I was using NextDNS instead of pihole because I wanted my ad blocking to still work when I’m out and about.

Couldn’t stay on the free tier because I make so many DNS requests. Which seemed weird - it’s just the two of us using the network?

Lo and behold, the fucking forgotten Roku attached to a TV was doing a fresh DNS lookup every 30 seconds to try to call home and send telemetry data. It accounted for like 60% of my DNS traffic!

If you already have a Roku you can probably just stop using a Roku.

Google has Google TV. It's rancid with ads too. Basically the top half of the home screen is ad space, with more sponsored content recommendations below. There for a while it was running fried chicken video ads on that top half. That's when I decided to replace my ChromeCast with Google TV with an Nvidia Shield that has all the Google crap gutted out of it. Not exactly perfect, but so much better.

Unfortunately, digital rights restrictions prevent an open source option from taking off. None of the streaming services want to allow their content onto a platform they can't easily manipulate.

closest non-apple alternative to appleTV is probably nvidia shield, but it may have enshittified when i wasn't looking. appleTV is pretty much the only apple device I use these days, every now and again i use my old ipad

I think I read that licensing for the transcoding or something was the hang up.

There's several problems. Transcoding is one but there's also issues with content providers requiring the use of their own apps along with Linux not (until very recently) being able to use any HDMI spec beyond 2.0.

I've been a ROKU user for over a decade but the last year has had me thinking more and more about boxing up my devices and sending them to their HQ with a note "Since you treat these like you own them I figured I'd just send them to you."

I am really REALLY tired of them dicking with my boxes and updating / reconfiguring things however and whenever they see fit.

The biggest hurdle is streaming services' DRM (something called widevine iirc) that just doesn't work on linux, which limit you to low resolutions like 720p. There was some struggles between AMD and the HDMI consortium preventing them from shipping HDMI2.1 drivers, but that appears to be solved.

KDE Plasma Bigscreen is joining the Plasma release schedule next month and will then be available in distro repositories. That at least will be a big deal for Linux HTPCs.

Are you familiar with Kodi?

There are solutions aiming to help with that like LibreELEC (basically a minimal backing OS for Kodi). But unfortunately any Linux-based streaming solution will have issues with DRM connecting to Netflix, Prime, etc. There are sidesteps around that too but starts to get more and more challenging for the average user

Seems like doing some clean room design off of Roku OS would be a good choice.

can you go into detail on the boxes and your mods? interested in getting some of my family off of Roku for this reason

Enshitification is just business doing business. It suck as much value as it can out of anything it touches until it's barely worth it then just let's the quality hover there. They call it "the price the market will bare", also known as, giving as little value as possible.

Everytime something turns to shit it's because the business side of the endeavor has started making the decisions.

Roku is another prime example of enshitification

Agreed, but are there any realistic alternatives in the android space to firestick and roku?

I'm also curious what you ended up with

does the UI just render blank squares in that case?

I use adguard on my opnsense with several lists... one of them snags it by default. the big blank border of a square is still lame.

From https://plasma-bigscreen.org/get/

Plasma Bigscreen is not yet widely available.

We are planning to join the Plasma release schedule starting with Plasma 6.7 (in June), which will make it possible for distributions to ship it in their repositories.

In June, so almost!

It'll be packaged up in plasma 6.7, I think mid June. Then it'll be easy for distros to make it available. I want to try it but I don't want to change distro or build it myself. When 6.7 rolls out, I got my computer plugged into my TV with CachyOS handheld edition. Right when Plasma 6.7 is available in the Arch repos, I'm installing it

want to. Got a rpi5 sitting waiting but too many other projects ahead of it.

I did try android TV on it. it was utter horse shit, so I'm hopeful for pbs.

They were born in it, moulded by it, they've never seen a world without an add somewhere in it.

I'm on the home screen for one second. The remote, in fact, has buttons on it, I don't even need to look at the home screen.

You can add or remove tiles as you see fit (although they definitely like to add some for you from time to time), but like I said, I barely use the tiles.

I love people on here who don't and have never used it expressing any feelings on it at all. Like, why do you care, other than were all here (on the internet) just to get mad about shit?

They "don't have" the technical expertise or energy to avoid it.

looks like they shrunk the menu to icons in order to make room for the ad on the same view, not just when you arrow over to the app icons.

Yea I've been ignoring that forever. I jsut go to my Jellyfin app at square 1

Fast and responsive UI, easy for older people to use. Too bad it is getting worse but I still find it more usable than Google TV.

You can also just block it via a Pi-Hole. My Roku works fine as a smart TV, but has no ads because they can’t load from the ad server. I also blocked the telemetry server too. So I get all the benefits of having a smart TV (like convenient apps, instead of needing to use a HTPC as a workaround), and none of the downsides like ads.

The built-in ads were actually what led to me finally setting up my pihole after moving. I had it set up in my old apartment, and my wife was used to having it quietly running. She didn’t really realize how much it blocked until we moved. After the move, I was busy with unpacking, work, etc and didn’t have a whole lot of free time. So the network was just running on the new ISP’s provided modem/router until I had the time to get all my server shit unpacked and set up. My wife kept dragging me away for other tasks, so it was like three weeks before I even had time to touch the box that my pi-hole was in.

I finally got time to set my pi-hole up because my wife had the Roku TV paused, it went to the idle screen, and she saw an ad scroll past on the idle screen. She turned to me and was like “okay yeah, you need to go set up that adblocker thingy. Ads on the fucking idle screen? I knew ads were getting pervasive these days, but what the fuck?” The next day, she left me alone so I would have time to actually get everything plugged in and configured. Seeing that ad on the idle screen was the moment that cemented in her mind that an adblocker is a necessary part of the network.

I had gotten a roku for us for xmas the year before. Saw that tos update and stopped using it immediately. Tbh it kinda sucked anyways.

Had to Google it but it looks pretty nice. I thought you meant that you were injecting giant ads into Android TV.

Used a fire TV stick for a long time but multiple factors made me finally switch to an Nvidia shield.

Worked great for a year and then an OS updated made the home screen 60% ads, especially those that started to play with sound when I was on them for like 2 milliseconds. Installed projectify on it and now I only see what I want to see.

It is always disturbing to me how much ads I see when I am using someone else's system, because I banned everything at home.

I dont have ads on my Nvidia shield but I never updated it either.