I'm glad other systems offer it as an option for people who enjoy it. I can't fathom the decision process that permanently enabled it for everyone.
You’re really gonna hate the fact that 99% of people think this is what stuff on their digital television is supposed to look like.
(Which is exactly why Roku did it)
I'm gonna need to see some data on that. The nearly universally description I hear from regular, non-techie people is "my TV started looking weird", especially when they're watching content they're familiar with. If a brand new movie or show looked like this and that's the only way I'd ever seen it, fine, so be it. I remember seeing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in soap opera mode on our then-new TV and thinking "WTF is this and how do I turn it off?". That's not what Indiana Jones movies are supposed to look like.
It’s enabled by default on all smart TVs. Q.E.D.
Pardon me, it makes zero sense at all.
Both your assumptions (that we're an extreme minority, and that Roku thinks that way) seem to be only supported by the conclusion you make from them.
All that said, putting the feature in enabled by default and seeing how many people end up disabling it would be how they could be grounded in reality and avoid creating a shitstorm.
Put another way, the best explanation for a metric not being collected is that it's not going to reflect well on the decision-makers.
A way more realistic scenario than what you suggest (i.e. that it doesn't hurt Roku, or even makes business sense) is that it's an outcome of a promotion-driven development.
Someone's getting a promotion for launching that "feature", and statistics that show that people turn it off the moment they realize it's there wouldn't bode well with that.
Instead, it appears that the new feature has a 100% adoption rate among the targeted userbase.
Modern problems require modern solutions, you know.
I said yeah, I hate that too, give me a few minutes to fix it, believe me I don’t want it.
Most people probably don't notice it, or just think "that's the way TVs are now".