It was my favorite UI between firestick, android tv, and roku. I’m seriously bummed out by what they’ve been doing.
Last time I asked it seemed like open source streaming box OS’s aren’t a thing.
LibreElec?
I am living that dream right now and it’s pretty sweet. Tied into my jellyfin and emby setup. Personal photo screensaver, integration with my control platform, can run some emulators. And add-ons for some services.
I can’t get prime video to work but that’s not terrible, I do wanna watch fallout though.
I need to figure out a way to dual boot to Blissos easily on the fly.
But yeah LibreELEC has made me proud
I recently got rid of my TV box from my ISP (around here it tends to be bundled, but I found a cheaper data only ISP) and of a separate media box I had to play my collection of videos in digital files that were stored in a NAS and even the old NAS setup (which was just improvised with some external HDs connected to my router and used the older SMB v1 protocol which is much slower than more recent versions) and brough everything onto a single device which is a Mini PC with Lubuntu and Kodi which even has so additional stuff in it like an always on VPN and web controlled Torrent download server.
I never had a this good and this well integrated home entertainment setup before.
That’s basically a “make your own” version of LibreElec, but I didn’t recomend it above because that Mini PC was $150 and you do need to know your way around Linux to set something like that up yourself (plus the added value to make it worth it is in being able to hand more server services in that machine, such as Torrent downloading over that always on VPN) whilst LibreElec is a pre-assembled full solution and is also available for much cheaper devices.
But yeah, it’s actually pretty amazing how far open source home entertainment solutions have come in just a decade (which is how old my setup with a dedicated media box and NAS was before this restructuring of the whole thing to modern tech).
PS: Oh, and by the way, it’s possible to get a wireless remote control (about $4 from AliExpress) that works absolutelly fine with Linux and lets you control Kodi by remote just like you would control a dedicated TV Box.
I think our parent’s generation (or maybe their parents’?) would have said something like “There ought to be a law!” but we don’t say that because we don’t expect anyone in office will ever help us. Hm.
This seems entirely opposite to my observation. I’d say Biden and his administration are unusually focused on unfair or annoying business practices. In just the past two weeks the Biden administration:
- Set clear rules requiring cash refunds for flight delays
- Banned non-compete clauses
- Set new rules on “junk fees” for credit cards
- Increased the minimum salary for overtime exemption
- Expanded fiduciary duty to retirement “advisors”
- Announced a lawsuit against Live Nation (TicketMaster)
- Re-instated net neutrality
Oh man, don’t stop, what about two weeks prior to that? And two weeks before that? I bet we must be living in a consumer utopia with the pace of the last two weeks, surely applied to the last 3 years, right? right?
Yeah, things have actually gotten quite a bit better over the past 3 years. Much of that was due to the abysmal performance of his predecessor, so even a “just ok” job would have looked like a masterwork.
That said, Biden’s def hitting his stride lately 😄
Oh man, don’t stop
You got it! Here’s some other consumer protections the administration has introduced recently:
- Direct filing with the IRS
- Price limits on asthma inhalers and insulin for seniors
- Requiring ISPs to provide consistent up-front information and pricing
- Restrictions on college junk fees and disallowing witholding of transcripts
Hungry for more? Check this out:
White House Statement on Junk Fees
That’s from October, so some of it overlaps, but among other stuff there’s still a “Click to Cancel” rule working its way through the FTC.
Sadly Biden has been spending a bunch of time on lame crap like climate change, human rights, health care, infrastructure, election integrity, etc., so it might take a bit longer for him to single-handedly usher in consumer utopia.
Great. That covers what, 1 month of his administration? Keep going, unless you’re cherrypicking this incredibly active recent two weeks. This list should be enormous.
For RaspberryPI/Adguard:
Custom block rule
(ads|logs|cloudservices).roku.com$Thread MVP ^
Man Roku’s just getting worse and worse. I used to love my Roku years ago. Thought it was crazy I would have a fire stick because Roku was so much better. Those days are gone. Well mostly I still hate Fire Sticks.
I factory reset my roku TV and now keep it offline. I have a laptop with Ubuntu hooked up to it.
Same, im gunna hook up a pi5 to it soon. Crazy how much faster the Roku UI is when it’s not bloated with all that crap
Roku went to shit long back
Sigh, time to sell my Roku stock
I’m not shocked, but I am disappointed.
I just recently got that forced arbitration agreement from them. In response I got out an old Odroid N2+ I had laying around, installed Android TV, installed SmartTube, and never looked back. My only gripe is I have a Nebula subscription and the Nebula app that runs on Android TV is like a damn phone app. It starts with the phone aspect ratio and it expects me to use a touchscreen. It’s annoying. If anyone has a solution to this Nebula problem then I would be most appreciative.
Any thoughts on an alternative device to stream through Plex? I have an LG tv I guess I can use 🤷🏼♀️
AppleTV with the Infuse app.
Blows everything else away. It will connect to Plex and Jellyfin servers. Or a standard SMB folder share if you prefer. No ads. It never lags. Has reliable frame rate matching. And you’re likely to get 5+ years of software update support.
The only thing it won’t do is Atmos from Bluray rips (it will do lossless 7.1 but not the atmos layer). If you need that, then get an Nvidia Shield Pro.
Why Infuse and not the native Plex app?
Better support for Dolby Vision. I also prefer the Infuse UI.
The apple tv looks good. But can I put software of my choosing on it and will I be able to do everything on the apple tv if I dont have other apple devices?
Sideloading and customisation is a downside. Like other Apple devices, the App Store is the way they want you to install things.
There are ways to sideload things like Kodi through pre signed certificates but I don’t know much about it.
Dont need another Apple device.
They might miss out on the convenience of AirPlay, though. AFAIK you cant do DLNA streaming to the Apple TV.
AirPlay really bridges the gaps for me, wrt having any app available on my tv at any time.
Combined with steam connect, it’s a decent multi use box with solid, non-intrusive updates. Just wish the garden wasn’t so unnecessarily walled.
Plex user here, you install app on your receiver (tv/tablet/phone/whatever) and if you so desire you can host local content via plex server running on a machine on your network. Not used it as a home screen though, as i avoid paid players.
I’ve had the displeasure of using a Roku TV while put up by insurance since a truck drove into our garage in January, after a couple hotel stays.
I’m sure it’s a few years old but there can’t be more than 8mb of RAM.
The software is so bloated and sluggish on mine
I really wish software developers were actually allowed to ship decent firmware for stuff rather than just running a gigantic bloated os to effectively just decode and display video
wish software developers were actually allowed to ship decent firmware
huh funny i thought the talent were in charge…
It blows my mind how slow mine is now. I don’t even use the UI really, I only switch between ps5 and my shield tv, but that switch takes SO LONG
You bought an ad supported device.
I can’t believe the company that puts ads on the remote would do this to me.
Fork
