> This. Why would you even connect TV to the network?
I happen to have a NAS with family pictures I like to display. I can (and do) firewall that thing, but then you hit other issues like the apps you need to show pictures and movies in the first place not to install/run.
I've yet to hear of a reasonable recipe to isolate and secure such connected TVs. And don't get me started on Chromecast or other Android dongles, I've no reason to expect better treatment from Google. Some open source hacked-together box, then?
Apple TV is the best one. No ads, full OS updates for a long time.
There are ads for ATV content.
No, there really aren't.
I turn on the device, the app in the upper left is selected and showing some content from that.
The device sits idle, I get drone footage of landscapes.
If I accidentally bump the wrong button on the remote and get sent into the Apple TV (streaming service) app, sure it advertises producte, but in general there are no ads.
In comparison, Google TV's homescreen is giant ads for content on services I don't subscribe to, Roku is at least as bad, Amazon is worse, and Samsung and LG......oof.
>In comparison, Google TV's homescreen is giant ads for content on services I don't subscribe to
I enable app-only mode on my chromecast and does not see any ads.
But on the Apple TV you don't need to enable or disable anything. There are no ads, there has been no ads and I'm pretty sure there will be no ads.
And the Nvidia Shield is also hot garbage in this regard.
I suppose my next device is an Apple TV or some kind of home brew Linux box.
The shield was great until Google forced ads into it, switched to Apple TV back then and no complaints since.
The shield is vastly superior to the Apple TV. You aren't trapped in Apples wall garden and can install any apps on it. Android TV comes with an awful launcher, but that is easily replaced. There's no sponsor block on Apple TV and there never will be.
No, it's not. Let's start with the disclaimer that I work for Google, not the Android TV team, all words my own, etc.
The Shield at launch was an amazing product - premium UX and hardware, premium price point. Google changed the experience to an ad-loaded mess without providing an opt out for those who had spent hundreds of dollars on the Shield.
I was dogfooder, a huge advocate of the product, and someone who had convinced others to buy the Shield and Android TV devices. That UX revamp and how the team treated their customers (internal and external) turned me off the product for life. I tried the various competitors (XBox, Roku, Amazon) before landing on Apple TV. I now own two Apple TV devices - both of which are still getting updates many years after I bought them - and will continue using them for as long as the product line is maintained.
People in this thread have talked about Apple's clean beautiful ad-free UX, but the apps themselves are far better. Apple sets customer-friendly App Store requirements *and enforces them*. That means:
* The back button always works. It will bring you back to the home page of the app and then to the system launcher. It will not get stuck in an endless loop of "are you sure you want to quit?" and just dismissing that dialog like multiple Android apps do
* No loud obtrusive sounds on app startup (YouTube, Netflix)
* The apps are first-class priorities for developers. Circa 2019, the Paramount+ app was an inconsistent mess where subtitles were broken on some platforms. The Plex app wouldn't transcode certain formats on the XBox, and so on. None of these issues are a problem on Apple TV. Not every app is perfect (Dropout, I love your content, but your app is awful), but none of them are worse than on any competing platform.
Apple TV is a truly incredible product and ecosystem and one that feels like a joy to use. That's not the case for Android TV (now Google TV, I think?) even with a custom launcher.
Perplexity Launcher is free and takes <2 minutes to install on the Shield or other Google TV devices and has zero ads. Being able to sideload apps that will never be allowed on the Apple TV is a major benefit for anything piracy adjacent.
I (and most users) don't care about that. Having a great app for YouTube and other services I use is far more important than being able to stream pirated content.
You can also use the VLC app on an Apple TV to have a free and slightly janky media server. Just drag and drop files through any browser on a computer.
The better Roku hardware I would say is a second best - you can block the as servers fairly easily and then you do have to disable all the crap on the homescreen.
Those aren't exactly cheap.
Just a cursory search on my local used stuff marketplace says I can grab a Gen 3 ATV for 10€. A 1st gen 4k (which is the one I have) is about 100€ and still runs the latest tvOS.
It's more expensive than a 40€ Chromecast, but also SO MUCH BETTER.
Obviously, as an advertising company, Google should have your utmost scrutiny. But as far as I know, their TV boxes don't ACR your content. If they were the only two options, sticking with your smart TV software instead of using a Google TV box would be a privacy mistake.
Typically you will get sambatv or such installed, and technicians for whatever reason tend to click accept/approve during installations. Happened to me n my Google TV thing
Tbf I was talking about first-party Google TV boxes (Google TV Streamer and Chromecast with Google TV.) Likely not perfect for privacy, but not pure evil like built-in smart TV firmware, they support sideloading without time limits, alternative app stores (Flicky/F-Droid) and they're friends/family/roommate/partner friendly with support for DRM-ed streaming apps, Chromecast and pairing with the official YouTube app.
I chose one over the Apple TV because I knew I wouldn't able to stand any limitations on sideloading. For a while I was running a custom build of Wholphin with patched libmpv/libplacebo to work around a bug before the fix was upstreamed. A device without the freedom to do that sort of thing would drive me nuts.
What technicians? When my TV was delivered they pretty much just unboxed it and set it on the floor, not even being willing to help mount it, let alone plugging it in.
You can always just connect your laptop (or some spare laptop) to the TV via HDMI. Not sure why you’d need to “hack together” something. A dedicated HTPC is nicer if you want to use IR remotes and the like.
Yeah, perhaps "hack together" is unnecessarily dismissive, but the experience to match is that of a single peripheral to control everything. The other area I have no interest expanding my knowledge into is the minefield of codecs, HDMI cables, GPU and drivers combos to have something outputting HDR and whatever Dolby's flavour of the month proprietary invention I inevitably come across.
Any SBC like Radxa Rock (cheap) to Orange Pi (powerful). 4k output, a linux you control, play retro games or stream torrent movies.
Not well.
If you only care about file playback, bit still care about things like HDR and quality audio I would recommend something like the OSMC Vero V instead.
It's still relatively cheap, and open source, but also let's you playback something like a blu-ray rip without loss of quality.
It has the other bonus of not requiring any real setup or maintenance.
GBM/DRM Kodi supports HDR video on the Orange Pi 5 family. You can grab whatever audio from HDMI or plug whatever in the usb port, the only advantage of this Vero is the optical out.
The orange pi doesn't do HDR properly. Linux in general doesn't support it natively, and the hardware doesn't provide for it.
On most devices Dolby Vision, etc get downgraded or support only the streaming profiles (profile 5) . If you want full Atmos, Dolby Vision, etc you have to buy one of only a handful of devices. The Vero V is one of them. There are only a few others.
https://osmc.tv/wiki/vero-v/dolby-vision-support/
Does the optical out actually transcode to 5.1 or is it only proper optical when the source has DD built in ?
Wrong number, I have no idea.
Or just buy an old x86 mini pc from ebay, vastly more powerful and less headache.
Mine comes with i5 8500t, 16gb ram and 256gb ssd, and it was like $150.
Just hook up a PC to it?
No idea what NAS you’re using, but I would recommend the Apple TV box.
> Some open source hacked-together box, then?
I've just used an old Intel NUC with Debian stable, a remote mini-keyboard and an automounted Samba share on the network forever. It's no more hacked together than any other computer. I do make the mouse pointer and the fonts real big. No apps required. Don't really need the keyboard except for mplayer hotkey presses - just the touchpad on it; if I need to do something that involves typing other than typing a password, I usually ssh in.
I think people are lowkey addicted to having shit sliding in and out and constantly being advertised to. How do you know what to watch unless somebody is constantly bombarding you with options? If it doesn't look like a star trek control panel, is it really TV?
If you like that, you can install Kodi. I haven't tried it since it was XBMC because I found the interfaces annoying and it had trouble dealing with networks, but I'm sure it's better.
> I've yet to hear of a reasonable recipe to isolate and secure such connected TVs
I don't even try. I overpay for dumb tvs in the present, or underpay for 10 year old tvs pre-Applefication. I've never owned a network capable television, or one with apps. I wouldn't.
edit: if your NAS is a separate box that can sit in proximity to your television, you could probably just run all of this stuff directly from the NAS. They spend most of their time doing nothing at all.