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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check out: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/
This looks exactly like what I was looking for! Thank you!
I wonder what kind of hardware to best run this on to watch YouTube, Jellyfin, Disney+…
I do have a steam machine on the TV anyway. Is it possible to run this on Steam OS? And without having to fiddle so much when just wanting to watch TV?
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.
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.
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?
There are third party clients for a lot of streaming services as kodi add-ons. Here for example is the add-on for P+: https://www.matthuisman.nz/2021/06/paramount-plus-kodi-add-on.html
Please keep in mind that I haven’t used these for years and can make no comment on whether they still work. There are also some inherent limitations. Quality will be caped at 720p for example because widewine Linux bullshit
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).
This is the setup I’ve 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.
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
That sounds like a good plan. I’m fairly new to the network game, how did you setup the firewalls between TV VLAN and your home network. I would like to have home assistant and jellyfin to access the TV (e.g. HA sees ‘running’ status of TV, TV can connect to jellyfin) but block the rest.
Did you use port-based blocking in your firewall?
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.
Open the TV and pull the wifi antennas off the board.
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.
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.
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’m still using an old Apple TV. I’m not happy about it but haven’t found a good replacement yet.
There’s a few interesting options for software in this thread. In terms of hardware - maybe a NUC or something? Would have to be small, quiet and relatively cheap.
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
If you have nay knowledge of networking (or want to learn), start setting up restricted VLANs to isolate your smart devices. Only allow them access to specific services/devices like your media server.
For dedicated hardware, there are plenarily of options. A Raspberry Pi will work to start with, there are Linux images with Kodi such as LibreELEC and osmc (I have used both in the past and they worked fine), and Android TV images also that can run apps. I suppose you could also set up a generic Linux install and run the Jellyfin client or similar - not sure if there any turnkey options for that.
We have a couple of Apple TV boxes and they perform well, the Jellyfin apps for them have really improved in the last year or so too.
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