Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.
This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.
It’s called Kodi. It’s a media centre that organizes and displays a library of your own, locally stored (on a NAS or external hard drive) video files.
It can be extended with add-ons for example for watching YouTube, but of course there are also some piracy add-ons, which Kodi itself doesn’t condone, but can’t do anything against