I have been using an Apple TV and a Chromecast for a long time. I've never seen an ad on the Chromecast - it simply plays a stream as instructed by an app on the phone. Is it different with the Fire Stick?
The Chromecast does some gross shit. You see it in Pihole if you force it to route its dns through the Pihole. It has some black magic whereby it ignores local dns setting as far as I can tell. I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole. Good times.
> I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole
Im betting my savings this is far from enough, its Google sw, they smart AF. Send that thing back to where you bought it better :)
These displays exist now. "Digital Information Displays". Example search here: https://www.cdw.com/Search/computer-monitors-displays/large-... Looks like you can't check out without an account, but I'm sure you could find a shop that would sell you one. Here is a basic one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1242029-REG/samsung_3... It looks like since I last checked the "smart" is creeping in, but these are desi…
These kinds of displays are not really calibrated to present television and cinema video content. Watching long-form visual media on these kinds of displays could be a frustrating experience - at least, these have been my prior results.
though if you just compare specs and ad-copy, you can just get a one designed for indoors and control room applications. Which behaves like a typical TV priced around 20-30% below. At least this seems true for the samsung lineup, which roughly looked like "cheapest option (for sure not worse than their awful 350$ TVs) < 24/7, medium brightness (got that and it's super nice in a bright living room, also non "calibration" issues ) < high end, QLED" - this mirrors their "normal" lineup very closely and I think economies of scale dictate that they won't use custom panels (as indicated by their yearly update of this bland, simple to understand lineup) so I guess these won't be any worse than what you get in a TV. Backlights are obviously not tuned for super-highend-HDR, but I don't think people here complaining about ads are in the market for that and full sRGB is pretty ok on a device which just works (no banding, no ads, no "image-improvement" algos in the background).
Yes - I wish Apple would just make a TV. Call it a living room screen or a living room monitor or something. Make it OLED, dumb TV, instant on, Apple TV box plugs in. Separate box with front facing ports that connects to screen with one cable. A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?). This entire market is in desperate need of someo…
Google is adding a “dumb TV mode,” but I’m skeptical. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/the-best-feature-of-... Presumably will still boot slowly and only the topmost UI layer loads differently, and until they confirm otherwise I’m guessing that even with a simplified UI it still includes all the creepy tracking of everything you watch.
I would imagine people would conflate "dumb tv" with privacy (sort of like "incognito"), when google doesn't actually say that.
I’m really pleased the author called out the Apple TV as a device that lets you avoid ads. We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place. There’s lots of griping about the cost of an Apple TV 4k, but I’ll pay that extra $100 to avoid ads and not be tracked so exte…
What kind of ads do you have on the fire stick?
I am curious because in France at least there is only the top banner on the home screen, which I do not even see as I directly jump into an app.
I just bought the TV I wanted and never connected it to the internet, never ran the "setup". I use an AppleTV 4K which has all the streaming apps you want (Netflix, Amazon, BBC, Pluto, etc.). For local media I use an application called MrMC ($6.99) which is a Kodi port to the AppleTV that allows you to mount Samba/NFS ( https://mrmc.tv ). MrMC even supports using a SQL backend for keeping track of your media (like Ko…
>never connected it to the internet Which is all fine and dandy but if you've bought a fancy new TV with bleeding edge features for use with your next-gen console, like low-latency gaming mode, HDMI 2.1 4K/120Hz, dolby atmos, etc, it can all comes apart when you realize you need a firmware update that fixes a bug with said bleeding edge features, since a lot of consumer HW these days is rushed out the factory door wi…
Connect it, update the firmware, disconnect it.
It’s useful to a separate SSID for smart-TV like devices. You can randomly update the passwords (to execute the disconnect it step) without annoying everyone else in the house.
I have been using an Apple TV and a Chromecast for a long time. I've never seen an ad on the Chromecast - it simply plays a stream as instructed by an app on the phone. Is it different with the Fire Stick?
The Chromecast does some gross shit. You see it in Pihole if you force it to route its dns through the Pihole. It has some black magic whereby it ignores local dns setting as far as I can tell. I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole. Good times.
I don’t think it’s black magic. They just do DNS over HTTPS.
The best option that I know of today (in terms of resulting usabilty and long term reliability) is using a dumb computer monitor and roll the rest yourself with a Raspi. While this option is certainly not available to all, it is the only thing that will really fit your needs. I completely gave up on finding anything decent in that market.
The best for who? This is a ridiculous take, nobody wants to roll their own TV UX except HN users looking for a weekend project. What usability / long-term reliability perk does your own software running on a RPI have over an Apple TV plugged into a dumb TV / monitor?
I know plenty of folks who run kodi.
I would say not "hn user" level folks, more like "i have a gaming pc".
Im in the market for a dumb TV. My current "smart" TV from Samsung is a joke. Slow to start, adverts in the UI. Snapped the "smart" remote so no voice stealling nonsense.
Im think a dumb panel connected to either a PC or RPi.
I don't see the point in swapping one tech company for another, so Apple and android are out. Dont trust them any mire that Samsung.