Not mine. My TV’s my absolute digital bitch. It lets me do anything I want AND nothing, unlike Warren Buffet’s kids
Server to host media. Super easy to set up and can run on a Windows client. Don’t even need an independent server to run it on. https://jellyfin.org/
https://kodi.tv/ (or https://libreelec.tv/ for an OS that boots to just Kodi)
Application to watch through Kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellycon
Client to run Kodi on: MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick https://a.co/d/1EGnekO
If you didn’t want to install LibreELEC to the PC and just want to keep Windows, you could run Kodi in Kiosk mode and it would boot directly to it just like LibreELEC.
I have not watched normal TV in years, let alone an ad on my TV. I spoke to my neighbors one day and figured out they were paying ~$60 a month for all their streaming services, and they’re STILL getting ads…
Stuff like this is unacceptable, and I refuse to partake in the lunacy and delusion that is modern television.
Also Plex as an alternative to Jellyfin with a way better UI and better app support
I bought a lifetime plex pass once and have no issues since. HW encoding works out of the box, the scanners do their job and I can use their apps on every platform. I had to disable the Plex offered free movies once, the horror. Don’t act like Plex is some Google level shit of annoyance or ‘enshittification’.
Jellyfin on the other hand has atrocious UI that basically screams the absence of any sort of UI designer into your face, the HW encoding is a mess to set up and the apps are a jungle of different 3rd party apps…
I pity the poor fool who sets up their smart TV instead of just grabbing an HDMI cable and plugging in their computer.
Ive been pretty happy so far with roku and blocking stuff with pihole, but every day I am more and more tempted to build a media pc…
This is the way to go. I tried pihole using Samsung smart features, but if you block the telemetry eventually your apps stop working and you can’t get them working again without doing a factory reset with blocking down. It’s prohibitively a pain in the ass, taking hours every time YouTube stops working.
Never had any issues with Roku on pihole.
I believe one reason maybe that the software is so garbage it can’t handle not being able to submit all its logging information when otherwise the system thinks it’s online.
Currently trying that for the same reasons you are tempted. Roku was passable and even a good choice years ago and it’s on a precipitous race to the bottom now.
Problem for me currently is finding a non windows solution that is navigable from a controller or remote is … tough. Steam, emulation station, Kodi all have reasonable interfaces but there seems to be a gap in a unified launcher solution (as well as a decent ‘app’ for accessing YouTube.) I really don’t want to spin up a single VM for each activity when they all in theory should play nice together.
My solution to this problem is Jellyfin, fed by usenet-backed sonarr/radar and Tubesync to pull in YouTube channel subscriptions. Those are added to a Jellyfin library which is accessible right next to movies and tv shows.
This is all through the Jellyfin app on a 2019 Nvidia Shield Pro. It’s a perfect couch-friendly setup. For just regular YouTube browsing, SmartTube can be installed on the Shield and on your phone. You can then cast to the SmartTube app on the Shield instead of to the YouTube app.
Exactly what I’ve been looking for too, and have come up wanting. I got excited recently about finding KDE Plasma Big Screen, but then it falls at the last hurdle on the app selection.
That is beyond the capabilities of normies.
My wife would agree with this:
And I’ve got Plex running on an always on NAS.
Lmao that greentext was literally me before I finally set up arrstack. One of the best investments of my time, it has definitely paid off over many years of just having things automatically download.
My Arr’s are unreliable. The trackers they search keep becoming unavailable for some reason. Flaresolver doesn’t seem to work with my VPN setup. Sometimes the file it finds to download turns out to be 54GB for a 1080p movie and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on there either. I haven’t got the time to look into Usenet any time soon. If I try to deploy something and it doesn’t work 100% right off the bat then the “wife acceptance factor” drops to zero, so I’ve got to be damn certain before I start tinkering.
This comes off the back of a device on my network causing router issues and making Plex unreliable for a couple of weeks. By the time I diagnosed and fixed the issue, the damage was done and wife acceptance factor was lost.
That is my preference, but my wife says she prefers only one step (turning on and using the TV) over multiple (turning on the TV, turning on the secondary system and using multiple controllers) so we go with the simpler setup per her request.
I did put my TVs on a Wi-Fi network separate from my main one so, while they do show ads as much as my pihole allows, at least they’re theoretically only spying on each other.
We had a samsung 4k curved tv that has ads on the input menu, and the ad space is filled with a samsung ad if the set has never connected to the internet.
It also harasses you with a pop up about connecting occasionally on startup.
It’s bearable but absurd. We returned it on principle
Dumb monitor > smart TV.
Mine is a monitor and nothing more.
Bonus points for buying a smart TV to get the heavily discounted price and never connecting it to the internet.
Some of the brands have been reported to not allow you to do anything until it has an internet connection to do its “initial setup” (or some such excuse).
I hope I can find a list of which ones to avoid when I have to eventually replace my old dumb TV.
Then right back to the store it goes and labelled as defective so it gets tossed resulting in losses for all companies involved.
