I was looking to buy a TV for my living room, but many people say that smart TVs are a privacy nightmare. I thought maybe I could buy a smart TV, disconnect it from the internet and plug in a raspberry pi or something. But I really don’t want to control it with a mouse and keyboard. 😵
So do any of you know of any good privacy friendly TV setups? Or know which brands are the least privacy invasive? Thanks ☺️
You could install LibreELEC on the Pi, it’s a distro specifically made for Kodi and that can be controlled with the Kore app from your phone
How much are you willing to spend?
https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/system-on-a-chip
Or just any non smart digital signage display would work
Thanks. I will try libreElec first and if I’m not happy with that I will try the Nvidia shield + LineageOS setup.
Depends on your budget, I guess. My setup consists of a regular Samsung Smart-TV that I have disconnected from the network, connected to a mini-PC from Minisforum running Linux Mint. The reason I got that was mainly for gaming, could get away with a significantly cheaper option if not. I run my own Jellyfin-server for media content (movies, TV and music) and use FreeTube to watch YouTube (which I sync with my laptop and mobile using SyncThing). I do use a wireless foldable and rechargeable keyboard with built in trackpad, but it’s not working as great as I imagined. Corsair used to have a nice media keyboard, but as far as I know they have discontinued it and I haven’t yet found a new one that fits my criteria, so I keep using the foldable one.
As for gaming, I run emulation through RetroArch and Steam in big picture mode. I have four 8BitDo Ultimate controllers in case I get any friends over who are keen on a round of Mario Kart.
Syncing freetube with syncthing?? I use both of those, but I didn’t know there was some way to keep freetube synced across devices. What does that setup look like?
Playlists, history, subscriptions and settings are all stored as .db-files in ~/.config/FreeTube (or whatever path it is if you are using the Flatpak). Sync those :) On FreeTube Android, you have to turn on custom data storage path in the settings first.
Amazing! Thanks so much for the info!
Thank you! I use FreeTube too. Gonna try this 👍
I have installed Kodi on my old laptop and added my Synology Nas as a source, so that I can stream media from there. I really don’t wanna use a keyboard, so I’m probably going to buy a Bluetooth remote.
I have a setup which is not ideal, but I believe improves privacy while preserving convenience: I never connected my TV to the internet, and instead use a MiBox TV S 4K for all my streaming with custom DNS blocking trackers and ads.
I guess there might be other Android TV boxes that allow you to change the DNS server. It might be worth checking a bit around if you decide to go down this route.
In my case, I found this Reddit post and was able to change the DNS server on the MiBox to NextDNS, where I could later activate relevant blocklists (SmartTV, Xiaomi, Google). I also perform monitoring of the domains the MiBox connects to and have blocked a couple manually.
This way I have an AndroidTV experience with the streaming services that I want, and with the domains I don’t want blocked.
I just could not find anything to replace the convenience of a chromecast…. Throwaway google account, VPN, seperate network, that was the best I could do
