispute over who actually owns a device after it is purchased. What comes next will be decided by the court. Meanwhile, the Reddit threads continue to expand.
