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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 ,
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.

lemmy_get_my_coat ,

Exactly what I’ve been looking for too, and have come up wanting. I got excited recently about finding KDE Plasma Big Screen, but then it falls at the last hurdle on the app selection.

yggstyle ,

That gave me abandoned vibes when I looked into it. Maybe they just didn’t update anything on their site but I struggled to find any recent info or reviews on it. A shame honestly. I loved the idea.

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.

Eric_Pollock ,
@Eric_Pollock@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Server to host media. Super easy to set up and can run on a Windows client. Don’t even need an independent server to run it on. jellyfin.org

kodi.tv (or libreelec.tv for an OS that boots to just Kodi)

Application to watch through Kodi github.com/jellyfin/jellycon

Client to run Kodi on: MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick a.co/d/1EGnekO

If you didn’t want to install LibreELEC to the PC and just want to keep Windows, you could run Kodi in Kiosk mode and it would boot directly to it just like LibreELEC.

I have not watched normal TV in years, let alone an ad on my TV. I spoke to my neighbors one day and figured out they were paying ~$60 a month for all their streaming services, and they’re STILL getting ads…

Stuff like this is unacceptable, and I refuse to partake in the lunacy and delusion that is modern television.

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

Also Plex as an alternative to Jellyfin with a way better UI and better app support

LainTrain ,

And also a good degree of bugs and enshittification

the_post_of_tom_joad , (edited )

Wait plex or jellyfin? Both?

Edit: thanks y’all

curbstickle ,

Plex. Its been getting shittier for years.

Meanwhile JF has been improving in leaps and bounds.

golli ,

Since he mentions enshittification, I assume he means Plex.

However I am pretty sure both will have some bugs. I use jellyfin, so I can only speak about that. But one annoyance is that the androidTV app sometimes doesn’t have the best subtitle support. However it allows you to open movies in external players, which is a workaround.

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

I bought a lifetime plex pass once and have no issues since. HW encoding works out of the box, the scanners do their job and I can use their apps on every platform. I had to disable the Plex offered free movies once, the horror. Don’t act like Plex is some Google level shit of annoyance or ‘enshittification’.

Jellyfin on the other hand has atrocious UI that basically screams the absence of any sort of UI designer into your face, the HW encoding is a mess to set up and the apps are a jungle of different 3rd party apps…

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Don’t act like Plex is some Google level shit of annoyance or ‘enshittification’.

Close enough for me.

The UI has always been pretty terrible to navigate but when they started trying to push all their streaming services I jumped ship. I don’t respect companies that don’t respect their customers. Jellyfin is better and is constantly improving where Plex is doing the opposite and wants to charge you for the privilege.

MaggiWuerze ,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

What streaming services is plex pushing? They offer integration for other services you subscribed to like Netflix or Disney and they also offer free, ad based services that you can permanently hide with one button. And the UI? Jellyfin is so convoluted, especially the settings.

LainTrain ,

I never said Plex is google-level enshittification, don’t project words in my mouth. What is a fact though is that it is undergoing enshittification and that it’s a buggy mess and video transcoding might work for you, but it’s a well known source of pain for others. It could be better on Jellyfin too, but nowhere near as difficult to set up, even on weird/unsupported systems.

UI screams no designer

Idk what you’re on about, not even LTT Linus pointed out any issues with the UI and he is no Linux CLI wizard.

If anything it’s far simpler to use than Plex because it doesn’t have the dark pattern bullshit into it.

You load the app, you hit movies or TV shows, hit your favourite movie or TV show and play. It’s not complicated at all, no need to click past the various upsells and no need to buy battle passes just to watch a film.

The only thing this supposed absence of a “UI designer” seems to have brought is the absence of upsells and enshittification/dark patterns.

helenslunch , (edited )
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

The number of people suggesting this shit as a replacement for streaming services is way too damn high.

The monetary cost of the hardware is insane if you want to have any sort of hardware to store your media. But the time investment to get something like this running is 10x more. And at the end of the day it’s all 100% illegal and liable to get you in tons of trouble.

cheese_greater ,

Not mine. My TV’s my absolute digital bitch. It lets me do anything I want AND nothing, unlike Warren Buffet’s kids

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