My old Android TV is almost 10 years old and despite ADB modding it shows its age. So I took a look around and quickly found out how bad things have gotten in the Smart TV space.
Dumb TVs are out of the question because of their high prices - they’re for commercial use after all.
What I want is a nice big TV (around 65" to 75") with a real colorful, sharp display and an OS that does not annoy me with ads (I despise ads) and recommendations while still fulfilling my needs, which are
- Crunchyroll
- Prime
- Ad-free Youtube client like smarttubenext
- HDMI for console gaming
- Absolutely no stuttering and frame rate issues when playing videos in apps
- Preferably no stuttering menus
- Reasonably priced
Anything else is completely uninteresting to me.
And yes, I know about the nvidia shield, but that thing is 5 years old and I don’t want to ride an already old horse that might be replaced very soon due to its age (even though there’s currently no signs of that on the horizon). I also don’t like using more than one remote…
I have no issue with modding it as long as that’s reasonably possible - just to get rid of most bloatware, annoyances, ads and such.
Any ideas?
Buy a good inexpensive TV. The manufacturer can make them cheap because they’re losing money and hoping to gain it back with ads and analytics. Don’t connect it to the internet. Get a Steam deck or small form factor PC (Intel NUC or variant) install Linux, profit.
I’ve bought a few small form factor PCs, and again Steam Deck works great, for $300 and then a great TV. And I don’t have to put up with any ads, any crap applications that barely work, it’s just browsing ANY website I want, playing ANY PC game I want. It’s honestly the best outcome and I’ll never go back at this point.
Don’t let yourself accept the subpar TV applications that are just a website with awful frontends, that run like shit and that the companies creating these apps have 0 incentive to make properly because their app isn’t there for a good experience. It’s there to track you, just like the TV.
This is what I do. A pi with Kodi or Jellyfin or similar plugged into HDMI is fine, it doesn’t matter what OS is on the TV if you’re never using anything but the one input.
