What Am I Supposed To Do With This Roku PlayStation Vue Button Now?

Sony's live TV service, PlayStation Vue, is dead. As announced last year, Sony shuttered the service as of January 30, 2020. If you're a subscriber, that means you'll need to find another streaming service if you're committed to cutting the cord. If you're me, you're stuck wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do with this useless button on my Roku remote.

Look at it. It's just sitting there, staring at me, threatening to interrupt what I'm watching should I or my cat accidentally press it. With Vue now dead, there is literally no reason to ever make use of this button, because should I do so, I will only be faced with a reminder of its death and the nagging worry that one day, maybe Steam will no longer exist, or those movies I own through some service will no longer be accessible if my account isn't properly linked.

It's not as if I was using the Vue button prior to this. I've never been a Vue subscriber, instead choosing to use Hulu TV and YouTube TV to get my fix of live basketball and ad-laced, modified-for-your-television reruns of Avengers: Age of Ultron on TNT. But that button at least had potential: Perhaps one day I would click it by mistake and be wooed by the offer of a free trial and find that it offered a superior experience to Hulu or YouTube.

Now, that potential is gone like the carefree days of my childhood, and I'm left with a relic for which I have literally no use--at least the countless old power cords sitting in a bucket might one day gloriously find the devices with which they're meant to be partnered.

I could pry the button off and give it to my cats, one of which would be delighted with it, but he could just as easily be entertained by a twist tie, so it doesn't seem worth the effort. (The button obviously isn't intended to be removed, and I learned my lesson with this sort of thing when I took the safety label off my car's driver-side sun visor.) I could find some way to reprogram the button, but a cursory search suggests that's no easy task; Roku has presumably struck deals to include these branded buttons that don't allow for that. But as the streaming wars heat up and some services don't make the cut long-term, Roku might want to be a little more selective with who ends up on its remotes.