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Aceticon , (edited )

I replaced the TV Box from my ISP as well as the Media Player I already had for local media with a cheap mini-PC running Lubuntu and Kodi and have seen only a handful of adverts on my TV in the last couple of months (which I might see only when I’m watching Live-TV).

(PS: Mind you, there is no way to avoid Product Placement in Movies and TV Series, so I have still probably seen quite a lot of “covert” advertising).

The whole thing is now under my control and hence I don’t have to endure that crap.

Granted, I’ve been a Techie for decades and have for a long time been very aware of how software with Internet access is an agent of the software maker serving their objectives, not of yours serving your interests and how anything you paid for held by somebody else isn’t yours until you take them into Court for it and win (so your “bought” movies held in somebody else’s system aren’t yours) so I never jumped into the Streaming bandwagon and instead kept my eyepatch handy and wooden leg polished, and when I got a TV some years ago - before the enshittification really took off - I very purposefully avoided “smart” ones like the plague.

Frankly even if you’re not technically adept just get a Mini-PC and install LibreElec on it (which is purposefully made for non-Technical users to just to use Kodi) and get used to using Kodi. If you’re into paying for it you can even subscribe to perfectly legit IPTV subscriptions with hundreds of Live-TV channels and it definitelly integrates with the paid streaming services if you can’t do without and don’t want to sail the high seas.

(I’m running Lubunto, a more generalistic lightweight Linux distro where I explicitly installed Kodi, rather than LibreElec, because I use it for more things than just watching stuff on my TV).

PPS: Also, get a generic wireless remote of the kind used for Android TV (which works just as well in Kodi under Linux, as all those things do is send key-presses using the same USB protocol as keyboards), not the voice control crap with just a few “app” buttons but the ones which look like normal remotes. They often come with air-mouse functionality and a full mini-keyboard on the back, but one almost never has to use that even with Lubunto which is not really designed to be unobstrucive and will pop-up “update” prompts once in a while (I’m tempted to fix that, just like I fixed the need to explicitly log-in and start Kodi, but so far I can’t be arsed because it seldom happens)

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Honestly even a chromecast with Google tv and something like Stremio launched on boot would give you similar results for relatively cheap. No techiness needed, just some fiddling with settings.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’ve heard the nvidia shield is/was the gold standard for this purpose

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Huuuuuge price difference though.

Though I guess the chromecast is being killed off so the difference doesn’t matter much anymore.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Fair. Added benefit tho; it’s not a Google product.

Downside: it’s Nvidia and they’ve gone off the deep end into AI bullshit. Arguably went off the deep end several years ago into Crypto bullshit.

frizop ,

it’s not, they started the enshitification process years ago, I threw mine away. In the fucking garbage if you can believe it because it started showing me ads.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Well that sucks. I don’t particularly want google or amazon hardware on my network in any capacity, nor do I intend to provide network access to a “smart” TV. Guess that leaves AppleTV, maybe a couple other options, or dedicated media PC.

Aceticon , (edited )

How sure are you that the Google software and hardware you’re recommending won’t be enshittified at some point, especially in light of Google’s behaviour in recent years?

Because one of the core guidelines in this new setup of mine was exactly to avoid software/hardware stacks from profit-driven companies were the temptation to “make it nice now, enshittify for maximum $$$ once there’s a good installed base” is very much present, hence I went all the way to a fully open source solution with an as generic as possible mini-PC (the fully generic PC, a self-made desktop, would not have looked as good in my living room and use way more power, whilst the mini-PC looks like it belongs there and has a 15W TDP).

I mean, my first try at changing my home media setup was actually getting an Android Media Box (which is much cheaper than a mini-PC), but the mini-PC plus Linux gives me total control over the entire software stack and a lot more than an Android Media Box does over the hardware stack (I can actually add more storage, expand the memory and even change the wireless support) without having to jump through the hoops of rooting an Android to get rid of all the crap (and not just he crap from Google - for example I didn’t want Netflix on the fancy starting menu of the Android box and yet if I uninstalled it, the pretty picture for it would still be there using space whilst not actually working) which is not exactly non-techie friendly and might not even be possible (I do believe it is possible for the Chromecast, though).

Android is an inferior solution if you want to avoid enshittification and are not all that technically proeficient, though if you don’t care about being forced by the software on your own hardware into shit you don’t want (such as watching ads) it is the technically simplest option, but then again that scenario is just enduring the kind of abuse that the post is talking about, and my advice is not at all for people who are fine with ads and other “product promotions” (such as pre-installed software supporting services you have to pay for) shoved in front of them even in their own home and their own hardware.

Whilst I didn’t go for the fully integrated Linux+Kodu solution which is LibreElec and instead went for a self-made Lubuntu + Kodi solution because I have lots of experience with Linux and wanted to do more with that device than just “media box”, my expectation is that a single-purpose packaged solution like LibreElec on top of a mini-PC together with the kind of remote I mentioned above is the simplest “just works” option: so accessible to non-techies and without enshittification or a risk of future enshittification.

asexualchangeling ,

Any remote recommendations? I’ve been thinking about doing something similar.

FeelThePower ,
@FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

not if I don’t have a smart tv

Frozyre ,

My phone is a billboard. My TV is a billboard. My PC is sometimes a billboard.

Like, what hasn't advertisement infected?

I think it's about time we just harass marketers back, but not with advertisements, but with other means. Enough so they get the message.

Blackmist ,

Ironically the billboards in my town seem to be disappearing due to lack of use.

The billboards are the only thing that aren’t billboards.

knightly ,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your screens are showing you ads then they aren’t your screens…

SlopppyEngineer ,

“We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento

HelixDab2 ,

Don’t give your TV the wifi password, kids. No, you don’t need to ‘finish setting up’ your TV; it works just fine as a dumb display.

ThePowerOfGeek ,
@ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world avatar

Next time I have to get a new TV I think I’ll just get a large computer monitor and stream content via an old mini PC with Linux installed on it. Not an ideal solution, but I’m so tired of this invasive bullshit. At least that will cut out some of its vectors.

After the recent Roku TOS fiasco I’m done with them. If manufacturers won’t give us a viable situation we will make one ourselves.

Anyone know a good OS setup for reduced ad streaming? I know about Pi-Holes, but I’m talking about a way of actually streaming content (in addition to blocking ads at our near the router level).

HelixDab2 ,

I use my PS5, TBH. I still get ads on Amazon Prime, but I’m not seeing Netflix ads. (I also don’t have Hulu, etc.) I pay for a VPN for my desktop–I’m using Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC–and with Firefox and uBlockOrigin I see pretty minimal ads online; if you’re able to open your streaming service in a browser rather than needing to download their application, then a VPN an uBlockOrigin might be sufficient.

Aceticon , (edited )

A way more than enough Mini PC for streaming content costs about $140 nowadays.

It’s a direction I went into recently and was pleasently surprised how cheap it all is.

PoopMonster ,

My best purchase in the last couple of years was a 4k Sceptre TV from Walmart. Super cheap, good enough video quality and is dumb, just turns on to 4hdmi ports. That way I can just plug in whatever I want, or get a $30 roku and replace it whenever they update it to the point where it lags on basic menu navigation like my previous tvs.

Fuck all that bloatware, ad infested crap.

Hector_McG ,

An article on Ars Technica, complaining about advertising.

What hypocrite posted this?

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

“you participate in society? Interesting!”

daddy32 ,

“each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue.”

Fuck me, this is the amount of money that’s enough motivation for them to ruin my experience and make me angry?

I guess regular users have much higher tolerance to ads than me, but our home has a strict zero ad policy.

Zwiebel ,

I’ve heard somewhere else that it’s a 50/50 split between the TV sales and ad revenue

HelixDab2 ,

A quick check online says that Samsung–which has about 25% of the global market–sold at least 1M OLED televisions and 8.3M QLED televisions in 2023. So, let’s say that they sell 9.5M televisions annually (I’m not sure if the numbers are global or US-only); that’s $190M in pure profit from advertising alone. For a billion-dollar plus corporation, that might seem small, but it’s certainly enough to get them to take notice.

ItsComplicated ,

Samsung is also trying to make its ACR data more valuable for ad targeting, including through a deal signed in December with analytics firm Experian.

This should add to their profits.

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Experian, the social credit score credit rating company? Fuuuuuck

ItsComplicated ,

My jaw dropped when I saw that. Not sure how many people are aware if it.

grue ,

That deserves to be its own headline. Something like “consumer electronics companies now conspiring with credit rating companies to surveil the public even more invasively.”

PlantJam ,

Experian has a program where you connect your bank account and they monitor transactions for things that could improve your credit by a couple points. I’m sure they’re not also harvesting the rest of your data to use in their analytics, right?

ninja ,

That’s just 1 year’s sales. If the TV lasts 5 years it’s raking in 5 times the data. 190M x 5 = 950M/year, and 5 seems conservative.

HelixDab2 ,

Good point.

Aceticon ,

It’s even better for them: those $190M are per-year for the lifetime of that TV.

So if for simplification we said they also sold 9.5M TVs in 2021 and again in 2022, in the year of 2024 the will be making $570M from the TVs they sold in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

If Samsung TVs are used in average for 10 years, in 2033 they will still be making money from TVs sold in 2024 and all the years in between. If their rate of sales remains 9.5M per year and how much they generate per quarter in data and advertising revenue from those TVs remains $5 (true, all big simplifications), by 2033 they will be making $1.90 BILLIONS from just this in addition to what they make from selling TVs.

No wonder they’re full in on this monetization of users even whilst making user experience significantly worse - they would need to lose a huge number of sales due to this for it to not be worth it for them.

TORFdot0 ,

If a company could pay $5 a customer for a competitive edge in customer satisfaction over their competitors, they would. Either they are getting way more than that or there is some cartel/monopoly action going on in the market. Maybe they are playing the long game to introduce an ad free model at a premium.

Still don’t see how nobody is undercutting existing players with ad free, smart tvs.

The_v ,

Why is basic math.

In a made up scenario let’s start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It’s at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.

Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the “smart” chips. So let’s say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.

So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.

The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.

And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV’s as being the best thing.

pdxfed ,

That was the sentence that stuck out to me the most in the whole article as well. Incredible how much is lost for so little. I imagine it’s like drug dealers though, maybe $5 for the first seller, then gets chopped up and cut again and sold for less and chopped up again…

My question is, what are the alternatives? Other than finder older TVs without so much junkware and spyware, Are there open OS ROMs that can be loaded? Cracked firmware or debloated ROMs? I was very into Android’s launch 15 years ago and rode a train of options away from terrible stock ROMs from various OEMs; eventually privacy and simplicity becomes a selling point for OS after companies get through enshittifying it.

grue ,

My question is, what are the alternatives? Other than finder older TVs without so much junkware and spyware, Are there open OS ROMs that can be loaded? Cracked firmware or debloated ROMs? I was very into Android’s launch 15 years ago and rode a train of options away from terrible stock ROMs from various OEMs; eventually privacy and simplicity becomes a selling point for OS after companies get through enshittifying it.

I’d like for us all to stop for a moment and appreciate just how thoroughly and comprehensively fucked up it is that Linux, which is what all these TVs are running and which is supposed to be Free Software (which exists for the express purpose of empowering the user’s right to control his device), has been subverted so goddamn badly!

pdxfed ,

Wow had no idea TVs ran on Linux. They should pull the license.

grue ,

They should, but they won’t. Between Torvalds’ (wrong) opinion and the logistical issues of getting approval from all the other copyright holders, the Linux kernel will remain vulnerable to tivoization in perpetuity.

nullPointer ,

“commercial display” is a worth while route to explore. They do cover a wider range of image quality and features, so it does take paying close attention to specifications.

yggstyle ,

Be cautious with the commercial display route. A lot of them come with “management system” software the company is trying to push which can paywall control features or break things on you if they get online for firmware updates.

In general though they do make good displays: they are typically a lot more expensive (and heavy!)

ItsComplicated ,

Average users will not have the knowledge or patience for work arounds.

Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection just to watch a movie or series.

LainTrain ,

Yeah that’s well put. All this advocacy for adblockers and not accepting the awful state of things fall on deaf ears, most people don’t care, they accept the state of things as it is, and technology as magic.

ItsComplicated ,

People deserve better and should expect/demand better.

LainTrain ,

But that’s the thing. To play the devil’s advocate:

Should expect/demand better

Should they? Says who? Us - who to most people are - “weird computer people” for knowing how to navigate an excel spreadsheet?

We know it sucks. But they’re entitled to think it’s fine, especially since we’ve made so much noise about this for the past decade that it’s hard to imagine anyone is uneducated still.

“Liberating” the masses in this manner seems like a crusade up the alley of Don Quixote.

Frozyre ,

Oh man, I'd hate to be the dude twiddling his thumbs on Ad 2 of 8 on Twitch.

"Dum de dum dum, wonder what the streamer is currently up to. Oh well, another 45 seconds to go. Dum de dum dum"

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection a lax and ineffective regulation.

“Voting with your wallets” is a false premise dreamed up by corporate to avoid govt regulation and has not and will never be a real thing that works in this world of monopoly and lack of option.

henfredemars ,

It only works in competition which we don’t have for the most part.

Instead we have the illusion of choice through multiple brand product names. There’s a couple choices, sure, but few enough to function as an effective monopoly.

Mr_Blott ,

I notice OP said

This world of monopoly

And you agreed with him, but I’d like to point out you’re talking about one country

Monopolies are really really bad for consumers and are strictly regulated in modern countries

sunzu2 ,

You can either vote with your wallet or do nothing...

Working people have no way to lobby government, shortage of a revolution, real people make decisions for benefit of other real people.

NPCs are just here to enrich them both.

the_post_of_tom_joad , (edited )

You can either vote with your wallet or do nothing

I don’t want to fight here, we agree. In fact i bet we agree on a lot. But VWYW is, i can not stress this enough, not a thing. If it ever was in our lifetimes, it ain’t now. Its time the phrase was dropped outta everyone’s mouth.

You can purchase something that thru your effort does not do most of the awful things you are trying to avoid, that’s being a smart customer. It’s not like I’m dismissing the entire idea behind VWYW, just that it is simply that now, it’s an idea that doesn’t work with the facts on the ground.

The power of our “wallet ballots” gets lower when Monopoly power gets higher. Monopoly power is very high. VWYW power is in this world, in this moment, not a thing.

My point, is a simple but strident one. VWYW is not voting! It just isn’t.

It has absolutely no effect on the world around us. Puts no pressure on companies. Is not a thing except in our heads. It is time to let go of the idea.

And yeah…working people like you and me have no power period. “Voting with your wallet” is now simply a power fantasy pushed by capitalists to keep regulations at bay and held by the powerless clinging to an illusion of agency.

sunzu2 ,

I don't agree but you can either vote with your wallet or mindlessly consume.

One is better than the other but yeah 80% of spending is not really discretionary... Gonna need to get a rental, gonna need healthcare, transports education etc

But you can stop drinking soda for example... It ain't much but it is something.

People don't have to pay subscriptions either...

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

I … think i understand what you’re saying. You don’t agree with my definition of VWYW? I don’t wanna assume, but i think maybe you define it as reckless vs thoughtful spending?

Mine has to do with the effectiveness of our purchases in driving market trends. They do not.

You don’t have to buy a subscription to Netflix, but deciding not to isn’t changing anything for anyone (besides saving you 15 bux).

brbposting ,

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/e385fd9e-97f4-442a-a65b-141419d24bda.jpeg

Is $6 too much for a bag of Ruffles?

After nearly three years of price increases, signs that buyers have had enough are starting to mount. On Thursday, the food and beverage giant PepsiCo reported a 0.5 percent decline in revenues in the second quarter in its Frito-Lay snack business from year-ago levels, a result of a 4 percent drop in volumes in the category.

I think maybe we voted with our wallets against $6 chips but you could probably convince me otherwise in a paragraph :)

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Well sir I’m always down for a nice discussion, you had me at hello. But youre in trouble if you only wanted a paragraph 🤣

Your link is great evidence to your point. It absolutely does reinforce the idea, with evidence that voting with your wallet does indeed affect change. I should say also my point isnt VWYW doesn’t ever work but that it has very little power.

I’d like to suggest that same article also helps mine, at least some.

Point being it shows VWYW (at the consumer level) didn’t have the power to stop the inflation of chips in the first place. Leaving aside the illusion of choice, the current system has taken the power of VWYW out of our hands almost completely.

The fact that PepsiCo even has that kind of market power is beyond question at this point right?

I’m not saying anything controversial if i take it further, that supply chains between our bag of chips and Pepsico, (distributors, grocery stores etc) are also consolidated, yeah?

At each step of the process, market consolidation reduced the ability of the companies within that chain to VWTW, and they pass the costs on down to the next link who also has no ability to VWTW. At the end of this chain we sit with our wallets, but the power has been diminished before we got to open them. Just like the lesser evil, VWTW becomes a choice of voting between ALL chips that cost more across the board or no chips at all.

That’s what i mean when i say VWYW in this system, at this time, is meaningless.

kusivittula ,

and i bet if most users would not put up with that, they would remove hdmi ports.

kent_eh ,

They’re not “fine with ads and data collection” so much as they don’t care and can’t be bothered to look for a better way.

It’s just apathy and a bit of lazy inertia.

ItsComplicated ,

they don’t care and can’t be bothered to look for a better way.

This implies they are fine with it by tacit agreement.

kent_eh ,

No, it implies that they don’t understand that there is an option.

Angry_Autist ,

Your average user would also never be on lemmy to see this, at least for now.

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

Problem is getting an 55+" Screen with an OLED panel and support for HDR in a non-smart package

Zwiebel ,

It’s not smart if you don’t connect it to the internet

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

But it will try to start into a crippled user interface ever so often.

bobs_monkey ,

My Sony just goes straight to the HDMI that turned it on via CEC

Diplomjodler3 ,

There are commercial displays that don’t have any of the bullshit. But you’ll have to jump through some extra hoops for the sound.

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

I have a dedicated sound system anyway

Diplomjodler3 ,

But if your display has no digital output, you may need to plug it into the analog output of the computer you’re using to drive the display. That’s not optimal.

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

No, I just plug the video input into my AV-Receiver and let it split it up, and then an HDMI cable from the receiver to the TVs input

ZeroTwo ,

Smart tub and stremio. I’m good.

tau ,

Amen. I recently switched over and I haven’t been happier. I even got my parents onboard with it instead of satellite TV and streaming services.

anarchrist ,

GO AWAY!! BAITIN’!

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

I unironically wanna watch “ouch! my balls”, that looks like quality programming i could get behind

kent_eh ,

Isn’t that basically what Jackass was?

7U5K3N ,

Pihole on your network… And block Internet access to the TV…

Tho… a while back the wife and I bought a dirt cheap 32 inch TV from bestbuy… it will literally turn itself on to deliver an advertisement if you power it off while in an app. (Skipping the home page)

Pihole crashes it.

We bought it for watching football outside so it’s unplugged for the majority of the year… but that’s still absolutely unacceptable. Imho

TrickDacy ,

That’s some fucked up shit

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Ah that’s a terrible sign of where things are going

0x0 ,

…bought a dirt cheap 32 inch TV from bestbuy…

Pihole crashes it.

I wonder why…

kent_eh ,

it will literally turn itself on to deliver an advertisement if you power it off while in an app.

Name and shame that brand.

The more the word is spread about who the worse offenders are, the more people can effectively vote with their wallet.

7U5K3N ,

It’s a visio.

Literally the cheapest 32inch TV that best buy had.

It’s absolutely unusable with the ads disabled.

Horrific television.

teft ,
@teft@lemmy.world avatar

Mine is a monitor and nothing more.

Dymonika ,

Literally came here to say that. HDMI is king!

Exec ,
@Exec@pawb.social avatar

DisplayPort is superior

Ghoelian ,

Definitely, but unfortunately TV’s don’t usually have DP.

friend_of_satan ,

Any TV can have DP if you watch the right videos.

yggstyle ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/87554143-64f7-4079-bc19-361d12cd8a0a.gif

QBertReynolds ,
@QBertReynolds@sh.itjust.works avatar

Bonus points for buying a smart TV to get the heavily discounted price and never connecting it to the internet.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Even then, you’re still having to wait for its CPU to fuck around with the image and sound before it actually outputs it,

kent_eh ,

Some of the brands have been reported to not allow you to do anything until it has an internet connection to do its “initial setup” (or some such excuse).

I hope I can find a list of which ones to avoid when I have to eventually replace my old dumb TV.

Fiivemacs ,

Then right back to the store it goes and labelled as defective so it gets tossed resulting in losses for all companies involved.

kent_eh ,

Of course, but that’s a lot more effort than it should be.

tobogganablaze ,

Dumb monitor > smart TV.

Ugurcan ,

Point is, it’s near impossible to find a dumb tv with good specs. Like LG is producing no-smart version of LG C3 (best display ever so far), but it’s only sold to businesses.

DirkMcCallahan ,

I pity the poor fool who sets up their smart TV instead of just grabbing an HDMI cable and plugging in their computer.

ChillPill ,
@ChillPill@lemmy.world avatar

Ive been pretty happy so far with roku and blocking stuff with pihole, but every day I am more and more tempted to build a media pc…

MagicShel , (edited )

This is the way to go. I tried pihole using Samsung smart features, but if you block the telemetry eventually your apps stop working and you can’t get them working again without doing a factory reset with blocking down. It’s prohibitively a pain in the ass, taking hours every time YouTube stops working.

Never had any issues with Roku on pihole.

henfredemars ,

I believe one reason maybe that the software is so garbage it can’t handle not being able to submit all its logging information when otherwise the system thinks it’s online.

MagicShel ,

That makes perfect sense and explains why you can’t fix it just by bypassing blocking temporarily and reinstalling the app.

yggstyle ,

This is the case with Rokus as well. If you also redirect or block the hard coded DNS (Google) from bypassing your local DNS it starts to get extremely sluggish over time… presumably from background processes repeatedly resending requests out.

yggstyle ,

Depends on your blocklist. It would freak out every so often on me when I was preventing it from bypassing my DNS with its hard coded ones until I added in a forced redirect instead.

yggstyle ,

Currently trying that for the same reasons you are tempted. Roku was passable and even a good choice years ago and it’s on a precipitous race to the bottom now.

Problem for me currently is finding a non windows solution that is navigable from a controller or remote is … tough. Steam, emulation station, Kodi all have reasonable interfaces but there seems to be a gap in a unified launcher solution (as well as a decent ‘app’ for accessing YouTube.) I really don’t want to spin up a single VM for each activity when they all in theory should play nice together.

TrenchcoatFullofBats ,

My solution to this problem is Jellyfin, fed by usenet-backed sonarr/radar and Tubesync to pull in YouTube channel subscriptions. Those are added to a Jellyfin library which is accessible right next to movies and tv shows.

This is all through the Jellyfin app on a 2019 Nvidia Shield Pro. It’s a perfect couch-friendly setup. For just regular YouTube browsing, SmartTube can be installed on the Shield and on your phone. You can then cast to the SmartTube app on the Shield instead of to the YouTube app.

yggstyle ,

It seems we have similar backend setups 🏴‍☠️

I’ll need to dig into an android solution a bit - smarttube seems pretty nice but has no Linux version unfortunately.

cRazi_man ,

That is beyond the capabilities of normies.

My wife would agree with this:

Media PC

And I’ve got Plex running on an always on NAS.

Cl1nk ,

This is the way

BakedCatboy ,

Lmao that greentext was literally me before I finally set up arrstack. One of the best investments of my time, it has definitely paid off over many years of just having things automatically download.

cRazi_man ,

My Arr’s are unreliable. The trackers they search keep becoming unavailable for some reason. Flaresolver doesn’t seem to work with my VPN setup. Sometimes the file it finds to download turns out to be 54GB for a 1080p movie and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on there either. I haven’t got the time to look into Usenet any time soon. If I try to deploy something and it doesn’t work 100% right off the bat then the “wife acceptance factor” drops to zero, so I’ve got to be damn certain before I start tinkering.

This comes off the back of a device on my network causing router issues and making Plex unreliable for a couple of weeks. By the time I diagnosed and fixed the issue, the damage was done and wife acceptance factor was lost.

BakedCatboy , (edited )

Man that sucks. I must have gotten lucky or something with my setup. I also have trackers go unavailable all the time but I enabled 8 different ones and usually multiple will have the same torrent so it usually has no problem finding something even if 1 or 2 are down. I also don’t VPN tracker searches, just my BitTorrent client so flaresolverr seems to work fine for me (I only have it enabled for 2 of my trackers since most of the ones I use don’t seem to require it).

If you end up trying it out again I would look into the quality settings and make sure you’re not using the remux quality profile (edit: apparently the default 1080p quality profile has the 1080 remux quality enabled so this might have been the problem). By default most of the quality profiles seem to limit at 100MB/min, so a 2 hr movie shouldn’t allow anything over like 12GB. Whenever I tweak quality or custom formats I refer to trash guides which has a lot of battle-tested rules you can copy. I have my main quality profile set to only download qualities between hdtv720 and br1080 (which is just below remux) with custom formats copied from trash guides set to prefer hevc with surround sound since I have 5.1.

cRazi_man ,

Thanks. Really helps to know where to start looking when I get time over the weekend.

TrenchcoatFullofBats ,

You may also want to look into Usenet instead of torrents when you’re researching. Sonarr/Radarr/Readarr etc all work (in my opinion) better with Usenet.

You’ll need to pay some, but the reliability is amazing, which is extremely helpful for the partner acceptance factor. I pay for two providers (newsdemon is primary and eweka is a backup) and two indexers (drunkenslug and nzbfinder), and everything has been rock solid reliable for years. Download speeds are also MUCH faster than torrents.

Combine this setup with overseerr (or jellyseerr) so your partner can find their own things to download and you might be able to get them back on board.

Plus, no flaresolverr required!

Wildly_Utilize ,

My gf loves stremio + torrentio + real debrid I set up for her

It does go down occasionally and she is more techy and patient than most but give it a try if you havent.

Its dead simple compared to what you’re doing now and good to have in your back pocket even if you want to maintain a local library. Having an issue? NP just open stremio and everyone’s happy

Reverendender ,

It seems like way more stuff than I want though

BakedCatboy , (edited )

I mean yeah there’s a lot of stuff it does, but you can pick and choose what you want to use it for so it depends on what you would find useful - you don’t have to use the full automation. I started just by using it as a read-only way to see what movies I had and in what qualities and keep things organized. You can use it as a manual interface to do one-off downloads - basically just as an interface to search 5 torrent sites in 1 place where you are still picking exactly what you want it to download. You can use it only to rename files to a consistent format. So there are a lot of ways to use the various features of sonarr/radarr besides automatic downloads. You’re not forced to go all-in and out of the box it doesn’t start automatically downloading until you enable that.

I think it’s a common misconception that if you use sonarr/radarr you have to use download automation and set up trackers but it’s not the case. It’s a useful library organization tool even if you don’t ever have it download anything.

Reverendender ,

That was definitely my misconception

BakedCatboy ,

I’m glad to clear it up! It’s a super powerful tool, and I still occasionally skip the automation and just use it for manual searches since it reduces that process to a single click to search all configured torrent sites and a single click to download and have the rest automatically handled.

Before when I was visiting friends and wanted to quickly add something to plex, I used to need remote access to my torrent client and separate remote access to my NAS filesystem to move/rename files when downloads finish which was a really manual process. Now all I need is the reverse-proxied sonarr/radarr UI since it handles moving/copying/renaming on download completion - and while the UI isn’t mobile-first, it’s very usable and feels less error-prone than moving/renaming files remotely using a file explorer app.

toynbee ,

That is my preference, but my wife says she prefers only one step (turning on and using the TV) over multiple (turning on the TV, turning on the secondary system and using multiple controllers) so we go with the simpler setup per her request.

I did put my TVs on a Wi-Fi network separate from my main one so, while they do show ads as much as my pihole allows, at least they’re theoretically only spying on each other.

asap ,
@asap@lemmy.world avatar

With HDMI-CEC you can achieve what your wife wants. I have one remote to turn on my Nvidia Shield (with Plex, Jellyfin, Netflix, etc), and that same remote also controls all TV functions.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Ew.

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