Blocking ads in Roku launcher

New Roku interface sucks! I will talk about it in my later post in details. The size of ad is increased probably 8x. Before I did not think  it would be worth blocking Roku ad servers because ads were not in your face and not intrusive. Now ad occupies almost half of the screen and is very annoying.

After some research online I found the servers that Roku uses to host its ads. Below is the list of servers that should be blocked to stop Roku from serving ads:

• api.roku.com
• cloudservices.roku.com
• channles.roku.com/images

Most modern routers have some sort of URL filtering abilities. Adding these URLs to the filtering list solves ad problem nicely. So far the only downside that I found is that Hulu Plus starts a bit slower. It maybe trying to hit the server for updates. Another side effect of blocking these links is that the Roku channel store is no longer works. Your loaded channels work OK but you can not get the new channels. This works for me, in fact it is an additional benefit as you child will not be able to browse the channel store and to download any unwanted apps. If you start the app store when these URLs are blocked, upon returning in to the main menu you will not be able to see your apps for a few minutes. This most likely caused by the network timeout and check for application updates.

If you have older Roku software you can block zedo.com domain and that would block all ads in the older Roku software.

I can not take credit for discovering these URLs, I just looked them up on the Internet. I hope this post will save you some time.