For "fun and interesting" consider an LG WebOS TV. Many can be rooted[1] which allows installing a homebrew channel[2] of unauthorized apps or writing your own.
I initially did it for Jellyfin before they made it into the official app store, but the Moonlight game streaming app has unlocked many hours of entertainment.
This is also the coolest thing you can do for a rooted webOS tv:
https://github.com/satgit62/How-to-Install-and-set-up-Ambili...
doesn't need to go through another device to capture the HDMI, it's built right in!
Second-coolest has got to be https://repo.webosbrew.org/apps/org.webosbrew.custom-screens... ("Bouncing DVD logo" screensaver)
I had a spare pair of Hue lights that I mounted behind my Android TV. Bummer I can't use Hue Sync on built-in streaming apps.
Only time they get used is when I'm playing Fortnite. I had Huenicorn set up for NixOS, but I haven't bothered trying again in SteamOS.
Moonlight is really fantastic. It's worked better than Geforce Now for me. Amazon's thing worked best, but they don't have as many games as my Steam does.
Moonlight is great, but be careful about overestimating how fast video decoding is. I would get 10-40ms additional latency, jitter doing moonlight from tv, vs running it on Linux on my mini PC homelab hooked up to the TV, my decoding/network latency was like 1-2ms for a frame
Yes, of course, I wouldn't play a game that requires fast reactions over Moonlight, but 40ms won't ruin the experience for most games.
Are you using it over Ethernet or WiFi? I remember I tried Moonlight to a local computer two or three years ago over Ethernet and the latency was still too bad, any ideas if that's better today?
If you were using a TV streaming stick, many have slow Ethernet due to slow port (Micro-USB), slow PHY hardware (100 mbps) or slow network stack. For the popular streaming apps they only need 25 mbps max, so most stick makers put no effort into design or validation testing beyond that minimal use case. And they don't care about latency.
I use Moonlight via direct 1 gbps Ethernet from a high-end gaming PC in the same house through a Google Chromecast 4K HDMI dongle with a powered USB-C hub for the RJ-45 input and it works flawlessly at 60 fps 4K 10-bit HDR with around 12 ms video latency. Some USB 3 hubs and USB Ethernet dongles won't reach full speeds on some streaming devices USB ports. The second one I tried worked at full 1 gbps.
You have to verify every software and hardware component in the chain is working at high-speed/low latency in your environment with a local speed test hosted on your source machine. I used self-hosted OpenSpeedTest. Moonlight works great but none of the consumer streaming stick or USB hub/RJ-45 dongles test for high speed/low latency across dozens of different device port hardware/firmware combos - so you can't trust claimed specs. Assume it's slow until you verify it's not.
It goes gaming desktop PC -> ethernet -> fiber -> 5g -> wifi -> Amazon Fire stick at a flat 100km away from the PC, and I still finished Expedition 33 on it with no problems.
I'd say definitely give it another go.
Moonlight works flawlessly for me and I use FreeBSD as a daily driver. Of all OSes to play games.
UnRaid + KVM VM + GPU Passthrough with Moonlight has meant I no longer have to dual boot to game.
60FPS at 1080p on a 4k screen. 4k struggles but I think that's more my GPU then anything else. I do have 2x of them.
I'm assuming you don't play many games with anticheat though since they'd flag it running in a VM
Only older models that have not been upgraded to latest webos.
Can confirm and will add that depending on what model you get, webos UI is a breath of fresh air compared to other heavyweights ( like samsung ).
Great..... another rabbit hole to go down. I have an LG CX and I never knew I could root it. Glad I never gave it internet access.
Unfortunately it still spies on you if you connect to the web :S
I guess you can mitigate that if you use something like a pi-hole? I do wish there was a solution using root/devmode to block ads (or better yet, run in whitelist mode!).
You're correct on all points.
However, if you do have an pihole/adguard home, this list does get rid of all the ads: https://gist.github.com/d4kine/b2458cc9d693d7d36193be0247094...
Hmm but I'm skeptical. All it takes is an update and the list is no longer relevant. And there's no guarantee that data isn't passed anyways through the domains that are not blocked.
Still, would love an "opensnitch" in whitelist mode for my TV!
As you should be, I can only claim it blocks ads because that's my experience. I don't know if I'm being tracked.
But it has worked blocked the ads since 2023, so that's something.