Technology

Why won't anyone make a privacy focused premium streaming box with no ads? I'd pay so much for this thing that will never exist.

I don't mind if it's an ad for a new tv show or movie or streaming platform. But if it's shopping stuff I'll need to find a new tv.

PiHole takes care of that.

As long as they don't remove the option to startup on input #1, I'm good 👍

Apple TV boxes have no ads.

I know everyone here hates Apple, but, there it is.

They've already been adding them to mine. My home screen inputs got smashed into one (because I don't use any of the home screen apps, I only use the two HDMI inputs) so they could jam a bigger ad on the right, and then make suggested things some of the options. Like the last month or so it's been wanting me to watch super girl or Wonder woman or some dumb shit.

My other personal favorite thing they do is that they load slowly so sometimes I'll go to select an input and the cursor will jump to the wrong place because an ad loaded. Fun!

What would one recommend as more of a custom build version of these with a way to connect a convenient remote (smartphone or otherwise)? Alternatively is there a way to sort of jailbreak many of them, or does that just become more cumbersome?

I know a lot of people here reeeeeaaaaalllly hate apple, but, having used many different streaming boxes over the years, I’ve never had a better experience than with my Apple TVs. I have a Gen 4 (Apple TV HD) and a Gen 5 (Apple TV 4K first generation), and they both have worked flawlessly and trouble-free since they day I bought them many years ago. I primarily use them for the Plex app (there are very nice Jellyfin, Kodi, and Emby apps too, chill), and sometimes for some other stuff, all of which they do very well, even the older one, and even still after all these years. tvOS updates have, historically, been pretty essentialist— that being, slim and performant. Old Apple TVs still run great.

YES, for those who don’t like Apple and/or who aren’t totally into the who Apple ecosystem, one won’t get all of the benefits (yet will still get about 90% of them) and one might see friction with some of Apple’s “way of doing things” — especially that fucking annoying remote of theirs - but, all things considered, it does what it does extremely well, and it’s far better and more powerful than its competition IMO (for which you do pay a premium I feel is well worth it). and it is especially good at both protecting your privacy (compared to its competitors) and keeping ads far, far away (except when individual apps insert them, i.e. Hulu or Netflix with ads).

I have had Rokus in several TVs I’ve owned, and… yeah, they were, technically, the closest to the great functionality I came to expect rom my ATVs, but, still, nowhere close. On top of that, my Rokus all wanted all my data and sleazily blasted me ads while making it nearly impossible to disable the ability to disconnect my wifi, disable ads or tracking, etc. The whole device/os seemed designed for data mining first, and showing me media second. ew. the only upside was that the Roku Plex app has one or two interesting UX and UI features the tvOS app didn’t due to some weird programming quirks in SwiftUI and tvOS limitations that didn’t exist in whatever development framework that Roku uses.

I guess I get to ad more devices to my pfsense Adblock rule

I only use my Roku streaming stick for Youtube and Plex. Should be easy enough to replace with a mini-PC or equivalent, if it really becomes bad enough.