Hello!
Regarding what Gamers Nexus recently disclosed regarding LG TVs in their latest video I think its finally time to do what I can to mitigate it.
I cant root it since the firmware is too new and I cant afford a new TV either. My best bet would be blocking all LG IPs network-wide and disconnecting it from the network. (Although I understand even that might not be enough, its the best I can do right now)
I was thinking of using an old Raspberry to atleast access youtube and my media server, however I dont know what would be a good OS/distro to run this on. Preferably I would want to use something like an old PS4 controller as the remote.
Anyone here who has any suggestions or living room setups to suggest? Any and all tips are welcome.
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This is the setup I’ve been built so far:
I use KonstaKang’s LineageOS Android TV build running on a pi 5: https://konstakang.com/devices/rpi5/LineageOS23-ATV/
No Google play services store at all, I just use ADB to install apps
This is the launcher I use, it’s way nicer than the stock Lineage one: https://github.com/meddouribadis/arclauncher/
I use SmartTube as my YouTube client: https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube/
I have this Bluetooth remote app on my phone for the rare occasion I need to type a password or something: https://f-droid.org/packages/io.github.jqssun.btremote
I also have KDE Connect on both my phone and TV so I can play/pause media from my phone at any time and send files (like new launcher wallpapers) easily without adb.
There’s no best answer right now, Plasma Bigscreen is making good progress.
I have to imagine they’ll soon be putting cellular antennas in the TVs to circumvent all that anyway.
That’ll be expensive so I don’t think it’ll be happening. They’ll be OK with collecting data from the 95% of their customers who don’t know how to block the TV from having internet access.
That’s true even the premium brands won’t halfway decent CPUs in them to keep the giant bloated menus from stuttering.
Not a popular answer, but Apple TV is the best out of the box experience. Zero ads, massive longevity. Mine is like 7 years old and still running the latest tvOS.
If you have the cash and inclination, Nvidia Shield is the hackers choice. Zero hardware upgrades in years tho, but software aplenty.
Just don’t let your smart TV access the internet in any situation, there’s no need. It’s just a stupid display.
Apple TV’s launcher was recently “updated” to showcase whatever latest content is being pushed through Apple’s own services. Which is advertisement.
What ”launcher”? The TV app? You can just move it away. There is no launcher anywhere, every service along with AppleTV+ is just a separate application
Launcher, home screen, app screen, whateveryouwannacallit of an Apple TV unit.
Remember, we’re talking about a replacement for shitty ad-infested “smart” TV interfaces - not an app. Apple’s TV app is not relevant here.
Apple TV the device has no ads, zero, nada.
You are very wrong. We have two Apple TV units. They absolutely have ads now. The homescreen background used to be clear, and now it’s a non-stop showcase of bullshit games, shows, and other nonsense that nobody asked for.
Wtf? Where? I have three and zero ads.
If I select a top row app, that application can “advertise” what’s new on the top half of the screen. That’s it.
If I select a top row app, that application can “advertise” what’s new on the top half of the screen.
Yes. They are advertising to you. That’s what “ad” is short for: “advertisement”.
Apple TV units have ads.
A raspberry pi running Kodi has been serving me well for years.
Easy install paths include LibreELEC and osmc. I believe both are based on debian.
FWIW I chose and have been happy with osmc.
Regardless of the choice, Kodi has a plugin system for things like YouTube, you can access your media via the jellyfin plugin/app, or by pointing Kodi at your media. It has a remote app available on android and iOS, and for the most part just works.
What model pi? I have a 5 running lxqt and it gets overwhelmed streaming YouTube videos to a computer monitor.
Pi4 8gb. FWIW, the 5 is not great for media. I don’t remember the details, but iirc they removed hardware decoding from the 5.
I couldn’t find a working YouTube app on Kodi, nor any of the streaming sites (besides Disney plus oddly) nor Plex. It kinda felt like a real debrid frontend and graveyard of plugins.
For people like me who don’t want to sail the high seas, how do you watch Netflix, Paramount and other subscription services with Kodi? Isn’t it just easier to use a browser at this point?
LibreELEC is definitely not based on Debian. I’m using CoreELEC and it works great too (same thing with different hardware support). It takes some time to understand the UI initially I admit. You’ll want CatchUpTV and Youtube addons (the latter breaks regularly as Google is preventing adblocking).
Old laptop, debian, Firefox, g60s remote. Done.
Im on a 2013 m93p thinkcenter tiny. Still goes hard
Open the TV and pull the wifi antennas off the board.
For the real “TV feeling”, try ErsatzTV. It basically creates multiple real-time streams of TV shows and movies from your media library. You can switch between them like channels.
Abandon ware now
Hey welcome to the hobby!
We personally have the whole TV on a Vlan, so it can’t acces anything at all. While our server/HA can still send a WOL command to it, and jellyfin can stream our movies to it. I run all of it on top of TrueNas, most as an app or else an VM.
I have never tried to set something up for YouTube specifically, since that runs on a Chromecast (for now…)
Let me know how your journey goes
Me personally, I just use a Linux distro (ive used Ubuntu and popos, both have been fine) and use whatever flavor of streaming service I can access. Sometimes you’re hit with lower resolution but I’d rather that than get spied on and be fed ads by my hardware.
Ive also gone back to physical media and use a DVD player. I’m just buying series I like one by one.
This video used a combination of physical media and streaming services. They relied on waydroid and with some workarounds, it worked well for them:
Seriously, I just use my TV as a big computer monitor, connected to a cheap old computer running Linux mint.
Torrent, jellyfin, streaming. Unless you need cable, this works great.
Hell even if you want some kind of cable service, IP TV exists.
IMO no real reason to use android TV or a smart TV right now.
Any Linux distro with Plasma Bigscreen. My TV box is an old laptop I got for free from work running Cachy OS. I have a remote-sized keyboard/trackpad that I use to control it. I mostly just need the arrows, but the whole keyboard is there if I need to go in to the desktop OS.
I could use a recommendation for a big-screen ad-blocking YouTube app though.
I just saw this video a few minutes ago and it seems like a pretty good approach.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nROKp0BpFek
It looks very similar to a post here from several months ago.
I use ONN Android boxes. Fairly inexpensive, but I think it’s difficult to set up without a Google account (you can create a dummy account on the setup).
Side-loading is trivial. Some favorite apps: TizenTube to replace YouTube (or any of a dozen or so frontends), Projectivy launcher to replace the awful default. Add an always on VPN.
There are builds for Android TV lineage os for the raspberry pi. If you are willing to put in some work for alternative apps it’s a great interface with no Google integration. I’ve used kodi before i moved to jellyfin always found the kodi -> jellyfin integration to be clunky. Google TV would be much cleaner
I could never get those Android TV builds to work with CEC which kind of defeats the purpose for me. I’ll try it out with the next update. Librelec had no issues.
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LibreElec, Umbrella addon and a premiumize subscription.
