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?
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.