Self-hosted TV interface solutions

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Epzillon@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Hello!

Regarding what Gamers Nexus recently disclosed regarding LG TVs in their latest video I think its finally time to do what I can to mitigate it.

I cant root it since the firmware is too new and I cant afford a new TV either. My best bet would be blocking all LG IPs network-wide and disconnecting it from the network. (Although I understand even that might not be enough, its the best I can do right now)

I was thinking of using an old Raspberry to atleast access youtube and my media server, however I dont know what would be a good OS/distro to run this on. Preferably I would want to use something like an old PS4 controller as the remote.

Anyone here who has any suggestions or living room setups to suggest? Any and all tips are welcome.

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lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Not a popular answer, but Apple TV is the best out of the box experience. Zero ads, massive longevity. Mine is like 7 years old and still running the latest tvOS.

If you have the cash and inclination, Nvidia Shield is the hackers choice. Zero hardware upgrades in years tho, but software aplenty.

Just don’t let your smart TV access the internet in any situation, there’s no need. It’s just a stupid display.

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- one_old_coder@piefed.social@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Zero ads
  
  The launcher is a massive ad for Apple’s services though.
  
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  - lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    What? There’s one icon that says “TV”. You can move it to the bottom and you won’t see any apple stuff beyond that.
    
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- lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Apple TV’s launcher was recently “updated” to showcase whatever latest content is being pushed through Apple’s own services. Which is advertisement.
  
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  - lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    What ”launcher”? The TV app? You can just move it away. There is no launcher anywhere, every service along with AppleTV+ is just a separate application
    
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- klankin@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Are apple TVs not phoning home?
  
  If anything I’d imagine they’re one of the hardest companies to block, considering most apple users have a thousand idevices that could smuggle messages, even with all communications turned off.
  
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  - lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not at this scale. Remember that Apple is a hardware company first. They make money from hardware and app stores.
    
    Google is the worlds largest ad company who dabble in hardware and services to increase their ad revenue.
    
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  - Drun@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    “Find My” network is pretty strict by its nature. Realistically speaking, I wouldn’t be scared of it, because I can’t see any vector from which it can be dangerous to the end user.
    
    Nonetheless, “Find My” is an optional feature and can be fully disabled. Other Apple web-services can be blocked on a network level, if you want it for some reason. But, IMO, at this paranoia level, the only right option is OSS with a strict firewall.
    
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rotkehle@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
check out: plasma-bigscreen.org

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- Epzillon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This looks exactly like what I was looking for! Thank you!
  
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- Mad_Punda@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I wonder what kind of hardware to best run this on to watch YouTube, Jellyfin, Disney+…
  
  I do have a steam machine on the TV anyway. Is it possible to run this on Steam OS? And without having to fiddle so much when just wanting to watch TV?
  
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- fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Can I flash it over the TVs OS?
  
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  - thallamabond@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    This is installed on existing linux, so probably no.
    
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harsh3466@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
A raspberry pi running Kodi has been serving me well for years.

Easy install paths include LibreELEC and osmc. I believe both are based on debian.

FWIW I chose and have been happy with osmc. It’s got a plugin system for things like YouTube, you can access your media via the jellyfin plugin or by pointing Kodi at your media, has a remote app available on android and iOS, and for the most part just works.

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- AlThePilcrow@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What model pi? I have a 5 running lxqt and it gets overwhelmed streaming YouTube videos to a computer monitor.
  
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  - harsh3466@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Pi4 8gb. FWIW, the 5 is not great for media. I don’t remember the details, but iirc they removed hardware decoding from the 5.
    
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- lightnsfw@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’ve also been running Kodi on a raspbery pi and have been happy with it. Only issue I’ve had with the pi is I can’t get the overscan settings to work with retropie. But kodi has adjustments for the screen size so it works fine.
  
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- nullify3112@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  For people like me who don’t want to sail the high seas, how do you watch Netflix, Paramount and other subscription services with Kodi? Isn’t it just easier to use a browser at this point?
  
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  - Vittelius@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There are third party clients for a lot of streaming services as kodi add-ons. Here for example is the add-on for P+: matthuisman.nz/…/paramount-plus-kodi-add-on.html
    
    Please keep in mind that I haven’t used these for years and can make no comment on whether they still work. There are also some inherent limitations. Quality will be caped at 720p for example because widewine Linux bullshit
    
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  - steelplatedmech@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Browser would be simplest. Even though I prefer Linux and do run it, Windows might be better in your case with it having the DRM support and apps to run those services at higher resolution and HDR that sticking with browser might not allow.
    
    For my case I picked up a cheap MiniPC and install Fedora on it to use instead of the TV interface.
    
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- pedroapero@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  LibreELEC is definitely not based on Debian. I’m using CoreELEC and it works great too (same thing with different hardware support). It takes some time to understand the UI initially I admit.
  
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LordChaos82@fosstodon.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
@Epzillon I have been using Plasma Big Screen for a while now and cant be happier. I use Jellyfin as my main media source, Fred TV for my IP TV service and PWA for Youtube and Netflix. My TV has been disconnected from the internet for a while now and I dont feel my kids know the difference. I also use the Rii bluetooth remote to access Plasma Big Screen interface.
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- Statick@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Does Fred TV work with a remote? Jellyfin was great but I couldn’t find an IPTV service that worked well with a remote. Fred TVs interface is also not great compared to something like Tivimate
  
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- Valon_Blue@feddit.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s really good to hear. I’m liking the direction my Chromecast is going less and less and I’ve been thinking about making the transition. It would go over a lot smoother with my partner if it’s more fully featured. Have you tried it with Amazon Prime Video? That’s one of the only streaming services we’re still holding on to.
  
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  - LordChaos82@fosstodon.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    @Valon_Blue I created a PWA for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and it works great. I am unable to get 4K but I only watch in 1080p so it does not make a difference for me.
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SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is the setup I’ve been built so far:

I use KonstaKang’s LineageOS Android TV build running on a pi 5: konstakang.com/devices/rpi5/LineageOS23-ATV/

No Google play services store at all, I just use ADB to install apps

This is the launcher I use, it’s way nicer than the stock Lineage one: github.com/meddouribadis/arclauncher/

I use SmartTube as my YouTube client: github.com/yuliskov/smarttube/

I have this Bluetooth remote app on my phone for the rare occasion I need to type a password or something: f-droid.org/packages/io.github.jqssun.btremote

I also have KDE Connect on both my phone and TV so I can play/pause media from my phone at any time and send files (like new launcher wallpapers) easily without adb.

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mbirth@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
For the real “TV feeling”, try ErsatzTV. It basically creates multiple real-time streams of TV shows and movies from your media library. You can switch between them like channels.

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- ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Abandon ware now
  
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  - portifornia@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Really? https://github.com/ErsatzTV/next looks pretty active to me..?
    
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JelleWho@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Hey welcome to the hobby!

We personally have the whole TV on a Vlan, so it can’t acces anything at all. While our server/HA can still send a WOL command to it, and jellyfin can stream our movies to it. I run all of it on top of TrueNas, most as an app or else an VM.

I have never tried to set something up for YouTube specifically, since that runs on a Chromecast (for now…)

Let me know how your journey goes

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- papagaya@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That sounds like a good plan. I’m fairly new to the network game, how did you setup the firewalls between TV VLAN and your home network. I would like to have home assistant and jellyfin to access the TV (e.g. HA sees ‘running’ status of TV, TV can connect to jellyfin) but block the rest.
  
  Did you use port-based blocking in your firewall?
  
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JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Also, looking towards the future or for people that can find one at a decent price:

Not a raspberry pi but an Orange Pi Plus or Pro. They have a rockchip that has AV1 decoding (along with standard others) which is probably going to be the future (it is for corpo streaming already).

Put plasma big screen on it and get a Bluetooth wechip remote or something

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Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Two approaches:

Network isolation/DNS blocking - put the TV on a VLAN and only permit specific ports through to a media server (whatever the TV will support). If you lack VLAN capability, run PiHole as your DNS server (it works best as DNS and DHCP, but that’s just my opinion for things I like, such as proper name resolution for all devices).

Second option: disconnect TV from network entirely, then run something like Kodi (or whatever media center you prefer) on an old laptop, mini-PC, whatever, and have that device connect via HDMI. HDMI can passthrough the navigation controls from the TV remote (not giantess, but it’s part of the standard).

Even my POS Samsung passes through enough of the controls to navigate Kodi on a 2017 laptop, while retaining power, volume, settings, etc for the TV itself.

My current setup is a Jellyfin server and Jellyfin client on the TV. I run PiHole with a blocklist for all the Samsung BS which has had the side effect of making the TV menus faster as it doesn’t retrieve any “what’s new” info from Samsung. Its actually kind of fun to monitor the FNS log and see the domains the TV hits, click Deny and see what breaks in the TV. On average about 30% of all DNS requests on my network get denied, and nothing of value has been lost. That’s how much crap is being sent all the time.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

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- Reannlegge@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Before I fully understood what pihole was doing, it does not block out going things, it was amazing to see how much ad poop was trying to get to my TV. As I got more and more into this very inexpensive hobby of home labing /s I decided just to remove the TV from my wifi and my pihole went from blocking in the high 60% range to something more like the mid 30% range.
  
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Surp@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Open the TV and pull the wifi antennas off the board.

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MicKet@swiss.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
@Epzillon
I use #LibreElec with #Zattoo and #Netflix addon on an old Laptop. For remote control, I use a Remote with Bluetooth and Infrarot.
Currently I play around with #GamesOnWhales and its fork #Quasar for game streaming.
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Bluefruit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Me personally, I just use a Linux distro and use whatever flavor of streaming service I can access. Sometimes you’re hit with lower resolution but I’d rather that than get spied on and be fed ads by my hardware.

Ive also gone back to physical media and use a DVD player. I’m just buying series I like one by one.

This video used a combination of physical media and streaming services. They relied on waydroid and with some workarounds, it worked well for them:

youtu.be/nROKp0BpFek?is=GFhDrr82dCCFGcVT

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- whosepoopisonmybuttocks@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Seriously, I just use my TV as a big computer monitor, connected to a cheap old computer running Linux mint.
  
  Torrent, jellyfin, streaming. Unless you need cable, this works great.
  
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  - Bluefruit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hell even if you want some kind of cable service, IP TV exists.
    
    IMO no real reason to use android TV or a smart TV right now.
    
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beeng@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Old laptop, debian, Firefox, g60s remote. Done.

Im on a 2013 m93p thinkcenter tiny. Still goes hard

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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I use ONN Android boxes. Fairly inexpensive, but I think it’s difficult to set up without a Google account (you can create a dummy account on the setup).

Side-loading is trivial. Some favorite apps: TizenTube to replace YouTube (or any of a dozen or so frontends), Projectivy launcher to replace the awful default. Add an always on VPN.

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- Cherry@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted. I use similar Mi boxes. I hate google but the tv has a throw away tv email. I would love to not have google involved.
  
  I then have productivity launcher which i quite like. If i am wrong happy to be pointed in the right direction. generally use stremio/jelly/smartube
  
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  - gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Jellyfin for shows and movies, Chora for Navidrome Music, and it works as a perfect little access to your homeserver.
    
    I haven’t found an Android box that runs without Google services.
    
    Kodi on a Pi is just meh at best imo.
    
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  - ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Probably because those android set-top boxes are usually malware top to bottom.
    
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curbstickle@anarchist.nexus ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My answer is… excessive. So keep that in mind. If its just you or you and another adult, just set up kodi in some form.

I wanted something that would have profiles for my kids, a remote, and easy access. Where I am currently is:

Flex Launcher - 10’ UI. The same person started Big Launcher after but never completed. I’m hoping to finagle Plasma Bigscreen into doing what I want, but I’m not there yet.

Media is all Jellyfin, now with my older game emulation there as well.

Logging into the machine also auths against JF, so its per user at the OS level for each member of the family. Currently working on NFC for login so my kids can tap a toy or something to get their account logged in, rather than me or my wife doing it.

PC is an industrial pc I picked up, its light on usb ports but I added a wifi/bt card from another machine, bumped up the ram with some spares I had.

I have a usb soundbar and usb audio processor, all audio goes through there, managed via pipewire.

I couldn’t get CEC working well on it, so I made use of an overly expensive video switcher for this purpose that I picked up a while back. Corp conferencing switcher. Now I can send CEC programmatically.

Current remote is just an older android tablet with lineage on it. I want to replace this with a keyboard/remote combo, but haven’t found what I wanted to yet. This will just get broken accidentally by a kid, so I’d prefer a remote.

The experience is pretty decent, just login and browse. In any case, this is the (overly complex) way I’ve addressed things for me. That said, a few notes / to-do items:

No streaming platforms (I will not use them anyway)

I still need to stand up a youtube front end (I don’t use it much so low on the list, more for my wife)

I want to set up something to show family photos from immich as the background

I need better controllers for gaming. I have one 8bitdo pro wired, an old 8bitdo NES controller, and a gamecube usb adapter (but my gamecube controllers have all gone to crap now, so thats useless). I also connected up the balance board from the wii, but haven’t gotten much use out of it yet.

I want to get my AudioBookShelf on there as a dedicated setup with login by desktop account automatically, haven’t even started this yet. May have to do something a bit different here too as I want a read-along style for the kids.

I would never buy all this stuff, I used things I picked up on the free or cheap via hardware replacements through my work and tech liquidation/"recycling” companies.
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- echo@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I have a setup very similar to this. Although I’m fully on the Plasma Bigscreen bandwagon. But then again, I don’t have many custom services such as NFC login/custom background image logic like you do, and I doubt Plasma Bigscreen would play nice with that stuff. A couple of things I learned through my many attempts of setup:
  
  HDMI CEC doesn’t work on pretty much all x86 devices except for like some particular mini PCs, the Framework desktop, and the Steam Deck dock. Most ARM devices do though which is how I got around this by just using an Orange Pi 5. Another option is tunneling over DisplayPort if your device has a DisplayPort and you have a supported DP-HDMI adapter. Then finally, there’s also the PulseEight USB adapter if nothing else works.
  
  I’ve been using Waydroid for any application that doesn’t support Linux natively like YouTube or most streaming services (although I only use YouTube and Jellyfin for all of my content). You can use Waydroid Android TV which launches a near-native Android TV translation layer running Lineage OS which is de-googled and privacy protecting by default. You can launch the normal Android interface which has the entire Android TV UI, or you can enable multi window mode and just launch specific Android apps directly from whatever Linux launcher you use and they launch and work like normal Linux apps with TV controls. Very useful since Android has a much larger TV app ecosystem.
  
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- Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  @curbstickle @Epzillon What's the "overly expensive video switcher" that you're using? I have an android TV with broken CEC (a Pi running Libreelec works fine one my other tv, but not this one).
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  - curbstickle@anarchist.nexus ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Conferencing hardware from lightware (upstairs) and crestron (downstairs). Not something worth bothering with though, just get a CEC adapter like the pulse eight.
    
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- Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Tech liquidation/recycling companies? I’d like to hear more about that
  
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  - curbstickle@anarchist.nexus ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    When companies decommission their hardware, they go to a large scale “recycler”. Most of the time that means pulling the drive on the PCs and maybe dropping another in before reselling it for less.
    
    Some companies also recycle things like digital signage players, which could be purpose built hardware and mostly useless or purpose built software and fairly useful if you know what to check for. Or sometimes speakers, audio dsp’s, monitors, etc.
    
    Other times when a company is being liquidated (like being sold off to pay for debts), it’ll get auctioned off. You don’t get to look at the details much (maybe one device pulled out in front of the crate the rest are in), you are buying in quantity, etc, but there can be good finds there.
    
    I’m big on making use of perfectly good hardware with just a few years on them.
    
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Cyber@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s been a while for me (I don’t upgrade things that work and I try to buy things that last a long time…)

But, Hotel Mode might still be a thing, and it might bypass some “smart” stuff on the TV

I used that to make my TV start on the correct external HDMI port for my MythTV instance running on Arch Linux (btw) with dual TV tuners in.

The TV is rarely used to watch live TV and it’s certainly not connected to any networking.

Just another approach that I’ve not seen mentioned here

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epyon22@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There are builds for Android TV lineage os for the raspberry pi. If you are willing to put in some work for alternative apps it’s a great interface with no Google integration. I’ve used kodi before i moved to jellyfin always found the kodi -> jellyfin integration to be clunky. Google TV would be much cleaner

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Undearius@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I just saw this video a few minutes ago and it seems like a pretty good approach.

youtube.com/watch?v=nROKp0BpFek

It looks very similar to a post here from several months ago.

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steelplatedmech@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My living room set up has been TV not connected to internet and hooking up a minipc running Fedora. Could run Windows if DRM content from streaming services is important to you.

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Mongostein@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Any Linux distro with Plasma Bigscreen. My TV box is an old laptop I got for free from work running Cachy OS. I have a remote-sized keyboard/trackpad that I use to control it. I mostly just need the arrows, but the whole keyboard is there if I need to go in to the desktop OS.

I could use a recommendation for a big-screen ad-blocking YouTube app though.

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jobbies@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m still using an old Apple TV. I’m not happy about it but haven’t found a good replacement yet.

There’s a few interesting options for software in this thread. In terms of hardware - maybe a NUC or something? Would have to be small, quiet and relatively cheap.

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db_geek@norden.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
@Epzillon Don't know, if it fits your needs, I'm currently running https://tvheadend.org/ and MiniDLNA https://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/ on an Odroid XU4Q with Arch Linux Arm.
My TV can direct use DLNA, so no further software is necessary.
Tvheadend is recording actual tv shows and recordings are manually converted into h264 videos afterwards and placed on the DLNA server.
Shows, which I don't want to archive, are also served by the DLNA server.
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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DHCP	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
NUC	Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
PiHole	Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
Plex	Brand of media server package
VPN	Virtual Private Network

[Thread #96 for this comm, first seen 7th Sep 2026, 18:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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thehatfox@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If you have nay knowledge of networking (or want to learn), start setting up restricted VLANs to isolate your smart devices. Only allow them access to specific services/devices like your media server.

For dedicated hardware, there are plenarily of options. A Raspberry Pi will work to start with, there are Linux images with Kodi such as LibreELEC and osmc (I have used both in the past and they worked fine), and Android TV images also that can run apps. I suppose you could also set up a generic Linux install and run the Jellyfin client or similar - not sure if there any turnkey options for that.

We have a couple of Apple TV boxes and they perform well, the Jellyfin apps for them have really improved in the last year or so too.

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ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
LibreElec, Umbrella addon and a premiumize subscription.

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