Frog: “Hey, did any of you guys notice the water get a couple degrees hotter?”
Other Frogs: Already boiled alive
Frog with hacked firestick and a pirate subscription: huh?
Frog who downloads media himself and hosts it on his own server: you guys are in water?
Frog who downloads media himself and hosts it on his own server: you guys are in water?
And when that frog realizes that all the other frogs in the water have been caught and eaten already, where do you think the predators are going to turn to next?
You’re right! People should stand against this NOW by not paying for these shitty services!
Wait a minute…
59… 58… 57 …
(Piracy means you are not giving these shitty services your money. Actively not supporting them.)
If someone could explain to me why that comment is getting downvotes?
The point I’m making is that just looking out for yourself is never enough, sooner or later its your turn.
I dunno why the downvotes, but I think your analogy doesn’t quite work. If anything, piracy keeps prices down for paying users - so long as piracy is an option, media services cannot raise their prices to such an obscene level, as the more they do it the more people will turn to piracy. So really pirates are on the front line.
Also, a lot of piracy is still done by torrents, which inherently helps others to pirate themselves - especially if you leave it to seed.
It’s just kind of sad that fewer people do it these days. Just like it’s sad how few people use ad blockers.
If someone could explain to me why that comment is getting downvotes?
It’s absurd. You’ve strained the metaphor by pushing it too far and it makes no sense.
- The boiling frog analogy has nothing to do with predators. Predators do not put live frogs in pots of slowly heating water.
- How exactly do you think ads are going to be forced on people who pirate their media?
- Telling people “stop giving money to trashy companies” is looking out for them. When companies get too greedy and start being shitty towards paying customers, the reaction absolutely should be “we’re going to pirate it instead” so that these practices actively hurt profits.
It’s absurd. You’ve strained the metaphor by pushing it too far and it makes no sense.
And when that frog realizes that all the other frogs in the water have been caught and eaten already, where do you think the predators are going to turn to next?
The point I was trying to make is that at some point it’ll be impossible or nearly impossible to do piracy, that you have to do more than just look out for yourself, you have to vote people into office that’ll pass fair laws for consumers.
I’m not passing judgment on piracy, just that someday there will be a point where DRM will be too much, so you need to fight by other ways than just piracy, like getting the right laws passed.
The point I was trying to make is that at some point it’ll be impossible or nearly impossible to do piracy
Piracy has always been illegal, and has always happened anyway. There is no way to make it impossible. Even Denuvo, the currently best anti-piracy measure, can be cracked and makes the experience worse for paying customers.
you need to fight by other ways than just piracy, like getting the right laws passed.
I don’t live in the country that needs to pass those laws.
Piracy has always been illegal, and has always happened anyway. There is no way to make it impossible
I hope you’re right, but I wouldn’t be so confident in that. As time goes on, and they bake more of the DRM into the hardware directly, it’ll be harder to circumvent (for the common person at the very least).
For example, the Sony PlayStation used to be very hackable, now it’s not (last time I checked).
I don’t live in the country that needs to pass those laws.
I would imagine that, as the world gets more International and interconnected, that might change, at some point the future. If it doesn’t, then good for you.
You are not immune to propaganda
And in particular, even if you avoid being exposed to it, you are still affected by other people being exposed to it.
Why come we are affected by what other douchebags are exposed to?
Because they vote too.
But to adverts. :-p
It’s why I’m struggling really, really hard not to feel to annoyed with the average consumers that still buy this trash instead of supporting less oppressive alternatives.
Like, yeah, people should just be able to buy what they like and not have to concern themselves with the overall market trends they’re helping to entrench… But holy shit is it becoming a serious problem. The customers are what drive the direction of the market, but the customers base isn’t just tech enthusiasts anymore, it’s literally everyone, and they are sleepwalking us all off a god damn cliff. By the time they wake up to start complaining about it, we will already be halfway down.
By the time they wake up to start complaining about it, we will already be halfway down.
They’ll be at the “too big to fail” point, where to try to reverse the trend would crash the economy that’s based on selling customer privacy and information.
I’m still alive.
But only because I ditched Amazon Prime at the end of the month.
Of course you are. Frogs jump out if the water gets too hot regardless how slowly the temperature is rising.
“Wow, I can’t believe these fire sticks are so cheap”
I’m surprised it wasn’t showing ads before. The fire tablets are discounted if they show ads on the lock screen.
Bought an early one. Used it for less than a year.
I still have it. Can they be flashed with Lineage or something?
Only old firmwares
Meh, could be fun to play with. Keep it on a DMZ lab segment.
That one guy hacked a company with a fire stick lol
What? That’s crazy, I’ve never heard this story. Got anything I should search on?
Ever since getting a fire stick I’ve been hooking my laptop up to the tv instead. Now I can play games, watch movies, shows, etc
Etc as in watch porn on the TV? Amiright?
I mean you could do anything you want porn, watch your security cameras, youtube with all your ublock and sponsorblock extensions, possibilities are endless
I hope its possible to transform mine into a Kodi TV or something
The day nvidia shield start doing that shit i’m going straight for Kodi in a mini-pc
I wonder if the pi 5s are up to the task
Even the Pi 4 runs Kodi just fine.
I need something capable of decoding 4K hevc. I want to try to stay away from my server and needing to transcode army’s despecialized edition of starwars
Fair enough. I use an Apple TV and Infuse in my living room on my main TV, so I didn’t even think about how the 4 needed to have things transcoded for it. Infuse natively decodes almost everything I throw at it. How do Harmy’s despecialized compare to 4k77?
4K77 is kind of like a preservation project. They’re trying to make it look as close to as it did in the original theater. Harmy is more about trying to make modern high-res copy without all the “enhancements”.
They’re both fantastic and they both have their place in the world.
Don’t give them ideas!! But I’ve blocked any update for my shield maybe two years ago, so it’s locked in a older version of Android, it works fine and I hope this doesn’t change 😬
Don’t forget about the playstore app updates, these should be set to not autoupdate.
Currently the android TV Launcher app is what shows you the ads on the homescreen. You can easily uninstall this apps update if you upgrade it accidentally.
They don’t need me to get that idea. I might block their update too good tip
Kodi in a mini-pc
That’s the way to go. You can even use something like a Raspberry Pi running LibreELEC, a very lightweight Linux distro which does nothing more than run Kodi.
All my screens just have computer hooked up. Even a debloated windows 10 install is better than any other stick solution. I don’t even need to do special rules on my PiHole lawl
Also, can’t find the thing I need? I’ll just pop onto AR, OR, IPT, whatever and get it. Can’t do that on a shitty stick or shield
To late.
Nvidia Shield is getting Auro 3D audio support, full-screen ads
Source: https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1700478955
The simplest solution right now is to uninstall the upgrade to the Google TV Launcher application under the my apps section in settings for the Nvidia Sheild.
At the same time disable automatic updates in the playstore app, this way the specific TV Launcher app won’t update.
Currently this is the app responsible for showing you ads on your homescreen and playing you full screen ads.
My recommendation is to also downgrade your Nvidia Sheild to 8.2.3, here is a excellent guide below.
I recently installed ProjectIvy launcher and I’ve been happy with it so far and there are no ads now.
You can easily change launchers on the Shield, unlike the Fire TV for instance, which actively blocks it, to get rid of the advertising and garbage.
My Chromecast is doing it’s job fine with app only mode but the day they change it or take away that mode I’ve got some mini PCs ready to have libreelec thrown up on them.
What’s this app only mode you speak of? I am intrigued.
It’s a setting that effectively disables all content recommendations from the home screen, leaving you with nothing but app icons.
Can this be done on stock Android TV on a Sony smart TV?
If you don’t have it on your Sony TV, I’d recommend installing another launcher like FLauncher which effectively does the same thing and gets rid of the garbage.
It’s in settings > accounts and sign in > your Gmail account > apps only mode . I have to scroll down for it on my Chromecast but if you have it on your Sony it should be in there.
Just in time for my laptop’s monitor to crap out and await new life as a HTPC.
Crazy how stupid you have to be to buy Amazon Fire products.
I think the general public isn’t stupid in this instance, I think they’re just cheap. I have a friend who filled his house with Echo speakers and bragged that it was less expensive than a couple HomePods or Sonos speakers. When I pointed out that Alexa made shopping suggestions after a request he made, he kinda brushed it off, but a few months later he disconnected them all when he noticed private conversations around the house were influencing his Amazon recommendations. He’s fortunate enough to have learned from his mistake and been able to afford to fix it. A lot of folks see a 4k streaming device for $30, compare it to something like the Nvidia shield or the Apple TV, and think it’s a great deal. When they find themselves frustrated by advertising a couple days, weeks, or months later (or maybe desensitized to it like a frog in boiling water), it’s too late. They’ve already spent their money, and/or assume that this is just what all streaming devices are like, so why spend more for this experience?
Stupidity? Probably not, just cheapness and an ignorance of how low cost hardware stays low cost.
I agree with the cheapness making it a low barrier to choose, but nvidia is Aldo doing the same thing. Full screen ads. Apple on the other hand is just locked/closed off, so no solid choice for a streaming device.
not just cheap but given away when you buy other items
my parents keep buying Amazon FireTV devices and they are so annoying and underpowered. I want them to just buy an HTPC or something, but they wont listen cuz thats more expensive, even tho they’ve been through multiple Fire TVs cuz they crap out
HTPC?
Home theater pc
There’s issues with PCs as well. Most browsers don’t play full HD nor 4k. I haven’t found a solution for that even though most of our viewing is from an attached gaming PC.
This is so annoying. It goes into a full screen ad as soon as you turn it on, so I babysit the remote and navigate to an app as soon as it turns on, in order to avoid ads. It also does this if you let the TV idle, which I also hate. I might just throw it away and go back to hooking up a laptop to the TV instead. I paid $70-ish bucks for this stupid thing.
Edit: I just remembered that you can hack these fire sticks, so i’ll probably try that first.
Isn’t there some consumer protection law against this, I mean this is really invasive and not doing what you expected it to do when you bought it.
We stopped getting consumer protection laws in the 50s when they were deemed communism.
Anything less than allowing every corporation to plunge their tentacles into the inner depths of your anus is 100% communism.
Chromecast 2. Very cheap and no hassle. Just stream from your phone or computer. Virtually every video streaming app I have ever seen is compatible. There’s a remote app you can use on your phone if you want one of those too.
Does that include the Ultra?
No idea, sorry.
Essentially yes, the Chromecast ultra is basically a more powerful Chromecast 2 that supports 4K (maybe other differences too but idk). I’ve stuck with the ultra because the next upgrade is one of the Chromecast “with Google TV”, which while is nice that you can install / side load apps like SmartTubeNext it also means you get a dedicated remote (I hate having more remotes) and it also has a launcher, which I think is more likely to get ads added to it (not sure if it already does by default or not) compared to the older CC2 / CCUltra which just has a “backdrop” photo slideshow and no launcher UI.
I will absolutely employ a 0 tolerance policy on forced ads.
If I have paid for a service to be ad free and you throw me an ad, I won’t pay for your service.
Hell, I’ll back-charge through my creditor and say I paid for a service that was not delivered.
I’d look through the fine print if it says that they won’t serve ads. Cause I doubt that.
‘we reserve the right to change… (this, that, and everything else)’
The fine print didn’t say I won’t do a chargeback either. Two can play this game.
I’d try to get a refund first unless you never plan to shop on Amazon again.
I meant it as a counterpoint, not something I’d actually do. Especially considering I don’t shop in such places in the first place. But yes, you’re obviously correct.
And that’s the exact reason that less and less people are taking credit cards and only taking debit and ACH.
People, or businesses?
For the rare business where it’s (unfortunately) standard practice e.g. gyms, I just setup a new (free) checking account with my existing bank.
Other than those rare, and “standarized” cases, they’d have to be critical to my ability to keep breathing for me to even consider using a check, or another payment method linked directly to bank, including a debit transaction that requires my PIN, or ever using my debit card online.
Where do you see businesses accepting debit but not credit cards? I’ve only ever seen it accepting both or neither (in the case of neither, you have to physically mail in a check or link up ACH information). And the only time I see ACH or physical payment accepted but not debit/credit is with governmental agencies in the US, because credit/debit costs them money to process while ACH/physical money does not.
I haven’t experienced not taking credit cards, but T-Mobile just got rid of my ten dollar auto pay unless I switch from credit card to debit card.
Same for Verizon
As well as AT&T. Its becoming more and more common.
A montage company just started doing that.
My barber won’t take credit, only debit or cash.
Credit card fee’s most likely.
Its mostly that, but its also the chargeback happy people. Not saying there’s not a time and a place for that, but its rampant when it shouldn’t be.
Probably and I’m perfectly fine with cash or debit only. Screw credit. Just hurts people in the long run
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I hate your opinion but i love your name. You ever drink Bailey’s from a shoe?
Depends, my autopay discounts were on Privacy cards, which I now can’t use. So losing a $20/mo discount becuase no way in hell will I give an actual debit card # or checking info to a company that’s going to lose it in their next breach, nor can I control or cancel them at will.
Depends on the person.
If you’re using credit because you don’t have money, then you’re doing it wrong. Credit only hurts people that don’t understand this.
I put everything on my credit card. I also pay it off every month. So it’s only helped me.
At the cost of people who use it the other way
I’ve never seen a merchant that doesn’t take a credit card. wtf are you talking about
Really? I’ve seen literally thousands, of cash only businesses lol.
I’ve never seen anything like a debit card only or whatever, but cash only businesses are fucking everywhere my dude.
Wild. Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I’ve only been to one or two places in the last many years where I had to use my card instead of Apple Pay.
Cash is strictly for drugs.
not really. it’s that credit cards usually cost a lot more per transaction in fees to the merchant.
Careful of backcharging large companies. They’ll remove your account from all their services. Looking at you Google.
That product tying is reason #3821 we need to start enforcing anti-trust law again.
Stop, I can only get so erect
You get banned retrospectively too. I got banned from Adsense in 2003 and magically got demonetised from YouTube in 2006.
They don’t delete anything, though. They just deny YOU access to it.
Not your computer, not your data. The cloud is just a buzzword for someone else’s computer. Always run local backups.
Currently using a Roku Streambar for all of our streaming needs but if they pull this crap, everything we consume will be downloaded, served on my Plex server and streamed using the gaming PC I have under our TV.
Getting beyond sick of these companies using every measure and device they can to shit ads into our eyes.
Its sad so many people seem to lack pattern recognition and don’t appreciate that Plex is no different than any of these companies, they’re just not as far along on the enshitification cycle.
They’re for-profit, providing a “free” service. They will fuck you and the platform. It’s not an if, it’s a when. They’re already moving in that direction. They’ve made many decisions in recent years that are very obviously stepped in trying warp the product into something more profitable. That will not stop, it only gets worse.
Why not get started on the move to Jellyfin now? You will have to in a few years to avoid bullshit, I promise you.
That’s this weekends project, moving to Jellyfin with all the discover together fuckery they’re pulling. Fuck Plex.
What OS are you using for the gaming pc under your TV? Wanted to do something alike but don’t know what would be the best OS for something like that
Cant say for the other person, but I use linux mint for the gaming pc under the tv (and for every other computer my family uses)
I was looking for something easy and fast to use even if I’m on the couch. Something that i could set to almost look like a smart tv but that could also work with steam link/moonlight
Perhaps kodi might be what you are looking for then
I just read that i could use Moonlight from within Kodi, so I think that would be a nice idea
The best OS for your HTPC is whatever OS you’re comfortable with
As I wrote on the other comment, I was looking for something easy and fast to use even if I’m on the couch. Something that i could set to almost look like a smart tv but that could also work with steam link/moonlight. So honestly I’m comfortable with windows but don’t think it would be the best OS to use for my case
i mostly use windows on the tv, an old laptop and a wireless kb/trackpad. runs cool, even with the lid closed all the time. reliably wakes up outputting to the external ‘monitor’ as long as it hasn’t ‘lost’ its connection to the tv (can’t unplug that input temporarily for another device–would have to flip open the laptop lid later to re-enable the external-only setting), and it’s new enough (skylake) to have decoding in hardware for the formats i’ve been using.
the other hdmi is a linux sff desktop set up similarly, but i haven’t got all the kinks worked out yet.
use firefox (with addons and some userscripts|styles) for online sites, and usb externals or lan connection for ‘saved’ content. shortcuts on the desktop (to web sites, playlists, lan shares) function as the ‘home screen’ or ‘launch’ page.
i do have the tv ‘online’ atm, though, because a lot of pluto ‘live’ tv get watched here, and the tv ‘app’ is faster and more reliable than their web site. the remote has a hotkey for it, too, which goes directly to the last ‘channel’ it was on.
Thanks for the thorough explanation! So you just use windows on the old laptop, no Kodi or anything else?
yup. just windows (or linux) desktop applications and networking. i don’t need a ‘10-foot’ ui; and don’t (atm, anyway) need the remote streaming capabilities or other features of a jellyfin or plex.
the keyboard i have is an original logitech k400. it’s really the piece that makes my setup usable, otherwise i’d have a full-sized separate kb and mouse sitting on the ‘coffee table’ (it’s really just a low-standing tv shelf on wheels) instead.
Yeah that’s a nice keyboard, maybe i’ll think about it because it seems really useful and compact at the same time! Thank you again for everything :)
Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 4 is pretty good, and you can run moonlight from within Kodi. Of course, you have to find a reasonably priced Pi…
EDIT: Also, I use this setup in a spare room, but use an Apple TV in my living room for identical purposes. Though I use Infuse and the actual Steam remote play application.
OH! I didn’t know i could use moonlight from within Kodi! Thanks!
I don’t think Windows 3.1 supports .MP4
My HTPC is on windows 11, set to auto log-in and launch steam big picture. Disabled as much of the Microsoft BS as I can, including the nags to use Onedrive or sub to Office 365 every major update.
Using Unified Remote to control things with my phone and also Parsec/Moonlight for game streaming to other devices.
My media is served from my Unraid server to my devices both locally and remotely.
All working well so far. 👍
I can’t believe there isn’t a good HTPC OS that can handle launching Netflix, prime, plex, whatever.
I haven’t used Kodi in a few year but at least then Kodi and the big apps didn’t play well together.
My Roku is pie holed, I don’t Even get the main screen ads anymore.
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Did you order it on Amazon?
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Noice!
I run a Piehole and don’t see any of the ads on my Fire TVs.
It’s that or because I’m still running the old gen2 firetv box that’s way out of OS support…
Do you know what you had to block to stop the Roku ads?
It came free with one of the standardized block lists. Let me go see what my pi hole is blocking.
I can’t tell exactly what it’s nixing without rebooting it and there’s somebody watching it right now.
Here are the obvious candidates from the Stephen Black block list
Interesting. I’m using nextdns on my router, I had manually blocked ads.roku.com and now have the Stephen Black block list enabled too but I’m still getting ads.
Now that I look through my nextdns logs, I don’t see my roku at all so something seems to be up with my config. Thanks for the help!
If you can’t get it straightened out Hit me up again here and I’ll restart my Roku and see if I can figure out what else it’s hitting
Thanks! I’ve just got it working now - something weird is going on with my ddns setup but manually linking my IP to the nextdns profile did it.
Something to be aware of, some devices will straight ignore your DNS settings in DHCP if they can’t get to their ads. My iPhone 13 did that. I had to block port 53 udp/tcp for everything but the piholes.
I’m sure eventually we’re going to see DNS over https doing the same and I’m 100% ready to mitm all devices that pull that bullshit…
as soon as services and sites start doing the same thing yt does… delivering ads via the same servers and hostnames as the content… pihole and other dns-based solutions lose their effectiveness.
Oh I have my own content. I’ve also been doing this since we were recording off air broadcast TV breaking out commercials from a live stream is nothing but an inconvenience.
i just uncovered a box with over 100 vhs tapes from the days before i switched to pc-based recording. that’ll be a future project after i get done with de-duplicating and consolidating the files i already have.
Coming back from VHS is a bit painful, I’ve done quite a lot of it at this point. (I think I’m up to a few hundred tapes)
I used to use TiVo to record broadcast and cable, export as MPEG, strip the commercials and then turn that into DivX. There are options out there to automatically strip commercials they’re ‘mostly’ good and work way better with digital sources.
The problem with VHS is another layer of substantial loss. If someone recorded it as SLP (and that’s pretty much what we all did back in the day) you’re going to spend a very long time with AI video denoising to get something even remotely watchable. Analog CRT hid so many video sins.
Topaz Labs video AI does a reasonably good job under certain circumstances. When you go to rip your content don’t just rip it all and then worry about it later. Rip a couple of things and then mess with them until you’re happy enough with the results to continue.
Generally speaking the stuff you start with needs to be kind of watchable If you expect it to turn out into something truly watchable. AI is good at cleaning up artifacts in a little snowy grain and straightening out fuzzy edges. But if your source material is coming out as utter disappointment it’s not going to fix it.
Broke: PiHole and a Roku
Woke: PiHole and a regular-ass computer that doesn’t need to be PiHole just to not see ads they’re not even expensive and and can do EVERYTHING why would anyone use a Roku or Amazon stick this run on sentence does not understand
The run on nature of that sentence is unfortunately the least of its transgressions.
That said, I don’t have space or power in the location where my TV is located for anything larger than a Nintendo switch dock. It needs to be silent, low profile, low power.
Roku gives me all that plus it’s 60 frames UHD and HDR. It’s about the size of a slice of bread and capable of decoding most of the things I throw at it, unfortunately It’s a bit picky about 4K streams.
My grown ass PC is in the basement in a rack, It has a 2070 in it but it’s old enough that it can’t quite keep up with 4K live encoding.
So now to be woke I need a real, silent PC to fit in a tiny space. Then I still have to deal with some kind of remote. Most of the options out there honestly don’t look great.
Edot4: IS IT BETTER THAN AMAZON AD SERVER?
a: yee anything is, your Roku is trash
edit: ur rong
Idk man my fam isn’t mad rich yet we have computers on every screen it’s not expensive or difficult app run on sentence also a fucking Roku isn’t doing 60FPS you need SVP for that nothing is recorded in 60 the hobbit shitty trilogy was 48 and people were like “aaaaa soap opera” shit like what the fuck no
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So they hate their customers now openly.
What a shame.
🏴☠️
