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This is the same Fox that owns Fox News. So now Roku’s advertising push can include a side of misinformation.
Side?
One of the things on my FOSS wishlist is an open source alternative to Roku/GoogleOS/Apple TVos, etc. there are lots of FOSS apps on these various platforms, but those apps almost always have varying levels of quality and availability across them.
Right now the closest you can really get is media center PC, but what I really need is something relatively plug and play I can send to family members, preconfigured.
yes I totally don’t know why this isn’t more of a thing. here’s hoping that “plasma bigscreen” will change that. https://plasma-bigscreen.org/
Plasma Bigscreen is coming
Looks very promising
Google TV is the least worst option in terms of open source optionality, Apple TV is best for privacy as is
Why tf does everyone trust apple for anything? They’re a pretty awful company.
Because as of now their main financial structure isnt based on selling personal information for ads. They make most there money selling products and services. And I think trust isn’t the right word. Apple is normally the least shitty out of all the shitty big tech companies with modern day convenience.
Because as of now their main financial structure isnt based on selling personal information for ads.
Again, how do you know that? Cook gave a gold bar to trump, they’re not a good company.
No one said Apple was a good company, just better for privacy.
Cook was giving a toddler a shiny for favoritism. That’s pathetic on Trump, not Tim.
Tim is a business man. He was brown nosing so his company doesn’t get fucked by the government.
They’re the only mainstream hardware company that takes user privacy seriously. Bad on right to repair and openness though
Why tf does everyone trust apple for anything? They’re a pretty awful company.
They’re the only mainstream hardware company that takes user privacy seriously
Why do you think that? Is that what you’ve heard or do you know that?
They’re the only truly mainstream company with E2EE backups among other things. iOS is also much more secure than stock android, only Graphene OS is better.
KDE is able to release plasma bigscreen. That, or frankly gnome would be fine with an air mouse.
For me it’s kind of JellyFin + TailScale, but that probably isn’t going to work with less tech savvy family members or on all devices. Plex works well enough, but then again it’s the same thing that someone has to be responsible for the ‘media’ portion, and a lot of people enjoy live sports, which seems difficult through the open source things.
Yeah JF + Tailscale in one of them $20 Walmart Google TV boxes works well enough but like, I’d love to drop the Google part entirely.
Yeah, I just use the web interface, so I end up having a cheap PC with a keyboard/remote which works pretty well, then it doesn’t matter the TV and get’s away from Google altogether.
Jellyfin is quite great for me right now. Check it out https://jellyfin.org/
Jellyfin is just a media streaming application
It is a server application too that can be installed in old hardware serving media to many clients, not only the jellyfin app.
It’s a server application that just streams your media. You’d still need some kind of device to install the client on.
Relax. I was just correcting your wrong statement about it being just “a media streaming application” by adding the sever part bit.
Relax, it is in fact just a media streaming application. It is an application that streams media. It does nothing else.
Okay ñ_ñ
What would be amazing is if there was some way to have a fully declarative system that was integrated with a system update UI.
You would upload the config somewhere, your family’s streaming box would see a new update is available and either prompt them to install it or install it for them overnight.
I’ve never used it before but it sounds like you’re sorta describing NixOS? That might be an option to sorta Jerry-rig this idea together.
Best solution would probably be a mini PC running a web app dashboard like they do with kiosks. I would tell you to get a rasp pi but they went up in price by quite a bit. You would still have to order it for them and spend a few hours tinkering and installing everything.
Yeah and the experience just wouldn’t be very good. I have a lot of experience with mini PCs auto loading into web dashboards and it never works quite as well as you want it to
Until I read the last sentence, I had no idea what you were talking about. You sound like you could whip up a media center PC easy enough. The machine I’m typing this on doubles as our media center. I have to take the mouse to the coffee table for a movie remote, but that’s the only hassle, and it isn’t a hassle for me.
I feel like the tech is already in place. What do you want that isn’t out there?
Must get very small, very quiet, require zero ongoing maintenance besides an automated update mechanism, and have a single unified UI across all apps that the user can’t easily escape out of.
That’s disappointing.
Eh, fuck you Roku I never trusted you.
Tons of older folks (like my Mom, grandma, my aunts) have Rokus set up to replace cable. They don’t know how to operate individual apps, but they love Roku TV (which pops up by default), and kinda just watch whatever comes in.
So… Yeah.
That’s not worrying at all.
A lot of the stuff that comes over the online TV channels is also broadcast over the air, have you considered getting them an antenna?
They all have one! In the attic, with an amp. I installed them myself.
It’s not the same as the Roku TV app though. Those channels are like older person catnip, and the duplicated ones don’t cut out unpredictably.
It’s also understandably difficult for some folks to remember how to change TV input, rescan channels and such.
Capturing all media distribution.
Well shit.
It would certainly be a shame if some rogue Roku employee deployed an update that stripped ads and broke automatic updates for all devices right after Fox finalizes the deal but before they get anything out of it.
On the day of the handover lock it up with ransomware.
Nope. Don’t like that 🤢
Time to toss the stick I use on the spare TV in the garbage
Time to throw out the roku I never use.
I can’t wait for free movie site levels of ads.
I have an old Roku 3 that is, basically, a Raspberry Pi. Like, if you could swap out the OS it could do Raspberry Pi like things.
Oh no! Not the pop-up AD Smart TV company! The only reason to have Roku today IMO is for those cheap Roku subsidized TVs but only when you keep them completely offline. I truly feel bad for all the people who have them connected to the internet but this is pretty on par for Roku.
Both our TVs are Rokus, internet connected and I’ve been too lazy to configure the firewall. Only ads I see are on the home menu screen, and those are slightly annoying but unobtrusive.
Wife’s TV in the bedroom is only used for YT. (I think, that’s her thing.) Mine’s a second monitor for my PC to watched pirated content.
Where and how are people seeing ads?
They’re on the home screen in a banner on the right when you select an app, as sections on the left, in a banner on the bottom left, a banner over the movie in their Roku Channel app and so on.
You may be in a country where they are not serving many ads. They also use ACR on TV models which have it that sends fingerprints of what you watch to a server for personalised ads.
Also Roku live tv has commercial breaks.
On a related note, the Samsung live tv app now runs javascript during its commercial breaks. It locks\disables about ten buttons on your remote so you are forced to wait or “interact” with the commercial.
I expect as Roku grows they’ll soon pick up that feature.
Already switched to an Android box since Roku was getting crappy fast. Projectivity launcher. Still need a fork to go mainstream to reign in Googles app developer shenanigans. If memory prices weren’t so screwed up, would have been a perfect time for Steam Machines to push regular Linux as an HTPC closer to mainstream
Any android box you can recommend? I am looking for something without all the bloat, ads and privacy nightmare. I have a shield. It is pretty nice but still bloated and too bulky to put behind a TV.
Projectivity helps. Android TV should be open source.
A Fire TV went nuts today spamming my network with 60k mdns Pkt/s. It took down all my WiFi access points because the CPUs couldn’t handle it.
Onn boxes from Walmart are hands down the best deal out there. $45-50 for the pro is solid.
It has boat, but you can get custom launchers or place it in app only mode to cut down on that.
Yeah I am considering in the near future to upgrade from my Shield before it gets too old.
I mean a BC-250 is still not a terrible option for a steam machine
Can someone recommend a good, simple, open source TV box with a remote that can play YouTube and Plex?
Mini PC with KDE Big Screen? Just got a massive update and can even handle HDMI CEC, so You can use your TV remote with it
Thanks for this info! Ive got a house full of Roku and have been gifting them over the years. Now I’ll have a new gift “box” to all those same people.
Cable is dying hence Murdoch needs a new way to broadcast his propaganda to old people.
