Annoying Rocket Mortgage ads freeze Youtube on Roku

[Reverend Conehead]

All I wanted to do was watch this Dallas Cowboys video:


But, no, on Roku it first plays some dumb Rocket Mortgage ad, which gets STUCK as soon as the ad is done and the video never plays. I tried over and over and it always plays some dumb Rocket Mortgage ad, followed by being stuck, and then I can do nothing in Youtube. I have to hit the Home button in Roku, then restart Youtube, but I can never get that video to play. I've finally resorted to downloading it onto a thumb drive via a Firefox plugin.

If these guys want to guarantee I never use Rocket Mortgage, this is a good way to do it. I'm also considering for the first time finding an ad blocking hack for Roku. I've been fine with ads until now, but when the ads actually prevent you from viewing your content, that's seriously annoying.

**** Rocket Mortgage. I'm never using those *******s.

 

[speedkilz88]

Blocking Advertisments on most Roku devices. (self.Roku)

submitted 1 year ago * by cheatfreak47

After a bit of trial and error I've come up with an easy* method for stopping the advertisements from displaying on Roku- in both the main UI, and in the Youtube Channel.

*It's only easy if you know how to access your router settings.

You need to add a domain block to the following domains in your router to prevent advertisement domains from resolving on devices connected to your home network. (Which would include any roku devices of course as well as anything else on your network)

The Domains you need to block are:

cloudservices.roku.com

doubleclick.net

These two should catch almost everything I find. I know blocking doubleclick.net definitely stops all youtube advertisments- and cloudservices.roku.com seems to stop most of the adverts that show up on the right side of the roku menu. Occasionally one may get through- but I haven't been able to find a domain for it.

I tested this on a TCL Brand Roku SmartTV.

As a bonus- that'll block advertisements on any site using doubleclick for it's advertising on all devices on the network- there are subdomains specifically for youtube and the like- but the known ones don't seem to block youtube ones. If anyone knows the specific ones- feel free to comment them and I'll test it out myself.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

~~~~~~~~

Q: Does blocking cloudservices.roku.com effect <insert channel/service here>?

A: No. Unless someone comes forward with something that is effected I haven't been able to check- it doesn't effect any other services on the Roku- you can run updates, use the store- stream movies and videos from the store- download and browse the channel store, and all of it seems to work without a hitch.

~~~~

Q: The YouTube AdBlock doesn't seem to work! What do I do?

A: Restart your Roku device. What's probably happening here is that the IP address associated with doubleclick.net is stored in your Roku's DNS Cache- and the only way to flush the DNS Cache is to restart it. It's also possible that just restarting the YouTube app will work- I haven't been able to check this extensively.

Got questions? I'll answer them to the best of my ability below. Feel free to ask below. I'll update the thread with new ones as they come. Enjoy your ad free YouTube and Roku menu.

 

[Reverend Conehead]

Thanks, man! I'll give that a try.