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Can i pleace find a decent TV without smart-capabilitys? I just want HDMI thats it
A Sharp Aquos TV from the late 2000s, pre-Hisense days. We have a 42" model from ~2007. It’s only 1080p (which is honestly just fine for its size and our usage), but there’s plenty of I/O for modern and legacy equipment, and lots of configuration options. It is an absolute monster at 75 lbs, but an incredibly high quality unit nonetheless, especially considering it’s age. I’ve owned it since 2019 and it’s needed zero repairs or anything.
For comparison, we also have a much newer 55" curved Samsung TV (in our basement, wall-mounted up high) which has already needed a backlight driver board replacement. Luckily that was only $50, but still, I expect better.
the largest problem with older TV’s isnt the resolution. even on my 75" its hard to tell the difference between 4k and 1080p… But HDR is amazing, it really blows me away each time a scene lights up!
That’s a fair point. HDR is quite nice, I use it a lot on my Pixel. The TV I mentioned does have dynamic brightness, but that’s over the whole TV, not really equivalent to HDR.
Buy a commercial signage display. It’s just a TV without the smart garbage.
Or, get a projector :)
Commercial displays
I must not be looking at the right thing. All I’m finding are expensive displays that have all this fancy scheduling, web surfing, etc. built into it.
LG and samdung make commercial displays, as well as monitors (no speakers or tv tuners generally)
Try this brand https://www.sceptre.com/
Are they actually any good though? I was looking at a 1440p Sceptre monitor for my PC, and a lot of reviews mentioned huge bezels, dead pixels, and other issues…
Oh, these are just Wide-screen Gaming monitors though?
Cheap computer monitor works well for me.
Just a heads up that the Smart Cancer has already begun infecting PC monitors. Samsung makes Smart Monitors.
It won’t be long before there are no longer Dumb Monitors.
I’ve had luck with just not giving a smart TV my wifi password.
That’s what I do
I’m looking to upgrade the living room TV soon, and this is what I plan to do.
I have heard though that some TVs insist on an Internet connection, so do your research and/or be sure there is a good return policy.
Ah ok, good to know! Thanks!
A buddy sent me this recently. I’m intrigues. https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=46513
Don’t give your TV wifi access, use a separate device to watch stuff (Chromecast, FireTV, Android box, etc…)
Yeah, that was my approach, but the forced ads are also on the roku stick :(
Yeah about time for me to switch to something else :/
Is there anything that’s a better alternative?
I’m looking into alternatives. So far Kodi is the front runner for my use. I have not decided on whether to replace roku units with raspberri pi running kodi or try the jailbreaking roku route.
Some people have mentioned apple TV, for now that at least isn’t riddled with ads. Others have mentioned getting android sticks, but I’m not sure how smooth that process is (or how well they work with remotes).
Wish it had more apps, but Apple TV is pretty solid. With the Steam link app, it’s also good for couch gaming on your pc.
I just dock my steam deck
We use Moonlight instead of Steam Link. It requires a little more setting up at the PC end, but overall seems to be a more smooth result.
I’ll take a look, but I haven’t noticed any performance issues with Steam link.
Moonlight blows steam out of the water. I can’t even tell I’m streaming when I use it.
Can you give me some examples for what’s really all that noticeable?
Witch brands have moonlight available natively? I think I remember Samsung. Anything else? LG doesn’t…
I can only speak for Apple TV, I’m afraid.
Anything that runs android, but still, just get an old laptop with a broken screen and duct tape it to the back of the screen
Can we install stuff outside of the play store? Like NewPipe?
Technically you can get commercial TVs but many companies stopped selling them. They are literally the new screen tech with no “Smart” capabilities. They are also much cheaper than their smart counterparts.
The only reason I still use my roku is because it has sound leveling capabilities that is much better than anything else I have. I use my PC for just about everything but recently Sling stopped working on the PC or at least the DVR is directing me to download some app? Also Paramount doesn’t handle 60fps content (sports) on the PC very well, it stutters a lot.
Windows has sound leveling but I haven’t had much luck with it when its really needed. My receiver is old and has only rudimentary sound leveling.
What’s the best alternative? I have a fire cube, and I’m getting sick of it. Apple TV? Is there a FOSS solution that’s close to the same quality interface?
The best is unironically to pirate and use something like Kodi on a SBC that can run libreElec.
TL; DR - No. But actually maybe, depending on what you’re looking for and what you can put up with.
Are you looking to access streaming services? Or are you okay with self-hosting?
The FOSS solutions that support streaming services are pretty janky IMO because they don’t have support from the service, so you’re probably better off hooking up a laptop running Linux and access stuff in a browser. I had Netflix working through Kodi on a Raspberry Pi, for example, but like I said, it was super janky. Maybe it’s better now, idk, but check out OpenELEC and Kodi. You’ll need some hardware to run it on.
If you can self-host your videos, Jellyfin is pretty great, and I think there are a couple more options. You’ll need to get the content yourself though and connect it to the TV somehow (e.g. the Jellyfin app if you have a smart TV).
AppleTV is very easy, and what I did after Roku, then the Chrome stick added ads. I haven’t seen any ads in the AppleTV home screens.
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen
A tv-like front end for Linux but the project doesn’t see enough support yet
Some good options already listed. But here’s another.
Hey an Android TV box (Onn brand or similar) and install an open source launcher on it, like Projectivity. You have to use adb to disable the default launcher after the new launcher is installed, otherwise it keeps defaulting back to the default one. But once don’t it’s smooth sailing. You have a dedicated streaming device with a remote control and a nice UI with zero ads on the home screen.
I have a Raspberry Pi 500 running PiOS that works well like a computer to just play things in browser. No ads or anything of course. But also no casting from a phone or anything
Bought a Roku back in 2020 or 2021 because the Apple TV was more expensive.
Now I know why.
For what it is worth, I have Roku set up as a REGEX in my Pi-hole so for the most part, any of this nonsense is completely blocked on my Roku.
Needless to say, I shouldn’t have to do this shit with a device I paid for and mainly use for Plex streaming.
I know it’s being lazy. But if you have the regex you could post, I’d appreciate it.
I had this happen to me just a few days ago. Within the hour I bought an Nvidia shield and came up with a plan to install the projectivy launcher and button remapper.
I’m mostly happy, it’s much more snappy but it’s missing a couple apps I used on the Roku (WGN and Marquee Sports). At least I can use my own pictures for the background and screensavers.
I have a vero-V but honestly the apps are lack luster. Its amazing if you have your own library of content. I saw my first homescreen add on roku yesterday. I am pissed.
I totally get it I could definitely bypass the ads. However the point is that they are doing it at all. I dont want to use their service if this is going to be their strategy.
I have a Roku ultra in my kid’s room.
I do not want her subjected to ads when she turns on the TV.
This is unacceptable to me and I will be replacing all my Rokus immediately.
pirate, or you’ll just be doing the same fucking thing again in two years.
good news: pi’s can do everything a roku does, plus any you install of: retro gaming, libreoffice, web browsing, shit tons of educational software, IDE’s, and teaching her computers.
I have a 200+TB library for my Plex and jellyfin instances. The Roku was just a family friendly launcher and remote. I bought them when you could still disable ads in the secret menus and most of the Roku BS is blocked by a pair of piholes, but I’ve gotten annoyed chasing new urls to blacklist.
It’s DRM for the other app bullshit that becomes a hindrance for going the Kodi route. There really isn’t a good alternative that I’ve found. Linux boxes will limit some services to 720p and jt’s mostly baseball and local news programs that I’ll lose.
For the news, I need to look at something like hdhomerun or something else I can pair with an OTA antenna.
For baseball, not much other than the absolute mess that live streaming sports is. Doable, sure. But a pita and sketchy last I looked into it. My season ticket comes with MLB.tv, but the irony is that I’m “in network” so all my teams games are blacked out for me. I had previously created a VPN tunnel and routed one of my Rokus to a different state to watch it. But it’s not a user friendly experience.
For games, I already have a batocera box running on an old dell thin client with way more power than a pi, and it has Kodi on it. But the UI/UX still sucks.
Cabernet with daddylive plugin, this can emulate hdhomerun on your network, add this to plex/Jellyfin for live tv. https://thedaddy/ . to Check the list and see if these 24/7 channel streams work for you.
I integrated these into plex and are able to watch live tv the way I want. Cabernet is a docker container on my network, ensure you set the ip address to the server vs the docker IP, in the Cabernet web ui settings.If you want to just watch streams off that site, I recommend using brave browser, turn on all the ad block capability and set it to strict and even import the hagezi multi pro blocklist in brave. The amount of pop ups on that site is horrible. But brave smooths them out and streams are fairly reliable. Plenty of sports.
I just got an HDHomeRun that I use with an antenna and love it. I use Mac and they are one of the only boxes that works on Mac.
They don’t have a native Linux client, but you can use VLC supposedly: https://info.hdhomerun.com/info/linux
You can connect your HDHomeRun with Plex too. It’s really a nice setup. Plex can work like a DVR to record live channels and even has some capability to remove commercials. I’ve started letting NFL games be DVR’d and commercials stripped before watching the game. It’s a much better experience if you can tolerate the delay.
I use an Nividia shield that I’ve had for about 5 years. Have an alternate ad free launcher enabled. Still works really well. I use it mostly with Kodi streaming from SMB, some Jellyfin though I have Jellyfin hosted on a Pi4 so video quality is somewhat lacking. The 4k upscaling still works very well and is somewhat unique among streaming boxes
mostly seems like you’ve tested stuff and got your shit together.
but the 720p limit is surprising to me. any idea why this happens?
DRM. They don’t like how open Linux can be so to combat people using it for pirating their content the companies restrict it.
For instance, Netflix is capped at 720p on Linux unless you are on Opera, apparently.
oh, you’re not sailing the high seas. got it.
Ughhh just unsubscibe
Libreelec on raspberry pi 4 (Kodi) works for me but it really needs a new YouTube app. That’s the only issue really
- Disconnect from network
- Factory reset
- Use HDMI to plug into a device that actually respects your privacy and does what you want (Jellyfin, Plex, Pihole for even more goodness, and simply run other streaming services via privacy enhanced browser)
- Enjoy life without enshittified asshole OS no one asked for by going back to a time that was better.
EDIT: I haven’t tested this as of yet, but it seems like a decent option for converting and old PC (or if you have a RaspPi) into a media platform with comparable functionality: https://arcadian.cloud/pi/2023/04/27/easily-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-smart-tv/
Think of any invasive streaming devices in your house. Samsung, Google Chromecast, ATV, LG etc. Roku is by far the worst.
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Roku is bad, I have one older Roku ““smart”” tv that I just block from accessing the internet entirely, and use a shield with a custom launcher instead.
Oh please do tell more
So, I use regex to block all Roku domains on my network via pihole:
(ads|logs|cloudservices|image|images|web|prod.mobile|wwwimg|captive|customer-feedbacks|amoeba|amoeba2|sr|giga.sb|cs).roku(.admeasurement)*.com$Then, possibly overkill due to the above, I used OpnSense firewall rules to block all traffic from my Roku tv. I think I just got fed up with seeing Roku spam in my pihole, as the above regex seems to completely “break” Roku.
After that, I set up FLauncher (following the method #2 instructions on the gitlab page) on my shield. This makes it so I only see the Roku launcher for a few seconds while the shield starts up, and then I’m dropped straight into flauncher. I chose flauncher because it’s very simple and barebones, so you might want to explore other options if you want more advanced features. I don’t really need those features since I’m usually using an app anyway.
Note that I did all of that after the tv was configured and set up, YMMV if it’s a brand new tv as it may need to call home to do the initial set up.
Depending on the model there’s also a dev menu that disables some phoning home/connectivity shit
Shoutout to the PiHole team!
Why is your Roku TV even on the Wi-Fi if you just block its internet?
They have models that blink the large white LED light until it’s connected to WiFi. Annoying as hell.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that - mine does do this, and the LED is right in the bottom middle, and it’s super bright.
Sounds like a job for some black tape.
You can fix that in 3 seconds with a piece of electrical tape.
Yeah, I suppose. I don’t use the rock UI, it goes straight into the Apple TV when powered on so I don’t really care that much.
It does until it doesn’t. Did you look at the OP?
You using an OTA tuner with some HD Homerun app or anything? Boooo needing Roku’s interface for antenna TV (on Roku smart TVs) cuz Apple didn’t solve for that (why would they I guess, $treamers as they are)
It didn’t look like there was any fantastic super easy OTA solution for Apple TV. Fine for us but maybe not the elderly. IDK
It probably doesn’t need to be - but it was required to set up. Before I had my shield, I allowed local connections for local streaming, but you are correct, it’s probably no longer necessary.
Had no idea FLauncher existed. Thank you so much
Thanks! I have nothing brand new as I am le poor :)
Is there any point in getting anything above the bottom tier Shield? Just trying to use it to replace my chromecast/stream tv and youtube
You should not buy a Shield. They haven’t been updated since…2019? And there’s really no reason to. Get the $20 WalMart one.
They just put out a huge update for the shield. Mine still plays the vast majority of things perfectly, even hevc and 4k content. I am perfectly happy with my shield pro. I’d buy one again if the current one shits the bed.
What are my other options? Apple TV and what else? Everything else is ad ridden underpowered and lacking licenses to play media.
They just put out a huge update
I obviously meant a hardware update.
What are my other options?
Anything that runs on Android TV?
Everything else is ad ridden
And the Shield doesn’t have ads? You can bypass all the ads by installing productivity launcher, same as on the Shield.
underpowered
How much power do you think you need to stream videos?
and lacking licenses to play media.
I don’t even know what that means.
As someone who owns both Nvidia Shield TV and standard cheap (Google certified) devices, all running Projectivy, it’s not really comparable.
The Shield runs smoother, has significantly less minor/annoying issues, and actually receives fairly regular updates.
Now, the new Chromecast with Google TV does get updates, but it doesn’t resolve the first two differences.
If you can’t afford, or justify the extra expense, for an Nvidia Shield TV, completely understandable. But don’t pretend that the user experience is the same, because it’s not.
All “standard cheap” devices are not the same. I recommended a specific one, which was tested and featured on LTT.
I also own both and there’s no discernable difference, other than one costs literally 10x more.
I said Playstore Certified, and yes, they are mostly the same when you look under the hood, at least for those classes of devices, per generation.
Same, or similar SoC, with 2/8 (sometimes 2/16) specs.
Once you get up to the 4/32 range, you’re already looking around the same price (+/-) of a Shield TV.
Also, lol @ citing LTT, for anything. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, doesn’t change the fact that it’s broken.
And for the sake of being fair, I didn’t even mention the 1/8 boards.
The hardware is 10 years old and it wasn’t even shiny at the time. Shield is a damned joke.
I have been using an onn 4k streaming box, which runs Google TV. They’re $20. It’s pretty easy to disable the default launcher and have it boot to Flauncher. Then you can side load smart tube for an ad free YouTube experience asking with Plex, stremio, or whatever else you want to stream.
I’ve got a couple of those that I bought shortly after the LTT video, but I’m still using my Roku because I still haven’t gotten around to jailbreaking and configuring them.
Do it. It’s very easy, and then you can ditch the Roku. There’s even an ADB app you can load to remove unwanted apps on-device.
Same. I think it’s also possible to flash them with LineageOS, but swapping out the launcher and using adb to remove anything superfluous is all I’ve done so far.
Get an AppleTV.
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I assume being Apple that it’s not possible to sideload apps not supported on the app store? In particular I’d like to use some kind of a SmartTube or other youtube app that is ad free
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Ahahahaha that’s awesome
That is correct.
But which do you want? Privacy or convenience? No one makes a streaming device that does both.
Nvidia has destroyed the stock Shield TV experience with ads, but it’s easy to install custom launchers like Projectivy. The underlying system is still a privacy nightmare, but I don’t care that Nvidia knows what TV shows I watch.
I mean, I do care, just not enough to use something like Kodi as my primary TV interface. Maybe if I used any ad supported services I’d feel differently, but I don’t, so meh.
That’s not Nvidia, that’s Google.
Yes, Google is an inextricably linked to all Google TV issues, but they didn’t force Nvidia to ruin the Shield TV’S launcher with ads, and other bloat.
At least, not as far as I know. If you have sources saying otherwise, I’d be happy to take a look.
but they didn’t force Nvidia to ruin the Shield TV’S launcher with ads, and other bloat.
The “Shield’s launcher” is just Android TV… Nvidia did not write their own Android launcher just for this device.
Fuck me. You might be right, as I haven’t actually used the stock launcher since the big ad update years back.
I just remembered my original launcher having a lot of a Nvidia specific integrations, but I guess those could have just been bolted on at the system level.
Anybody notice the Max app on roku requires clicking twice to pause and then twice to unpause? Very odd and annoying glitch or feature.
FWIW Roku doesn’t make the apps. That’s on Max. The Paramount app is trash too, resume doesn’t work.
Yeah I just thought the two-click bug on the Max app might be specific to Roku, the way some browser glitches only happen on one OS. Having to click twice is such an obvious bug, it’s like did anybody even tested this?
yeah it might be specific to the app they built for Roku.
My vizio tv auto plays shows, ads, and light music if you leave it idling too long after you turn it on. Moving the remote down just once disables it till the next time your on home screen.
They just did this to me. How can I tell them they failed this test?
If it has a video input, hook up a used PC, and pirate everything. (:
Reasons I turn off WiFi on any TV I buy and use a streaming box
Any good recommendations?
Onn 4k box or Nvidia shield
Onn is just Walmart Roku, they will absolutely slather it in ads as soon as they figure out how. +1 on Nvidia shield.
You can boot lineage os’s android TV version easily on the onn one
To my knowledge that only works for the 2021 version which is no longer sold. The newer 2024 version is locked down further and cannot have its bootloader unlocked.
Oh, I’m not sure, maybe
Roku will do this on their boxes too.
Roku devices and fire sticks belong in the recycle bin.
I switched everything to Apple TV .
I’m not into the apple walled garden, I use android boxes
Yeah I don’t get roku boxes lol. I have an nvidia shield pro, and I’m considering loading the lineageOS software on it
I got the shield too, it’s amazing. Upgraded from an old Chromecast and it’s night and day, didn’t realize how slow the Chromecast was, even on Ethernet.
oh man, hard agree, the shield is the kind of android boxes
I was seeing the Moana promo with my Roku streaming stick on a Samsung TV. Didn’t look like an ad exactly tho, just a nice ocean background behind the menu.
personally I prefer android streaming boxes, because you can install custom versions of android tv on them, so if the official release from google is bad, you can just go to the community version
That general principle makes me confident that opensource community-driven software will eventually replace corporateware. As long as people get equivalent features they’ll eventually gravitate toward the alternative that has no opportunistic agenda.
There any custom versions you can point me to? I’ve been looking for a custom Android OS to install on my Insignia Fire TV.
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
lineageOS, but you have to have a supported device, and I’m not seeing that device on there. Plus fire tv’s are pretty locked down. I would suggest walmarts onn 4k box or an nvidia shield
