My old Android TV is almost 10 years old and despite ADB modding it shows its age. So I took a look around and quickly found out how bad things have gotten in the Smart TV space.
Dumb TVs are out of the question because of their high prices - they’re for commercial use after all.
What I want is a nice big TV (around 65" to 75") with a real colorful, sharp display and an OS that does not annoy me with ads (I despise ads) and recommendations while still fulfilling my needs, which are
- Crunchyroll
- Prime
- Ad-free Youtube client like smarttubenext
- HDMI for console gaming
- Absolutely no stuttering and frame rate issues when playing videos in apps
- Preferably no stuttering menus
- Reasonably priced
Anything else is completely uninteresting to me.
And yes, I know about the nvidia shield, but that thing is 5 years old and I don’t want to ride an already old horse that might be replaced very soon due to its age (even though there’s currently no signs of that on the horizon). I also don’t like using more than one remote…
I have no issue with modding it as long as that’s reasonably possible - just to get rid of most bloatware, annoyances, ads and such.
Any ideas?
You could get a “smart tv” but use it as a dumb tv, no internet, no wifi, just have it hooked up to a single input… Then that input could be whatever you want.
For myself I just cast my livingroom laptop screen; no limitations on what i can watch; I suppose if you wanted something dedicated you could setup a micro computer with a wireless keyboard/mouse combo
As others have said, the best option is to buy the TV you want, update it to the latest firmware, then disconnect it from the internet and use your own external devices.
This is because the companies making the best display technology (much of it proprietary) at an affordable price have no incentive to sell “dumb” variants of their TVs when the “smart” version makes them way more money.
Lineageos works on a few android tvs, iirc
I really wouldn’t write off the Shield completely. It’s a few years old, but it works really well. My TVs are all disconnected from my network, and each has a Shield attached. The Shield can stream 4k HDR from Jellyfin, play ad-free YouTube with SmartTubeNext, and handles remote game streaming at 4k/60 with Sunshine/Moonlight. It’s really a versatile little box.
I bought a mini PC and plugged it into the TV. I use a “wireless mini keyboard with trackpad” to control it. My husband and I have been using it for years. Beelink’s mini Ryzen PCs are quite solid in my experience. I have Linux on mine. Firefox with ublock origin. No ads, like ever.
I just ordered my first TV ever, and its a smart TV of course. My first choice would be to not connect it to the internet, but my wife wouldn’t like that. So i think ill just put it on its own network and block as many domains that it uses to phone home with as i can, without breaking functionality.
Buy a good inexpensive TV. The manufacturer can make them cheap because they’re losing money and hoping to gain it back with ads and analytics. Don’t connect it to the internet. Get a Steam deck or small form factor PC (Intel NUC or variant) install Linux, profit.
I’ve bought a few small form factor PCs, and again Steam Deck works great, for $300 and then a great TV. And I don’t have to put up with any ads, any crap applications that barely work, it’s just browsing ANY website I want, playing ANY PC game I want. It’s honestly the best outcome and I’ll never go back at this point.
Don’t let yourself accept the subpar TV applications that are just a website with awful frontends, that run like shit and that the companies creating these apps have 0 incentive to make properly because their app isn’t there for a good experience. It’s there to track you, just like the TV.
This is what I do. A pi with Kodi or Jellyfin or similar plugged into HDMI is fine, it doesn’t matter what OS is on the TV if you’re never using anything but the one input.
LOVE my Jellyfin.
