That has nothing to do with piracy or not. Its just a device to play media. You can use a firetv to 100% stream pirated content via kodi or plex and still have to see this shit.
I don’t see it. I have mine blocked from dialing home, receiving updates and autoplays have long been turned off.
Good for you. It does not change my point though that a device which can stream media having ads not really has anything to do with more piracy.
Sure it does. As a pirate I’ve chosen to disable the device’s ability to connect to Amazon to annoy me with ads, and pirate the content they’d usually serve me instead of subscribing to anything. Not that hard to understand. If I could find a way to uninstall all the Amazon apps, I would.
Did you pirate the TV? No, this actually has nothing to do with piracy. What's hard to understand.
Unbelievable that you could miss the point this much and still ask "what's hard to understand" lmfao
Evidently it’s too complicated for you.
I didn’t pirate my computer either, but almost all the content on it is.
Also, the original comment I responded to said “and still have to see this shit.” I don’t, because of piracy strats.
You can disable whatever app you want until the system doesn't work any more. Just install an alternative for what you want to disable (e.g. the launcher) and then disable the Amazon version.
until the system doesn’t work anymore
yeah that’s my worry… accidentally bricking the thing. Can you rollback changes if that happens?
edit:
so be sure you don't disable anything absolutely critical (use your best judgment)
apparently not
I keep imagining a scenario where it cannot find something and just spins forever looking for it, or disable something that prevents startup entirely, etc.
edit: wait… you can install a new launcher on a fire tv? I need to look into that.
As long as it still boots, you can undo the change with a simple adb pm enable [packagename].
I wouldn't recomment disableing system critical things like systemui. You can google each package together with "Can I disable X" and you should get decent infos.
Regarding the launcher:
I don't have a Fire TV but I had a Fire Tablet. So if these two work the same, you can install another launcher without issues. But Amazon removed the setting for default launcher, so it will always pick the stock launcher when you press the home button.
To override that, there are two options.
Install the Automate app by Llamalab and make a small flow that detects when the stock launcher is the currently active app and then automatically launches the new launcher. This option is completely safe.
Disable the stock launcher. If Android doesn't find it's set default launcher, it will instead open the first launcher it finds. Worked good on the Fire Tablet, but I can't verify that this doesn't cause issues on a Fire TV. So this might be a bit risky.
Thank you for the help here, I was able to get things working well, and wanted to post a follow up response for anyone wondering about this, and maybe a separate post later. All directions found here: https://troypoint.com/troypoint-toolbox/
Using the Downloader app, I installed Wolf Launcher 0.1.9, then Launcher Manager 1.1.9 for Fire TV (which also replaces and/or redirects to the default settings menu as needed), and followed the tutorial steps to set Wolf Launcher as the default for the home button. (Of the four launchers in the toolbox, Wolf Launcher had the fastest startup, and once I understood the settings it was easy to hide widgets, sections, labels and unused apps from the view for a simple clean grid of all my apps on a dark background that doesn't scroll across the screen or anything unnecessary.) I wasn't able to install Automate (that I could tell), but instead installed Launch on Boot 1.13 (12), and used it to set Wolf Launcher to start on boot or wakeup.
It seemed tempermental at first because I was changing settings around, so I guess triggers got confused for a bit. Once I got it set correctly, now it still boots to the original Home screen first (with everything black, blank and/or missing except for the Home and Settings icons, since everything Amazon is blocked via the pihole), but once Home is done loading nothing, it quickly switches to Wolf Launcher. (I opted to not disable or remove the built-in launcher and apps to avoid accidental bricking since this already works, and I could just hide apps that cluttered the view now.)
Using the Home button isn't perfect, but it's definitely good enough. From within an app it often defaults to the original Home screen, but pressing it again once or twice usually switches back to Wolf Launcher, and simply exiting an app normally or via the back button instead will go to Wolf Launcher, so it's not a big issue. If for some reason Wolf Launcher doesn't start, the Settings menu is still accessible so it can be rebooted from there to reset it, or Wolf Launcher can be started from the Settings Applications menu.
Thank you again for the direction, it's finally setup the way I wanted!
edit: and to whoever is reading this, be sure to go into settings beforehand and disable automatic app offloading, and make sure all your apps really are there and don't need to be reinstalled again before you shutdown all communication to Amazon and the App Store. Even if an offloaded app is visible on Home, it won't be visible or installable from the other launchers. They only see installed apps.
edit2: also be ready to block access to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) in your router settings, because FireTVs have that as an automatic entry that you cannot delete. You can set your own DNS to a pihole for domain blocking, but separately you'll have to block 8.8.8.8 or it will always have a backup path through. The only way I've found to know it's blocked for certain is to use the Downloader app browser, and try going to 1.1.1.1 first to see Cloudflare's website work, and then go to 8.8.8.8, and it should be inaccessible if you have it blocked correctly.
Happy to help!
Btw, check out Netguard (either the F-Droid version or the one from Github, since these two versions allow system-wide adblocking).
And Newpipe.
If you don't know these apps yet, they will change how you use your Android device.
The main issue with some apps is that apparently the FireTV OS is different enough from my Fire tablet that many apks get a parse error or something similar, so you need a specific FireTV version, and there isn’t one available for many apps so you need alternatives. YT Revanced, for example, doesn’t work on the FireTV.
Fortunately the pihole takes care of all adblocking except for YT, and for that I have SmartTubeNext which includes adblock and sponsorblock, and I can cast to it with YT Revanced from my tablet.
I may look into NewPipe or Invidious, but honestly it seems like more a headache than it’s worth with the intermittent server issues I keep seeing reported, when the setup I have now seems to work without problems.
Thank you for the detailed info and the tips, it’s much appreciated! With that to lead me in the right direction I was also able to find a possible solution for the home button without a workaround using an updated app, though it seems ymmv depending on whether or not Amazon can automatically reset it somehow. I have pretty much everything blocked so the home screen is usually empty except for my top row apps, so the button fix may work for me, but those workarounds may still be needed. Thanks again!
I disagree. I will not under any circumstances be advertised to in my own home.
I'm happy to pay for your goods and services, but if you break that agreement our relationship is immediately concluded. The penalty for breaking the original terms of our agreement is that I will take what I originally paid for in perpetuity. You had your chance.
Same rules apply for attempting to renegotiate the rules whilst the ball is in play: see Amazon's new trend of attempting to charge an additional monthly fee of the same amount as the initial service to access documentaries etc. They're finished.
They aren't finished. Remember that you are in the minority with your outrage, and 95% of the general population loves eating shit popsicles from megacorps. Aka they won't do anything about it.
If anyone doubts this, simply visit the nearest Apple store for a half hour and watch the lemmings around you. Apple store employees, and the company literally abuse people and treat their customers like shit, yet the place is still packed. The lemmings still line up for an hour for their "appointment," and put up with people yelling/talking down at them, only to have the privilege of purchasing the latest iPhone.
The general population will take this lying down. CTV is one of the biggest growing advertising channels. It mostly gets bought and sold programmatically too, and nothing is off the table. Not only are we getting fucking hosed with streaming fees, they are going to absolutely bombard us with ads too.
Finished as in they no longer get to be installed on anything in my house. I realise that most people seem to love the taste of shit sandwiches. Not for me.
As soon as streaming services start acting like that, they're gone. The only one I have left is Netflix, and it is on thin ice - we'll see what they do with their pricing structure going forward and if they start trying to push ads on higher tiers.
If it wasn't for the Mrs., I would have turfed Netflix a long time ago. They are the grossest of all the streamers, and they are at the forefront of the greed we face today. I refuse to even use it. I pay for two subscriptions (my wife's, and one for my parents, who live across the continent). I refuse to use it. I don't even use it. Who are we turning into as a species?
People are desperate to justify stealing stuff, cus no one wants to be the bad guy in their own head.
Or you know have the sense god gave goats and be able to see the neon sign as they have been blowing out Amazon home devices for years. Now they need to recoup that half decade of losses. Buckle up.
Honestly, this is why we are here. I get it if you use their delivery because getting stuff can be hard depending on the area. But this stuff, where there are half dozen competing options… come on.
I wasn't specifically talking about this product alone, but about the general trend. I don't own any Amazon hardware.
A few years ago, piracy was all but dead because or really good offers like Netflix. All the stuff you wanted was there and the price was ok.
Now to get the same that you got for a tenner a month on Netflix, you have to pay for half a dozen of streaming services.
Youtube forces you to watch more ads than actual content. All services are increasing prices while decreasing what you are getting for that money. And all sorts of products are retroactively introducing ads.
I mean seriously, if someone bought that stick, they paid for it. They shouldn't have to worry about updates actively making the device worse.
It's an industry-wide trend that sucks, and it's one that creates resistance. People start pirating, use adblock and some hack their devices. Not because it's impossible to have a situation that suits everyone, but because they purpously use enshittification to suck more money out of their customers.
Your gripes about inflation are justified.
All I’m saying there were so many red flags on buying these that you’d have to be new to technology to not have seen this coming. I’m actually surprised they weren’t doing or worse from day one 🤷♂️
It's unbelievable. The dumb fuckers literally figured out a way to beat piracy. High quantity, easily accessible content at an appetizable price. Even one for TV, one for music, $10-15 a month, I had no issue. Everyone made out like a bandit, I was satisfied, and they all made billions.
Now you can't even use YouTube without being bombarded with ads, and streaming is quickly becoming worse than cable was. Piracy is definitely back on the table, and the fuckers don't have license to whine about it this time. They literally had it licked, but then got too greedy, so fuck them.
At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don't worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don't have to put up with that nonsense.
Which OS is good for this? Which remote can be used? I use my Stick to launch several apps like Plex, Smarttube Next, ARD Mediathek (German TV series). Not needing anything more. But a snappy remote and support for various audio and video codecs is key.
I'm a linux nerd and I jut run stock Fedora. It's desktop is like a phone UI, so lots of folks are familiar with it.
I then use a wireless keyboard and trackball. T
here are tons of remotes out there,but I don't have any experience with then. Let me know if you find a good remote though. 😁
I've been using a $20 air remote off Amazon for years now. The tracking is honestly incredible and the device is built like an old Nokia phone. I've launched it off the bed or couch hundreds of times, even had the plastic casing bust open, but when I clicked it back together it still works good as new, and it's even good enough to play simple point and click/mousepowered games on the TV. The front is all media/TV controls and the back is a full keyboard, with a toggled backlight. It's honestly so much better than any of the media center remotes I've used including the apple tv one or the firestick one.
Even if there's no good remote out there (I've not looked into it either) I would argue that the drawbacks of not having a remote are vastly less serious than the drawbacks of using one of these "smart" devices.
I run CoreELEC/LibreELEC on all my streaming devices. It only runs Kodi but since Kodi has tons of addons it is fairly easy to customize. Kodi also plays pretty much any codec in existence and has support for various remotes.
If you're planning to play 4k content you will want something with a little bit more power than a Raspberry Pi 4. For Dolby Vision you need one of the few supported devices.
Very helpful. Tanks!
Agreed. I started out with r-pi for the TV and and refuse to ever go back to just the smart-TV or stick interface. I've since moved on to more powerful HTPC/dedicated game server PC so I can host games for our friends but I still have the r-pi.
Honestly as nice as some of the smart TV or smart stick functions are, they're only nice because they're zero-effort. For just a slight amount of effort and no technical knowledge you can have a much better and safer setup.
Why do people still use those?
They’re cheap. That’s as far as some people think about it.
I use a fire stick because I'm familiar with them and they are much better than the shitty OS built into my TVs. Is there an alternative you recommend? I'm open to changing, especially with how theyve been pushing ads and paid rentals lately
Roku is pretty nice
Roku is literally chock full of ads, and they send whatever you’re watching back to their ad partners. I thought Roku was good too until I recently bought one of their top of the line boxes and it had ads _everywhere _ compared to my Roku tv. I immediately went out and bought an Apple TV and couldn’t be happier. No ads anywhere, and is way snappier than Roku.
Due to how they made it on scratch based on the Linux kernel, finding apps to install is hard. It doesn't even have a web browser, let alone SmartTube.
If you have the money, I'd go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.
Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.
I'll second the Chromecast (specifically the "Google TV with Chromecast" or something like that). It sounds cover-intuitive because it does come with its own home screen full of ads, but putting things like smart tube and a custom launcher on is pretty trivial and it was only £25.
Apple TV. No ads at all, it’s faster than every alternative (unless you’re building your own server), and it is much easier to use than every alternative.
Can you install adfree youtube on it with sponsorblock?
I got a 4K Max one because it was only 35€. I want to upgrade to a shield pro successor which is overdue by now.
Lol yeah the timing of their comment couldn't have been more ironic
You can easily change launchers on the Shield and remove all of Google's nonsense through ADB as well though, unlike Amazon who locks down the OS very tight. Plus like another commenter said, you can just flat out install LineageOS and you're good.
Thanks for the tip, I didn't know that.
You can run lineageOS on it though; problem solved
Lol, damn.
4k Max is so much faster than the Shield devices, i actually got upset that i invested so much money in two of them.
Interesting. I am not really happy with mine. Pretty laggy and it sometimes crashes. But good to know and makes the wait easier instead of getting that old tech instead.
Easy to sideload apps and use it for streaming, and I'm too lazy to set up my *arr self hosted media server with jellyfin again.
The Fire TV Sticks are getting more unusable with every update.
don't update them
Most updates are OTA. They don't give you a choice
I think they're recommending that you do something like firewall/piehole them
Yes.
I complained about this to "support" a few days ago. A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.
Straight up told them I will pick another manufacturer this weekend.
I'm burned out on protecting myself from smart devices. Maybe just a dumb screen this round.
Edit: I have every single privacy setting set to off, but some update added a new category and defaults to on. Don't know how long Amazon has been spying on me or what they took.
My device has autoplay off already. It may have stopped a full screen video ad, but there is a full screen picture ad instead.
A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.
We're almost there
Why would support care, this is clearly a feature not a bug. Did you at least demand a refund on the device?
They didn't whatsoever. I expected that. They said they sent my complaint through so I hope I tickled a 0 into a 1 somewhere in their sea of data, but I don't expect results.
Oh yeah, they followed up with an offer to buy a new TV. Like, that was a little cold there, dude.
Which is why I just bought an nVidia Shield Pro. Custom launcher coming tomorrow. Time to start torrenting again.
Glad I don't really watch content anymore. Though, between the Roku TV my kid has, and the big Samsung TV in our living room...my pihole is constantly hammered by both of them.
Isn't a firestick basically a chromecast? I mean, google is a shitty company in matters about privacy or ethics, but amazon isn't much better
I can cast to my internet-disabled TV anything to it, including pirate streaming sites with no ads. 20 years ago I ran a hdmi from my desktop and used a wireless touchpad to load downloaded stuff. It truly is the golden age of piracy
They're more like AndroidTV boxes with a full menu and HDMI-CEC support, only they came out back in the day when Chromecasts were just for casting. They were also dirt cheap; unfortunately that's because they were made with bargain-basement parts which often failed or started to overheat easily a few months in.
They have been built onto android until now, but i read that they wanted to ditch that and make their own os from scratch
Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV's, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon's, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.
I have a fire tv cube just direct launch into apps to avoid this. For example instead of powering on the fire tv with power button I tell Alexa to open the app I need.
Down side is this doesn’t really work with sieloaded apps like smart tube
Sounds like this can be better avoided by not having an fire TV cube at all
If I hadn’t already disabled autoplays and blocked it from dialing home for updates, this might be a concern.
That's why piracy is back on the menu.
That has nothing to do with piracy or not. Its just a device to play media. You can use a firetv to 100% stream pirated content via kodi or plex and still have to see this shit.
I don’t see it. I have mine blocked from dialing home, receiving updates and autoplays have long been turned off.
Good for you. It does not change my point though that a device which can stream media having ads not really has anything to do with more piracy.
Sure it does. As a pirate I’ve chosen to disable the device’s ability to connect to Amazon to annoy me with ads, and pirate the content they’d usually serve me instead of subscribing to anything. Not that hard to understand. If I could find a way to uninstall all the Amazon apps, I would.
Did you pirate the TV? No, this actually has nothing to do with piracy. What's hard to understand.
Unbelievable that you could miss the point this much and still ask "what's hard to understand" lmfao
Evidently it’s too complicated for you.
I didn’t pirate my computer either, but almost all the content on it is.
Also, the original comment I responded to said “and still have to see this shit.” I don’t, because of piracy strats.
Lmao autist
This here is the solution for what you want: https://www.xda-developers.com/disable-system-app-bloatware-android/
You can disable whatever app you want until the system doesn't work any more. Just install an alternative for what you want to disable (e.g. the launcher) and then disable the Amazon version.
yeah that’s my worry… accidentally bricking the thing. Can you rollback changes if that happens?
edit:
apparently not
I keep imagining a scenario where it cannot find something and just spins forever looking for it, or disable something that prevents startup entirely, etc.
edit: wait… you can install a new launcher on a fire tv? I need to look into that.
As long as it still boots, you can undo the change with a simple
adb pm enable [packagename].I wouldn't recomment disableing system critical things like systemui. You can google each package together with "Can I disable X" and you should get decent infos.
Regarding the launcher:
I don't have a Fire TV but I had a Fire Tablet. So if these two work the same, you can install another launcher without issues. But Amazon removed the setting for default launcher, so it will always pick the stock launcher when you press the home button.
To override that, there are two options.
Thank you for the help here, I was able to get things working well, and wanted to post a follow up response for anyone wondering about this, and maybe a separate post later. All directions found here: https://troypoint.com/troypoint-toolbox/
Using the Downloader app, I installed Wolf Launcher 0.1.9, then Launcher Manager 1.1.9 for Fire TV (which also replaces and/or redirects to the default settings menu as needed), and followed the tutorial steps to set Wolf Launcher as the default for the home button. (Of the four launchers in the toolbox, Wolf Launcher had the fastest startup, and once I understood the settings it was easy to hide widgets, sections, labels and unused apps from the view for a simple clean grid of all my apps on a dark background that doesn't scroll across the screen or anything unnecessary.) I wasn't able to install Automate (that I could tell), but instead installed Launch on Boot 1.13 (12), and used it to set Wolf Launcher to start on boot or wakeup.
It seemed tempermental at first because I was changing settings around, so I guess triggers got confused for a bit. Once I got it set correctly, now it still boots to the original Home screen first (with everything black, blank and/or missing except for the Home and Settings icons, since everything Amazon is blocked via the pihole), but once Home is done loading nothing, it quickly switches to Wolf Launcher. (I opted to not disable or remove the built-in launcher and apps to avoid accidental bricking since this already works, and I could just hide apps that cluttered the view now.)
Using the Home button isn't perfect, but it's definitely good enough. From within an app it often defaults to the original Home screen, but pressing it again once or twice usually switches back to Wolf Launcher, and simply exiting an app normally or via the back button instead will go to Wolf Launcher, so it's not a big issue. If for some reason Wolf Launcher doesn't start, the Settings menu is still accessible so it can be rebooted from there to reset it, or Wolf Launcher can be started from the Settings Applications menu.
Thank you again for the direction, it's finally setup the way I wanted!
edit: and to whoever is reading this, be sure to go into settings beforehand and disable automatic app offloading, and make sure all your apps really are there and don't need to be reinstalled again before you shutdown all communication to Amazon and the App Store. Even if an offloaded app is visible on Home, it won't be visible or installable from the other launchers. They only see installed apps.
edit2: also be ready to block access to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) in your router settings, because FireTVs have that as an automatic entry that you cannot delete. You can set your own DNS to a pihole for domain blocking, but separately you'll have to block 8.8.8.8 or it will always have a backup path through. The only way I've found to know it's blocked for certain is to use the Downloader app browser, and try going to 1.1.1.1 first to see Cloudflare's website work, and then go to 8.8.8.8, and it should be inaccessible if you have it blocked correctly.
Happy to help!
Btw, check out Netguard (either the F-Droid version or the one from Github, since these two versions allow system-wide adblocking).
And Newpipe.
If you don't know these apps yet, they will change how you use your Android device.
The main issue with some apps is that apparently the FireTV OS is different enough from my Fire tablet that many apks get a parse error or something similar, so you need a specific FireTV version, and there isn’t one available for many apps so you need alternatives. YT Revanced, for example, doesn’t work on the FireTV.
Fortunately the pihole takes care of all adblocking except for YT, and for that I have SmartTubeNext which includes adblock and sponsorblock, and I can cast to it with YT Revanced from my tablet.
I may look into NewPipe or Invidious, but honestly it seems like more a headache than it’s worth with the intermittent server issues I keep seeing reported, when the setup I have now seems to work without problems.
Thank you for the detailed info and the tips, it’s much appreciated! With that to lead me in the right direction I was also able to find a possible solution for the home button without a workaround using an updated app, though it seems ymmv depending on whether or not Amazon can automatically reset it somehow. I have pretty much everything blocked so the home screen is usually empty except for my top row apps, so the button fix may work for me, but those workarounds may still be needed. Thanks again!
I disagree. I will not under any circumstances be advertised to in my own home.
I'm happy to pay for your goods and services, but if you break that agreement our relationship is immediately concluded. The penalty for breaking the original terms of our agreement is that I will take what I originally paid for in perpetuity. You had your chance.
Same rules apply for attempting to renegotiate the rules whilst the ball is in play: see Amazon's new trend of attempting to charge an additional monthly fee of the same amount as the initial service to access documentaries etc. They're finished.
They aren't finished. Remember that you are in the minority with your outrage, and 95% of the general population loves eating shit popsicles from megacorps. Aka they won't do anything about it.
If anyone doubts this, simply visit the nearest Apple store for a half hour and watch the lemmings around you. Apple store employees, and the company literally abuse people and treat their customers like shit, yet the place is still packed. The lemmings still line up for an hour for their "appointment," and put up with people yelling/talking down at them, only to have the privilege of purchasing the latest iPhone.
The general population will take this lying down. CTV is one of the biggest growing advertising channels. It mostly gets bought and sold programmatically too, and nothing is off the table. Not only are we getting fucking hosed with streaming fees, they are going to absolutely bombard us with ads too.
Finished as in they no longer get to be installed on anything in my house. I realise that most people seem to love the taste of shit sandwiches. Not for me.
As soon as streaming services start acting like that, they're gone. The only one I have left is Netflix, and it is on thin ice - we'll see what they do with their pricing structure going forward and if they start trying to push ads on higher tiers.
If it wasn't for the Mrs., I would have turfed Netflix a long time ago. They are the grossest of all the streamers, and they are at the forefront of the greed we face today. I refuse to even use it. I pay for two subscriptions (my wife's, and one for my parents, who live across the continent). I refuse to use it. I don't even use it. Who are we turning into as a species?
People are desperate to justify stealing stuff, cus no one wants to be the bad guy in their own head.
“Gas prices going up? To the high seas I go!”
Or you know have the sense god gave goats and be able to see the neon sign as they have been blowing out Amazon home devices for years. Now they need to recoup that half decade of losses. Buckle up.
Honestly, this is why we are here. I get it if you use their delivery because getting stuff can be hard depending on the area. But this stuff, where there are half dozen competing options… come on.
I wasn't specifically talking about this product alone, but about the general trend. I don't own any Amazon hardware.
A few years ago, piracy was all but dead because or really good offers like Netflix. All the stuff you wanted was there and the price was ok.
Now to get the same that you got for a tenner a month on Netflix, you have to pay for half a dozen of streaming services.
Youtube forces you to watch more ads than actual content. All services are increasing prices while decreasing what you are getting for that money. And all sorts of products are retroactively introducing ads.
I mean seriously, if someone bought that stick, they paid for it. They shouldn't have to worry about updates actively making the device worse.
It's an industry-wide trend that sucks, and it's one that creates resistance. People start pirating, use adblock and some hack their devices. Not because it's impossible to have a situation that suits everyone, but because they purpously use enshittification to suck more money out of their customers.
Your gripes about inflation are justified.
All I’m saying there were so many red flags on buying these that you’d have to be new to technology to not have seen this coming. I’m actually surprised they weren’t doing or worse from day one 🤷♂️
It's unbelievable. The dumb fuckers literally figured out a way to beat piracy. High quantity, easily accessible content at an appetizable price. Even one for TV, one for music, $10-15 a month, I had no issue. Everyone made out like a bandit, I was satisfied, and they all made billions.
Now you can't even use YouTube without being bombarded with ads, and streaming is quickly becoming worse than cable was. Piracy is definitely back on the table, and the fuckers don't have license to whine about it this time. They literally had it licked, but then got too greedy, so fuck them.
Why is it legal to bait and switch people by adding ads after you pay for it? Every single TV should be refunded.
At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don't worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don't have to put up with that nonsense.
Which OS is good for this? Which remote can be used? I use my Stick to launch several apps like Plex, Smarttube Next, ARD Mediathek (German TV series). Not needing anything more. But a snappy remote and support for various audio and video codecs is key.
I'm a linux nerd and I jut run stock Fedora. It's desktop is like a phone UI, so lots of folks are familiar with it.
I then use a wireless keyboard and trackball. T
here are tons of remotes out there,but I don't have any experience with then. Let me know if you find a good remote though. 😁
I've been using a $20 air remote off Amazon for years now. The tracking is honestly incredible and the device is built like an old Nokia phone. I've launched it off the bed or couch hundreds of times, even had the plastic casing bust open, but when I clicked it back together it still works good as new, and it's even good enough to play simple point and click/mousepowered games on the TV. The front is all media/TV controls and the back is a full keyboard, with a toggled backlight. It's honestly so much better than any of the media center remotes I've used including the apple tv one or the firestick one.
Even if there's no good remote out there (I've not looked into it either) I would argue that the drawbacks of not having a remote are vastly less serious than the drawbacks of using one of these "smart" devices.
I run CoreELEC/LibreELEC on all my streaming devices. It only runs Kodi but since Kodi has tons of addons it is fairly easy to customize. Kodi also plays pretty much any codec in existence and has support for various remotes.
https://coreelec.org/
https://libreelec.tv/
If you're planning to play 4k content you will want something with a little bit more power than a Raspberry Pi 4. For Dolby Vision you need one of the few supported devices.
Very helpful. Tanks!
Agreed. I started out with r-pi for the TV and and refuse to ever go back to just the smart-TV or stick interface. I've since moved on to more powerful HTPC/dedicated game server PC so I can host games for our friends but I still have the r-pi.
Honestly as nice as some of the smart TV or smart stick functions are, they're only nice because they're zero-effort. For just a slight amount of effort and no technical knowledge you can have a much better and safer setup.
Why do people still use those?
They’re cheap. That’s as far as some people think about it.
I use a fire stick because I'm familiar with them and they are much better than the shitty OS built into my TVs. Is there an alternative you recommend? I'm open to changing, especially with how theyve been pushing ads and paid rentals lately
Roku is pretty nice
Roku is literally chock full of ads, and they send whatever you’re watching back to their ad partners. I thought Roku was good too until I recently bought one of their top of the line boxes and it had ads _everywhere _ compared to my Roku tv. I immediately went out and bought an Apple TV and couldn’t be happier. No ads anywhere, and is way snappier than Roku.
Due to how they made it on scratch based on the Linux kernel, finding apps to install is hard. It doesn't even have a web browser, let alone SmartTube.
If you have the money, I'd go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.
Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.
I'll second the Chromecast (specifically the "Google TV with Chromecast" or something like that). It sounds cover-intuitive because it does come with its own home screen full of ads, but putting things like smart tube and a custom launcher on is pretty trivial and it was only £25.
Apple TV. No ads at all, it’s faster than every alternative (unless you’re building your own server), and it is much easier to use than every alternative.
Can you install adfree youtube on it with sponsorblock?
I got a 4K Max one because it was only 35€. I want to upgrade to a shield pro successor which is overdue by now.
If you want to do this because of the full screen ads you may be too late.
Lol yeah the timing of their comment couldn't have been more ironic
You can easily change launchers on the Shield and remove all of Google's nonsense through ADB as well though, unlike Amazon who locks down the OS very tight. Plus like another commenter said, you can just flat out install LineageOS and you're good.
Thanks for the tip, I didn't know that.
You can run lineageOS on it though; problem solved
Lol, damn.
4k Max is so much faster than the Shield devices, i actually got upset that i invested so much money in two of them.
Interesting. I am not really happy with mine. Pretty laggy and it sometimes crashes. But good to know and makes the wait easier instead of getting that old tech instead.
Easy to sideload apps and use it for streaming, and I'm too lazy to set up my *arr self hosted media server with jellyfin again.
The Fire TV Sticks are getting more unusable with every update.
don't update them
Most updates are OTA. They don't give you a choice
I think they're recommending that you do something like firewall/piehole them
Yes.
I complained about this to "support" a few days ago. A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.
Straight up told them I will pick another manufacturer this weekend.
I'm burned out on protecting myself from smart devices. Maybe just a dumb screen this round.
Edit: I have every single privacy setting set to off, but some update added a new category and defaults to on. Don't know how long Amazon has been spying on me or what they took.
My device has autoplay off already. It may have stopped a full screen video ad, but there is a full screen picture ad instead.
We're almost there
Why would support care, this is clearly a feature not a bug. Did you at least demand a refund on the device?
They didn't whatsoever. I expected that. They said they sent my complaint through so I hope I tickled a 0 into a 1 somewhere in their sea of data, but I don't expect results.
Oh yeah, they followed up with an offer to buy a new TV. Like, that was a little cold there, dude.
Which is why I just bought an nVidia Shield Pro. Custom launcher coming tomorrow. Time to start torrenting again.
Which launcher are you planning to use?
https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher probably. Not sure yet, but has to be FLOSS.
Glad I don't really watch content anymore. Though, between the Roku TV my kid has, and the big Samsung TV in our living room...my pihole is constantly hammered by both of them.
Isn't a firestick basically a chromecast? I mean, google is a shitty company in matters about privacy or ethics, but amazon isn't much better
I can cast to my internet-disabled TV anything to it, including pirate streaming sites with no ads. 20 years ago I ran a hdmi from my desktop and used a wireless touchpad to load downloaded stuff. It truly is the golden age of piracy
They're more like AndroidTV boxes with a full menu and HDMI-CEC support, only they came out back in the day when Chromecasts were just for casting. They were also dirt cheap; unfortunately that's because they were made with bargain-basement parts which often failed or started to overheat easily a few months in.
They have been built onto android until now, but i read that they wanted to ditch that and make their own os from scratch
Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV's, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon's, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.
I have a fire tv cube just direct launch into apps to avoid this. For example instead of powering on the fire tv with power button I tell Alexa to open the app I need.
Down side is this doesn’t really work with sieloaded apps like smart tube
Sounds like this can be better avoided by not having an fire TV cube at all
If I hadn’t already disabled autoplays and blocked it from dialing home for updates, this might be a concern.
Lols :)