No the Home Screen ads were added in an update 2.5ish years ago. I know this because that is when I decided to disconnect my Roku tv from the internet rather than see ads when I turn my tv on.

I had been a pretty big Roku fan before that point as I had worked with them back in ~2017 and knew how locked down and sewn up they kept customer data, and only shared it in a very anonymized way. Obviously the situation has degraded in the recent years, and caused me to brick the functionality of a very expensive device.

Seems like it’s impossible to have a smart tv now that actually respects privacy, so back to dumb tvs and connections to pcs?