I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven’t already.
A cheap computer/laptop. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.
Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it’s just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it’s back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don’t sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.
I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don’t get any ads anywhere anymore.
People who don’t have the tech chops for self-hosting can also check the market for shop displays (like you’d see above the counter in a fast food joint). Those are “dumb” displays, no ads bs built-in because they aren’t expected to be used outside of a commercial environment.
They cost more than smart tvs because the ads subsidize consumer models. Rather, they cost as much as tvs this size really cost (after markup). $1700 is not realistic for a huge screen if it didn’t have ads. Also, fuck ads.
Oh, and if anyone knows why pfBlockerNG might fail to update some DNSBL AND IPv4 feeds during cron events, I’d be forever grateful. I’m getting tired of my router crashing every hour.
I made my Smart TV into a dumb TV by never activating the smart TV functions. And then I plugged a relatively cheap computer into it. So I don’t have this kind of problem.
That is the way
I recently took my brand new stupid fucking tv off the grid. I use Apple TV so not a big deal with the ads and shit but the damn thing forced an update mid movie, reset, and black screened. Couldn’t get it back on and went to bed, figured I’d deal with it in the morning. Luckily it worked the next day after that no more internet for you.
If you think that’s bad, my Denon receiver had to update itself which for some reason fails 100% of the time when using wifi so I had to find the longest ethernet cable I have to connect into the back (or disconnect 20+ wires from the back to move it closer to the network switch) so that it could finish downloading the firmware and complete the update before it would start working again.
That is bsolute cancer.
Get a cheap computer and connect the tv to it; get a mouse and bluetooth keyboard or an air mouse if your want to; install kodi perhaps, or just have your bare desktop. Problem solved
Disconnect the tv to wifi too.
There are some cheap Bluetooth TV remotes so if you want to take some time out of your day, there’s a few Linux distros that ship with similar GUI to some TV’s.
Who knew how prophetic this movie would be!
I mean… Historically I find the superbowl ads (and the halftime show) more entertaining than the actual game, but damn that is shitty.
I’d honestly return it as faulty. Preloaded adware shouldn’t be acceptable.
Yo dawg! I heard you like ads. So we put ads in your ads
Most smart TV OS are Cancer doesn’t matter how much you paid for it
Disable all internet functionality, set the time to the 1990s to prevent many timers from going off, attach the tv to another device that doesn’t have ads via your cable of choice. But why was your smart tv 1700? Did it have some special features?
Probably 4k oled
Have you ever looked at OLED TV prices? This is absolutely a normal price.
Apple TV was the best media thing I’ve bought in over a decade. No ads ever, incredibly responsive (league of its own compared to stuff like Roku), and is able to stream from my Jellyfin server. Beautiful interface, fast, clean, simple controller with a battery life that is easily over a year. Just a really good product. Roku can suck by nuts. Literal full page ads in a product that advertises that it has zero of them. Even the most expensive version. Fuck Roku.
I’ve found the shield pro is better, especially for customizability.
I agree. I switched from Roku to apple tv recently (and I don’t really have apple devices), and it was worth it.
Same here. One is the best made TV boxes period.
how does it go for codec support out of Jellyfin? I’m starting to collect and also rip AV1 content, which is fine for computers and phones (and my newer TV does it natively), but trying to find a streambox that wouldn’t need to transcode it is proving harder than expected
Shield pro is the best, end of story
Have a previous gen 4K, and have not encountered any issues with Jellyfin on streaming. There’s a spectacularly annoying bug that you lose your config if the atv is full to capacity - and with kids in the house it means frequent logins are required. The iOS client also seems to lag on features and updates compared to the other clients, but other than that niggle it’s been great.
