my TV incurred my wrath by having the gall to show me a banner ad while I was in the middle of a game.
so I promptly cut its balls off. (disabled the internet entirely). now it is a dumb TV. and it behaves like a TV. and not an ad machine.
But what device do you use to stream? That’s the dilemma I’m in, streaming sticks and devices are all so spammy.
I just run an old PC plugged in to my TV. It’s been running Windows, but I’m strongly considering switching it to linux now that it seems HDR on linux is getting stable. I might even use SteamOS directly since it’s got a nice interface for controller use.
I didn’t realize Valve released SteamOS to be installed on other devices, that’s killer! I just threw mint on a 15 year old laptop a few weeks ago and VNC into it from my phone to control it as my streaming box.
Louis Rossman has a video about goes Netflix will not play 4K content on Linux. For some reason they limited the video resolution to 720.
Not sure if it’s still an issue. Also I had my brothers login for peacock and it didn’t run on Linux at all.
Now I’m just using a mibox, and it’s pretty good and doesn’t feel spammy.
Honestly, the apple TV is the least spammy by a long shot. I also hear great things about the Nvidia shield, but it is pretty ancient by now. Or use a computer, but of course that’s got its own annoyances. Of course these are all the most expensive options, apparently for a reason.
Apple TV has been reliable for many years. Don’t even have an iPhone or iPad anymore but the OS gets the fuck outta the way and it probably has the least spyware of all the commercial options.
Building your own with like, a Pi or a PC is the best option if you mainly have pirated content… If you stream anything that option isn’t great because your device won’t pass all the DRM checks to play higher definition/4k stuff. (Someone correct me but last I looked into it this was still true)
Join the darkside, and run something like a Raspberry Pi with Kodi, and/or Plex, etc.
I’ve been using a Chromecast for years. I cast whatever I want from my phone. It plays media and that’s it.
I rooted my (Android TV based) smart TV, removed all the tracking (verified with PCAPDroid), and I use Stremio and SmartTube to stream everything. I also use AFWall as a firewall to whitelist only apps that I install to access the internet only through my VPN. I set my DNS to 0.0.0.0 to block all traffic outside of my DNS if my firewall ever fails because Android TV doesn’t have that option unlike regular Android.
I have a Hisense TV if you’re curious. You can also get a TV box that is supported by LineageOS and do the same thing on there.
Whenever Android 10 gets super outdated, I’m hoping that Plasma Bigscreen will be advanced enough to be able to replace it, then I will just use my laptop for TV activities instead. I also would need Linux to get better HDR support (currently it only supports HDR10 and not HDR10+ or Dolby Vision) and for AMD drivers to gain HDMI 2.1 support (which is being blocked by the HDMI forum for stupid reasons. The code has been ready for a while, but AMD isn’t allowed to release it)
I usually hook my Steam Deck up to my TV via a USB hub and HDMI, and then fire something up on Plex, which I keep running on my desktop.
Bonus: Make it a wireless HDMI dongle (which I’m too cheap for but are a thing), and now using it from the couch is even more convenient.
My TV has always been run without the “smarts” ever since I bought it.
That said, recently I’ve replaced my TV Box and Media Box with a N100 Mini PC running Linux and Kodi plus a wireless remote and in addition to that the thing even works as my home server with additional functionality than just that of the devices it replaced.
For a cheaper/easier option try LibreELEC on top one of the devices they support (check the downloads page or the Wiki for the list). It’s basically a Linux distro with Kodi, so open and with none of the privacy intrusion risks of Android. The same kind of wireless remote (example - note that you don’t actually need to use the keyboard on the back or the air mouse) also works here since it just relies on standard shortcut keys of media programs like Kodi so works everywhere (even Android).
However what all these privacy-protecting non-enshittified options have in common is that they’re not fully configured solutions that you just buy and use - as you’ve noticed, if you just buy a streaming stick or device it will likely be at the least “spammy” - and you do have to do some of the work to get them working.
Something like LibreELEC on a mini PC should be the simplest to put together as the hardware comes preconfigured in an actual box and all that’s needed is to install the LibreELEC image from a bootable USB stick, but if you have a bit more technical know-how (not really that much needed, mind you) you can get something like one of the supported Orange Pi boards along with a box for it and it will cost you less than half as much as even a basic Mini PC - those boards are basically using the same chips as Android TV media boxes so you get the same performance without the “spammyness”.
Never connected my LG TV to the internet. I got an Nvidia Shield TV Pro hooked up to it. The default home screen got riddled with ads as well after I got it, but at least you can change it to a third party one and never have to see it again. Otherwise a cheap used Xbox Series S might also work, but is much bigger and arguably less flexible. And if you want a truly privacy-respecting device you might have to go with a Linux mini PC, though that’s much more involved to set up and many commercial streaming services won’t give you the full quality streams you are paying for.
If you want customization and the ability to sideload apps, get an Nvidia Shield. There are custom OSes you can load which remove a lot of the spammy ad BS that the Shield’s default OS has baked in.
If you want ease of use and setup, get an Apple TV. It won’t natively run all of your pirated hentai apps, but it at least has Plex so you can stream custom content from a server if you set one up.
I’ve never given a tv my wifi password.
I’m not any techier than the average millennial. Maybe my trust issues are worse than average. I don’t regret my actions.
Also - my xbox one s may have streamed more video content than provided rocket leaguery…until I tripped on a cord…
Laptop now. Learning how to utilize these new capabilities.
If only our fucking government would do something about this and actually regulate these evil bastards.
First you’d need to ban money from politics and change the voting system to better represent the people living there instead of wealthy elites, but that would just be the start.
Whenever wealthy elites have even a tiny bit of power (as they do in any capitalist system, including social democracies like what the Nordic countries have), they will seize as much control as possible. We saw this happen many times.
Nico Semsrott (Kabarettist and member of the EU parliament. Yes, both) proposed in jest sponsoring placement on the jackets of the political members that got donations by companies.
The jackets should then look like the race overalls from Formula 1 or (not US) football players.
And I am fully supporting this.
Edit:
Like this:
Wait until they hear about cell phones.
And cars, and smart thermostats and smart cameras and smart fridges and routers and literally every fucking thing in your house that is connected to the fucking internet. Every single thing in our homes is a data miner.
How do you learn? I have some ESP32s that I’ve messed around a little bit with, and done some neat stuff…But I don’t have an electronics background at all and I often have trouble even figuring out how to power the damn things safely.
pi-hole ftw. the vast majority of my pi-hole’s DNS drops are from various Roku and Roku-like devices. Also, put all your IoT stuff onto a guest network, or if your gear supports it, on its own VLAN.
See, I just don’t connect it to the network. It complained when I set it up but now it just works as a screen.
I’ve got a raspberry pi steaming my desktop to it with gamestream/sunshine/moonlight, and it’s now as smart as my computer. It can even stream from different computers no matter where they are in the house, watch anything with stremio, and play games from them too. It’s way better than using the youtube or netflix button on the TV, most of the services it offers I don’t use anyway.
But actually pihole does sound like a good idea and maybe I should get that set up one of these days.
So with all the recent drama I learned that some TVs look for other open networks or other same brand TVs in range, and if found will join those networks and still share data.
So not connecting it isn’t enough in all cases.
A pihole wouldn’t solve this either if it was smart enough to know it’s blocked and look elsewhere.
You could set up a dummy LAN with no internet access for the tv. Unless it actually has more than one network card, it would need to be able to have the ability to virtualize network interfaces to connect elsewhere, and I really doubt these TVs are that smart.
I’d be interested to see more information on that. I don’t doubt companies would do that, but some good information on when it happens and how to prevent it would be useful.
I need to replace my router as it’s coming to end of life. I want one with vlan so I can put all my iot on a separate lan. Any recommendations?
I recently picked up a GL-iNet Flint 2 because it’s a powerhouse and one of the easiest routers to flash Open-WRT onto. If you don’t want to mess with firnware flashing, it comes stock with their fork of Open-WRT. So, either way, you have a ton of control over your router, including setting up VLANs and running AdGuard.
Thank you for the reply - you’ve offered a great opportunity to ask another question 😂
I was looking at adguard. Is this something worth the subscription? I was looking at it because it seems to handle a lot of ads, including those on mobile games and stuff. But in my cursory glance, people are saying it’s not safe…
I’ll look at the GL-iNet because a) I want a powerhouse and b) I want nothing to do with flashing firmware haha
I have the Ubiquiti Edgerouter X. I got it mostly because at the time it was on sale 😂 but it seems to have decent support. Note that you will have to get a wireless AP as the Edgerouter is a pure router without WiFi function. Lots of people also like Mikrotik products.
I’ll check out mikrotik - thanks!
I don’t really understand the rest of what you said haha
For consumer grade gear, Ubiquiti is probably the best bet. Unless you want to get into the commercial side of things, but that’s prohibitively expensive for the average person.
Personally I run a GL.iNet system. I like it being completely open source, and the Flint 2 is a workhorse of a router. But as far as ease of use and config, Ubiquiti is certainly more straightforward.
One way to get Congress to act on this would be to remind them of how Robert Bork’s video rental history got released. They very quickly realized that they all had the same sleazy movies on their rental list and passed a law making it illegal to share them.
Call your Congressmen and tell them that their smart TV is sending screenshots of whatever they’re watching back to home base, including stuff that’s not streamed, and there might be swift action.
Better yet, hack Samsung and leak it to the press. That’ll definitely light a fire under them.
