An ad-free Android TV | Hacker News Reader

An ad-free Android TV

cretezy.com

444 pointsCraftThatBlock199 comments

It was very underhanded of Google to add advertising after the fact. When I have to factory reset the TV I'm reminded of how it used to be before it upgrades. Years later they still haven't [1] updated the screenshots in their Play store page to show the giant 1/3 full screen ads you get now.

Replacing the Google launcher (I used ATV Launcher Pro) was one of the best quality of life upgrades I've ever done, if you haven't already I highly recommend it.

Not only does Google show auto playing video ads for streaming services you don't subscribe to, it also shows pure auto playing video ads for things like fast food. It really lags while it tries to start up to show the ads.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Google closes the ADB backdoor when they realise all the sweet ad dollars they're losing.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

We seriously need some "you own your hardware" laws - before the likes of Google tighten every bolt and implement enough "security" to firmly lock the users out of their own devices.

It's dead obvious that companies like Apple and Google and Sony and John Deere lock their hardware down to protect their revenue streams - not to help the users in any way. And yet, they're peddling the lie of "security" - and have been getting away with it for decades.

Now that AI is there to give even an average user a leg up when it comes to things like "I don't want to see ads in my TV's menus, can you do something about it", the companies will see more and more reasons to implement more "security" to stop it. And modern "security" measures are hard to defeat with technical measures - so this has to be curbed with legal action instead.

Stockholder value is now predicated entirely on things like recurring revenue, growth, and MBA short-term profit seeking. Enshittification of existing SaaS and 'smart' products is a feature, not a bug.

Unless something drastically changes in the US stock market, any publicly traded technology company of significant size is basically mandated to prostrate themselves to the altar of fiduciary responsibility to stockholders.

Stockholder value isn't the only metric that matters.

A hardware purchase occurs once, it doesn't come due for extracting or manipulating every quarter.

Ever hear of Farming-as-a-service?

https://agroinformacion.com/en/agtechmachinery/john-deere-su...

Or Driving? BMW had to pivot over initial outrage, but in 2022, they launched a "Functions on Demand" program that required drivers to pay a $18 monthly or $180 annual subscription to unlock physical heated seats and heated steering wheels.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/bmw-admits-heated-seat-subscri...

https://consumerrights.wiki/

> Ever hear of Farming-as-a-service?

You mean sharecropping? It's been around, in various forms, since pre-Roman times.

It’s a tv box.

Which will all have things like reprogrammable firmware and FPGA aspects to support paywalled proprietary features.

We already support it to some extent with licensed hardware codecs (HEVC, AVC, VVC etc...), licensed DRM like HDCP, and individual device licensing for audio technologies like Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and video technologies like Dolby Vision.

I’ve just realised: could shareholders sue for this? E.g. if I’ve bought the stock pre-enshittification, then the conpany decided to prioritize short-term profit, and then some time after the stock price falls (and that’s a big “if”, sure).

I don't think AI will save us from the ads. Eventually they will monetize AI by mixing ads into them if they aren't doing that already. Just like streaming got ads added into after being the escape from cable tv ads. And cable tv got ads added in after being the escape from broadcast tv ads. Its a cycle.

What's stopping you from reverse engineering then whole thing with AI?

Read to the end of the comment.

They (Android TV devices, mine was a FireStick 4K Max) also don't give a fuck about displaying things that are inappropriate; ours showed banners for horror films on several occasions, during the day when my children are about and scaring them.

It's much harder to switch out the launcher on a FireStick, but I did manage it briefly before it started boot looping right around 1yr of ownership, so it's e-waste now.

I have a Amazon Fire TV Stick 4k 2nd gen (who comes up with these names?) While the setup can be a little tricky, I've got mine on Projectivity Launcher which has no ads and I still have access to all the streaming apps and the Amazon app store (if I ever need it). There are good guides online so, if you still care, you should be able to recover your device.

It's not recoverable unfortunately, seems either the firmware is broken or a hardware issue. The last time it worked I factory reset it to see if that would stabilise it, but it never booted again. I contacted Amazon about replacing it, but they won't do anything because it's not registered to my account (because it was removed when I reset it).

I was also running Projectivy [sic] Launcher, but it launched a minute after the stick started which wasn't a great UX so I ended up disabling it because it annoyed the family.

Either way, I'm not worried about recovering it now; it would have been nice to use it for a few thing, but when it stopped working I just went out and bought a new TV.

SmartTube is excellent for ad-free YouTube. I've seen others recommend TizenTube, which more closely follows the official YouTube app aesthetic, but to be honest, I prefer the more minimalist look of SmartTube. The fact that it can also play Shorts (where the official YT app tries to push them to your phone) is a nice bonus.

One downside for those who use it: "Free with Ads" movies on YouTube will not play on SmartTube for some reason.

You could just pay for premium as it gives 60% to creators, which is pretty generous.

You can do both and have a better youtube ui as well as direct sponsor block integration.

Advertising company in shows ads shock!

But if the product originally did not do that, it's a bit of a rug pull to push a software update that includes them.

Google PR is so good that people tend to forget that the vast majority of Google's income is from ads.

Compared to that, their hardware, SaaS, and other ventures are just 20% side projects.

You might be giving Google's PR a bit too much credit there, at least its current PR. A large part of their reputation in the minds of the general public (who don't keep an eye on the machinations of the ad tech world) comes from inertia from their useful products particularly from times when “do no evil” was still a goal for them, and the fact that people just don't think the extra step “if this is free, how is it being paid for?” and might not even care if they did. Most people who are not into tech/business/both never even knew or cared that Google's income is mostly ad based, so they had nothing to forget in that regard.

I think you need look no further than the fact that they removed “don’t be evil” from the top of their code of conduct for evidence that their PR isn’t great. It was an essentially meaningless move and the headlines wrote themselves.

Yeah I'm just surprised that anyone is surprised.

It’s incredible that you can’t sue them over this.

Sony are even more egregious - unless you opt out within 30 days, you are subject to Binding Arbitration via the Sony EULA for example.

This means you have to settle Disputes between you and Sony through a neutral private arbitrator rather than a judge or jury in a public courtroom, and you give up the right to participate in any class-action tort.

Seems like that should be a right you can’t waive no matter what a contract says

EU protects it at a federated level, and no contract terms can override mandatory local statutory rights. Indeed most US-centric EULA clauses are considered invalid or unenforceable in the EU.

It doesn't mean organizations might not try to convince consumer otherwise.

Oh boy just wait until you read the fine print on… everything you touch!

Loans, banks, phones, walking into Walmart. It’s all binding arbitration.

Doesn't sound neutral at all.

Third party and independent means an arbritartor who isn't vastly paid by one industry.

It gets worse - they only introduced this EULA after losing their subscriber database on multiple ocassions.

IANAL but apparently also opting out gives you less power in a mass-tort as your class will consist entirely of a contextually miniscule group.

"Sony's EULA, however, eliminates anyone from a potential class except for individuals who specifically opt out. If a person who opted out later chooses to pursue a claim, the class will, at most, consist of those persons who opted out. Nt enough people will opt out. The class is virtually guaranteed to be too small to make it worth any lawyer undertaking representation. So by opting out, you are registering yourself into a group that has no power and no meaning."

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/kk36d/lawyers_thoug...

In the case of gaming console manufacturers, those who swear by PC gaming being superior may have a point in some ways.

For Indies, sure. For AAA you've got egregious DRM that can compromise your system to an unimaginable degree. These flaws were so structurally dangerous that Microsoft permanently blocked SafeDisc and older versions of SecuROM from executing in Windows 10 onwards.

Capcom in 2016 should have been prosecuted imo - their attempt at "DRM" installed a kernel-level driver (capcom.sys) that intentionally disabled Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention (SMEP), allowing the kernel to execute code in user space...

The current Denuvo DRM to combat 'piracy' (always ALWAYS a pricing issue) is now encouraging both legal and high-seas users to use hypervisor-based bypasses to circumvent its many shortcomings. This is basically handing over the keys to your house in the AI age.

Somebody needs to tell right-wing libertarians that this is literally a way to institute Sharia law. Maybe start a IoT company, and change the EULA to force things to be settled through Islamic courts.

This is not an exaggeration. Right now Valerie Haney has begun her fourth year of court-ordered Scientology arbitration over the billion year contract she signed to work for sub-minimum wage as a Sea Org member.

https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/val-haney-now-up-to-17-day...

> When I have to factory reset the TV I'm reminded of how it used to be before it upgrades.

Even the idea of needing or being able to factory resetting a TV seems like such a downgrade. I haven’t regularly watched TV in some quarter of a century, and I remember channel switching being effectively instant. Nowadays when I’m at someone’s home and have to mess with the TV, it takes so long to even go up or down one channel.

There’s a non-bloat explanation for channel switching taking time at least.

Now that all TV is digital (even OTA), it’s subject to the same quirks as streaming video on the web, and that includes how the picture will become garbled if you render it before gathering a sufficient amount of data. To prevent that, TVs and cable boxes take a moment or two to pull in enough data to render a clean picture when switching channels, which is where the delay comes from.

this is a telephone-game explanation of keyframes. Each video stream periodically includes a keyframe or I-frame (independent frame) which is a complete encoded picture in its own right. Other frames are P-frames which are diffs from the previous frame. A stream typically includes a keyframe every few seconds. If you want to accurately decode a stream starting in the middle of it, you need to start at the next keyframe.

Some players will take an initial placeholder image such as a grey screen and start applying P-frames on top of it anyway, which gives a corrupted image that still has some information (shapes of moving characters are often recognisable) until the keyframe comes. Others wait for the keyframe and display a black screen, a frozen screen or a loading spinner until then.

Related, if you've ever seen a low-bitrate stream whose quality seems to get really bad, then slowly fill in, then get really bad again, then slowly fill in again, repeating forever, that comes from a poorly tuned encoder that's not allocating enough bits to each keyframe (so the quality is bad) and then making up the difference in subsequent P-frames.

> Replacing the Google launcher (I used ATV Launcher Pro) was one of the best quality of life upgrades I've ever done, if you haven't already I highly recommend it.

I use Projectivy for the same reason. Sucks, because Android TV still has some of the best flexibility in a TV-appropriate OS (compared with other options I could find at least) but their priorities don't line up with mine regarding the ads.

I got so much frustrated with ads I have replaced it with open-source FLauncher. Experience is so much better.

I don't know why one would assume Google wouldn't add advertising...

If it wasn't there when you bought it, it is a change.

And, your point is? Google explicitly stated the would be pushing updates. They never said they wouldn't change things. Also, just look at the history of their products. They inject ads into everything they make. They are an ad company, that's where their revenue comes from.

Hmm, seems to have hit a nerve.

TV seems like a minor product for Google.

Android regularly was originally packaged as part of Google’s advertised “ Google Experience Devices” and “Android One”, where they advertised no bloatware and adware unlike other Android manufacturers.

Specifically for the Nvidia shield it was advertised as having updates forever. Nvidia held the promise for 10 years: https://hothardware.com/news/shield-tv-hits-decade-android-u...

The Nvidia shield outlasted every android tv device from Google and maintained a near pure experience as promised, for a higher upfront price.

I understand the history of Google and their products. Where they change what is offered is still not ok because you’ll never really know what you’re getting into, nor what Google may launch and cancel next.s

Lots of people have a graveyard of cancelled Google devices.

But Nvidia was able to be one of the first 4K certified Android tv devices for Netflix and keep it that way.

You're just making my point for me. Why would you ever buy a device running Google's software and expect it not to change unless it never recieves updates?

Why is the rating for ATV Launcher Pro so bad?

I just want to buy a "Stupid TV" I wonder if such a brand would sell very sell "JustWatch TV" people in stores seeing how quickly it turns on, and just works, no internet questions, just a TV working. Must be revolutionary, can't believe we never thought of having TVs without an entire invasive OS that slows down the entire TV...

Every smart TV I own never gets internet access, ever. I just plug a real device that connects to the internet instead, they're a much faster and better experience.

There are stupid TVs but they're more expensive since they don't have an ad subsidy.

I'm doing what you are - just don't connect it and you can enjoy ridiculously low prices on TVs.

Other than commercial panels, I think buying a non-smart TV with decent picture quality is verging on the impossible now.

Yep. I wanted a decent sized OLED with good image quality. Couldn't find anything remotely like what I was looking for in a commercial option, so I said screw it, cashed out some credit card rewards, and bought a spyware LG TV that never gets connected to the internet. Display itself is gorgeous. Set it to start up on the last used input (the AV receiver). Video sources connect to the AVR and those get managed individually depending on what access they need to function.

It could still be connecting anyway and using its microphone and using content recognition on what you watch. I am surprised how few people in this set of threads read about the LG spy TVs.

There is zero evidence of this happening. There are tens of thousands of people who have posted about devices doing sketchy things who monitor their network and yet this has never been demonstrated.

Anything you own could also have a secret 5G radio built in spying on you, but that's reasoning via Russell's Teapot and pointless except to baselessly spread paranoia.

Even if they do not currently do it they very easily could add it silently in the next TV software version you buy in the store...

On my LG TV, which is pretty old, the wifi module is just a standard m.2 e-key that I can remove. I wonder if that is still the case or if they are integrated now.

The next best thing I wish I could do is root my TV and install an OS that makes the experience less painful.

It's getting hard to get a dumb TV.

Try getting a display panel, like one of those used in restaurants to display menus.

> just a TV working

I think to be considered a television, you still need to be able to receive OTA broadcasts. With modern digital television, that now means you need a H264 (H265, soon maybe) decoder.

I don't know if you can do that cheaper than a SoC, which makes adding "smartness" (even if it's bad) not that much more expensive.

You are looking for a very large monitor. They are very expensive. TVs are large monitors subsidized by their adware.

Just buy a TV and don't connect it to the Internet. I have even seen people remove the WiFi daughterboard. That's essentially your "very large monitor." You absolutely do not have to endure the adware and privacy invasion of content recognition and other spyware. Beat the TV manufacturers at their own game.

> Just buy a TV and don't connect it to the Internet.

There are some TVs that eventually pop-up a “please connect” or similar message over any display (even if just using it to display content from another device via HDMI) if they have not been connected for some time, so that you can't permanently use them disconnected. I forget which brand(s)/models are involved, it was talked about in at least one of Louis Rossman's rants so you might find some details in the consumer rights wiki he is associated with.

There will be ways around this of course, though they might involve mucking about in a way the average TV user will not want to risk playing aroud with (rooting the device so you can alter an internal clock that is not affected by any clock you can modify on the UI, or pulling a battery backup out so everything resets (assuming the clock's state is not stored in solid state memory than needs no powered at all to maintain)).

> pop-up a “please connect” or similar message

I bought a Vizio TV which has this evil, undocumented "feature". It would pop-up a message after every dozen or so boots. The message can be manually dismissed with three clicks on the remote.

The TV also will not turn on and just display an external HDMI source even though it has a "Remember Last Source" feature. That feature does work with any internal streaming source but external sources must first be manually selected with the remote after each power on (also undocumented in the manual).

I figured this out because I bought this small TV to be a wall-mounted screen in the dedicated bathroom of our home theater room. It's only job is to turn on while someone is in the little bathroom and display a copy what's on the main 150" projector screen in the next room, then turn off when they leave. The on/off is handled by a motion sensor and standard Home Assistant automation but after power on it correctly shows the Last Selected external HDMI source for 1 second, then blanks the screen. The source is already selected and working but being blacked out until the remote re-selects the same source (only if it's external). This is clearly an undocumented anti-pattern added specifically to prevent the TV being used unattended as a display screen, picture frame, digital sign etc. Why? Because Vizio (now owned by WalMart) doesn't get rev share if it's: 1) Not online, and 2) Only viewing external sources. That's why it demands manual "proof-of-life" before it'll grudgingly deliver the basic functionality it claims on the box.

So, I programmed an ESP32 with an IR emitter so that every time the TV powers on it sends the remote presses to manually clear the "Please Connect Internet" message and re-select the already-selected external HDMI. Very annoying to be forced to figure this out but now it works fine and no one even sees the stupid messages as they're already gone before they see the screen. Fuck Vizio :-).

> The TV also will not turn on and just display an external HDMI source even though it has a "Remember Last Source" feature.

I have an Android based TV that is connected for the purposes of iPlayer/NetFlix/other, but is mainly used to play off my local media array via a Pi4 running LibreELEC (Kodi) as even though I subscribe to a couple of streaming services I still find getting things otherwise more convenient. Until a recent update it happily stayed on the HDMI source the Pi is hooked up to unless I switched it, now it (almost) always reverts to its own homepage (with the auto-playing video adverts for shows/games/services) when waking from standby.

> There are some TVs that eventually pop-up a “please connect”

This seems to be supported by the below link. It isn't a "please connect," but initial setup requires a Roku account. So the conclusion is do not buy a Roku TV, or Roku anything.

https://support.roku.com/en-us/article/how-do-i-use-my-tv-in...

Return it to the store, it's defective.

That might fly here (UK) under the consumer rights act (which replaced the earlier sale of good act in 2015), particularly the distance selling provisions, but certainly not everywhere. Even here some would try to argue that it isn't a defect but a valid “behaviour as designed” for a product sold as internet connected so you might not get a refund purely on that basis without a jolly good set-to.

If I advertise you a TV and sell you a rock is that legal because the design of the rock was for a rock?

OK so don't get one of those. There are others that don't have such timers.

All well & good, except how do you know until you've had it sat in your home working for × amount of time? The information is hardly easy to find, no box or advert for a TV says (except perhaps in very very small print) “will not work properly without an Internet connection”. Returning it is going to be a faf just physically, convincing the seller that the problem is a defect and not acceptable behaviour as designed is going to be fun too.

Things being too much hassle to fight is what a lot of the invasions of our privacy and other rights are based upon, hence 80-page click-through licences, difficult cancellation processes, labyrinthine stalking preference pop-overs on web sites/apps, etc.

You can set your TV to "dumb mode" by choosing Apps only mode or Basic TV mode (might be only available for Sony Google TVs).

You definitely want to turn "Samba Interactive TV" off.

> You can set your TV to "dumb mode" by choosing Apps only mode

Android TV has this. It didn't have ads for less than a year. Now the ads banner is there regardless.

Or a TV where you can rip out the internals and replace them with some cheap dumb board. Not sure where you'd find a reputable one, though, as that's the perfect audience for hidden backdoors.

Naturally I would say, but that doesn't have speakers... but you can't even buy a TV without having to buy a soundbar or any sort of sound system anymore. Infuriating.

A pair of bookshelf speakers will always dominate whatever speakers the TV comes with. It's a mandatory replacement in any case. There isn't enough physical space in a TV for good sound. Soundbars are crap.

Even soundbars are better than TV speakers. Proper speakers would still be better, but TV speakers are nearly useless.

I'm sure you're right, but it's very funny to be someone with a pretty good ear in some regards (I played in band in school and sang for many years, so I'm quite sensitive to intonation/instrument balance in music) that apparently has zero ability to mind poor speaker quality - I find the speakers on board my piece of shit 10+-year-old Samsung tv I bought from facebook marketplace perfectly adequate for general use.

It just goes to show how much taste is learned. Not even to say it's subjective (which of course it is at least in part), just that it's a skill that needs to be developed, and, at least in part, a curse. I remember thinking 480p was quite crisp quality, now I find 720p DVDs charmingly rustic.

All DVDs are 480p max.

I was a floutist as well. I think part of it is that you just get used to the level of whatever sound device you use.

The thing is "smart tvs" are actually cheaper than dumb tvs would be, specifically because they can make money on the advertising.

Anyway, google TVs (like my TCL tv) let you use them in dumb mode, which is what I do. I just have it wired to my Apple TV 4k (the least bad of the smart tv boxes that support HDCP) and thats good enough for me.

Everyone here talking about how hard it is to get one.

My 2018 Samsung TV has smart features, but is not internet connected. It turns on quickly and right to the selected source - no brain cells harmed having to look at ads. It slightly bugs out sometimes, but I assume this to be a general issue.

Not sure, but I heard that special Hotel TVs are basically that. They don't seem to be more expensive.

It's usually possible to buy a regular tv, and just never turn on/activate the internal "smarts" by never connecting it to the internet.

Only use an external device.

Do the non-connected TVs bitch about lack of connection and desperately prompt you to upgrade?

You may want that but you won't like its unsubsidised price.

Like it or not it's no longer viable to sell to consumers at "cost plus margin" - you're sold a loss-making unit and the size of the loss is based on how much LTV they expect of you.

Be happy it's cheaper for you, but be aware that as an informed consumer who's not plugging in your device you have negative LTV and are thus not the product's target customer and sadly are actually kind of leeching off their business model.

I'm sure you wouldn't do that if you had a choice. But the old business model is unviable now so no one's left except these jerks.

But hey, cheap TVs!

> You may want that but you won't like its unsubsidised price.

I promise you I won't give a shit about the unsubsidized price.

Thank you for your ancedote. I think OP is emphasizing that no, most people would give a shit because most people can't spend 1k on a panel.

Some people spend well over 1k on smart TVs.

Right but not most people as I said.

And yet TVs were sold for that price or more accounting for inflation for decades, and indeed most people bought them.

But now we have a lower price anchor so people won't pay that much for them

My Sony cost well over 1k, yet it came with crapware and got more enshittified as time went on.

Neither did I, so I bought an U5226KW for $3000, when a similar sized TV was only $700.

Monitors have also gotten incredibly cheap, and there's Sceptre who sell dumb TVs that are pretty cheap. So I don't really buy that they're selling TVs at a loss.

Consider the differences in hardware and customized software between a dumb and "smart" display. They are not the same.

Not sure the point you're trying to make, it sounds like you're agreeing that dumb TVs should be cheaper than equivalent smart TVs?

There is no reason to be happy about father enshittification which is exactly what you are describing here. Yet another produce that is getting worst while also not getting cheaper.

When I moved into my apartment, I went to BestBuy and I was actually able to find a "dumb TV"! They had ONE in stock, it was Insignia (their house brand) and it was sold as "open box". I love it and have had no issues with it.

That being said, I use an Nvidia Shield TV Pro connected to it, and I had to do similar steps on that to replace the launcher and install my own apps. I use "ATV Launcher Pro" (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.dstudio.atv...) personally, and it's great.

I also use "Send Files to TV" (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yablio.sen...) so I can download files on my phone and send them to the TV.

If ad free is the only goal this is probably OK, but privacy is still an issue and on the shield you have to agree to google and nvidia’s agreement. I bet most people don’t read either one.

If you just run android anyway I got a very cheap xiaomi one that grants me basically all the permissions I needed so far via ADB

For those with more capable routers, local dns adblocking, or NextDNS; you can add a static DNS entry for "androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com" and direct that to 127.0.0.1, you will also get no ads on the stock launcher. At least on Android 11 (For the Nvidia Shield). You might have to restart the device or empty the cache for it to take effect.

I do run Pi-Hole as well, I'll add a note!

When my old (2014?) "smart" LG got evicted from Netflix, as in "your TV will not be supported anymore starting August 15th 2026" I vibe-coded a Plasma BigScreen like interface with:

* Firefox in full-screen with a custom extension that makes the web UI of Netflix into something usable by a d-pad remote

* Switchfin (which has a Linux version) works pretty well out of the box

* Some custom Python+GTk apps to watch some public TV channels (they have no DRM and have a good API, so it was very easy, and I can get custom views for what my family watches)

* a nice viewer for Immich albums

* a CD player (I bought a 15EUR external USB DVD player)

Everything using a single UI paradigm, with just the things my family and I actually care for. No ads. No tracking (well, I guess Netflix still does some tracking anyway).

I'd love to do this but Netflix et al will only stream HD to Linux because of Widevine. So my choices are hardware I control myself or 4k streams

Yeah that's a tradeoff I had to make, for now it's a no brainer because the TV is HD anyway, in the future I'm going to upgrade to a 4K UST projector so I will need to think what to do, depending on how bad it is. I will probably get a backup copy in 4K ro play in Switchfin but still keep my Netflix subscription. Which is kind of ironic.

This sounds awesome! Can you provide some details on how you got it to work?

Well, Claude did its magic and it's been vibe-coded. It's a pretty simple setup, I gave it passwordless ssh access to the box and it deploys and does a visual check via screenshots (plus I report issues or things I want to behave in some specific manner).

What so you want to know more specifically?

I have a similar setup and want to mention Moonfin as another excellent alternative Jellyfin client besides the one recommended here, Wholphin. I just tried several and Moonfin was the only one whose UI didn't feel needlessly clunky to me.

https://moonfin.io/

My basic advice for media consumption in 2026:

- Buy the biggest LG C -series OLED TV you can afford and/or fit (WebOS, no Android TV crapola to deal with)

- Never connect it to the internet, LG wants to add all kinds of AI crap to it.

- Set it to Filmmaker Mode[0] to disable all of the "improvements" it tries to do to the image

- Buy an Apple TV

Done.

The ATV can turn the TV on and off and adjust the volume. You won't need the TV remote for anything after that.

I still use my 10 year old Apple TV 4k daily and it works like new, no slowdown, every single relevant streaming platform supports it with a dedicated app. It even got every single tvOS release until this fall.

[0] https://filmmakermode.com/ - also a good idea to do this to relative's TVs.

Now force Apple to let me install my own software however I see fit and i'll buy one in a heartbeat. Until then, they can fuck off.

Do you have a suggestion for an alternative to an Apple TV which includes your criteria? That is, good interface, no ads.

Only solution is the one given in OP. AndroidTV with another launcher eliminates all ads successfuly AND gives you the choice to also block ads/sponsors in youtube and other streaming platforms like prime video. It's the only way to truly get rid of all ads.

The apple approach would require Youtube Premium and still would not block integrated sponsor reads. It's the downside of the "golden cage"

Sponsor Ads can be blocked on the Apple TV YouTube app using iSponsorBlockTV on a home server: https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV

Nice, what held me back was missing revanced/morphe and smarttubenext. If i can get that to work without hassle, it might just be the heir to my nvidia shield.

That filmmakermode.com site is useless. It tells you to click the logos to find out how and takes you to the homepage of the brands. No information at all.

Why replace the one corportate overlord controlling your media experience with another when you can just use a device you fully own to drive the display.

How can I "fully own" the device I use to run 3rd party streaming apps?

> - Never connect it to the internet, LG wants to add all kinds of AI crap to it.

... Bad news, brand new 2026 LG OLEDs come with Copilot out of the box packed into the software. Ask me how we know out of absolute frustration. LG has started to super enshittify webOS packed in before you even put it online.

As long as you can switch to HDMI1

I can't even elderly-proof it. Apparently if you spam the mute key it suddenly will spawn a random accessibility menu you can jam settings on in the OS itself (going past the cablebox and my CEC controls). Even if I do everything I can to restrict the remote down (universal remotes, etc), I can't disable that shortcut.

... so I keep getting calls that the "TV keeps talking by itself" every time they hit a button and it fastspeaks everything on screen (VOLUMEDOWN VOLUMEDOWN VOLUMEUP VOLUMEUP MENU MENU etc) because they managed to turn on settings they shouldn't have been able to get to. :)

You elderly proof it by hiding the TV remote and having everything controlled by the device driving the display.

And if you want to be really sure, use stuff like Raspberry Pi with libcec to drive HDMI port selection. The world is weird!

Seems like we need a good aftermarket OS for our TVs now.

What with all of this snazzy AI reverse engineering that people have been doing, how far are we from getting a mostly automated system that can build a clean Android for each TV model? A lot of the difficulties in making 3rd party ROMs for phones are in details like battery life, or weird sensors. It seems like much of that would not be an issue for a TV

How long before TV manufacturers start putting in countermeasures to prevent that?

This is similar to my setup, except I use FLauncher instead. In addition, I run Netguard on my Android TV and completely block Google Play along with a hundred other services. I only give Google Play internet access whenever I have to update a streaming app. One had connection issues the first time I set up Netguard, so I had to look at the logs and open some specific ports to get it working. But all the streaming apps work now, and the TV can't display ads. For the most part, I don't update things on the TV. It all works too well right now.

Also +1 to Wholphin! That app is phenomenal. It gives the whole family the "Netflix-like" experience.

What makes it better than the default jellyfin app in your mind?

I use wolphin. Biggest thing for me is the seeking. I press < or > and it seeks, now. Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant. Some other smaller niceties, too.

Hah, that's a first:

> Tip: Hand this article to an AI agent (like Claude Code) and have it guide you through the setup. It can run the ADB commands for you and adapt them to your device.

Like "curl | bash" but... with a million times more computation.

> Like "curl | bash" but... with a million times more computation.

At least with `curl | bash` the originating website needs to be compromised. With AI, there are about a million different ways for it to go wrong and blow up your entire HDD.

Claude has done amazing things for my Chromecast. Plex released an update recently that broke the UI badly. File names and thumbnails were overlapping each other which made the UI unusable, I couldn't navigate. I asked Claude to get the latest .apk, and fix it - and fix it, it did, all without me having to touch a command line. It even took screenshots of the chromecast screen to verify the results. I had it add a few other things like showing the media duration below the title and fixing the delete feature.

I had problems getting the Chromecast to connect to my IKEv2 home vpn at an airbnb, so I told Claude to fix it. It figured out there was no good way to make the existing VPN client apps work on my chromecast, so it wrote a new VPN client for me that works perfectly, all in about 20 minutes without me needing to do much more than supply my certs.

It also fixed SmartTube to work on my phone, the official app only shows 5 videos, Claude fixed the .apk to show 100+ thumbnails.

Ignoring the obvious security nightmare the last thing I want in an install process is nondeterministic behavior

Oh wow, TIL about Wholphin. I'll have to give that a try. I wonder if this will finally resolve the issue with me having to login to JellyFin every few days for no apparent reason (it's not the server, I switched from Win to Linux and same problem).

EDIT: all that remains for this stack is a good browser that can allow usage of uBlock Origin. BrowseHere is a pain to use with its constant nags about allowing pop-ups on certain sites...

> the issue with me having to login to JellyFin every few days for no apparent reason

I only get shown the login prompt when the network connection to my server isn't established yet. I'm on Wi-Fi and need to wait for the connection before launching the client.

Something is wonky with your setup... My Jellyfin apps stay logged in indefinitely... Phones, TV, pretty sure even my browser is perma-logged-in.

Yeah I don't doubt that. My phones and PC are always fine also. I use an ONN 4K device for the TV. The first month or two was ok. Then I updated the app at one point and it's never been the same since. I've uninstalled and reinstalled and changed to Projectivy and tried some other loaders as well, and the problem just keeps coming back. We'll see if this Wholphin client changes anything.

This sounds like your client-device is either aggressive in App Cache cleaning.

Try Fulguris:

https://f-droid.org/packages/net.slions.fulguris.full.fdroid...

It's a fork of the original AOSP WebKit browser, which I've found to be much faster than Chromium-based browsers, and you can import your uBlock Origin filters.

My dad is extremely irritated with Android TVs as a concept. He just wants to watch something and complains about it taking a few minutes on startup to even show the screen where can can select YouTube.

He does not understand that it is just like a phone. Unless you keep it on standby (which he does not want to do: wastes power), it will boot, slowly, till all the subsystems are up and running. The low powered processors, the low speed ssds, and minimal RAM makes everything worse.

Your dad is right to not understand that. There is zero reason for any appliance to take longer than a second to turn on from zero power. Even complex systems can use fast boot techniques (i.e. hybernation) to power on quickly without any power draw while idle. All it takes is developers who care and/or consumers who demand better.

Ans that's why devices have standby from which they wake up instantly. That's the technique you're talking about.

If you stubbornly decide you're smarter than that, then wait I guess?

Modern bloated systems use a non-volatile equivalent of a resume from standby, for a cold start. The do a true cold boot, than save an image of RAM to flash, and load that on subsequent cold boots, without a need for a powered standby.

No that's not standby. Standby requires constant power. Fast boot does not.

Which is an implementation detail with practically no power use on a modern SoC and significantly better than wearing out flash memory in a couple of years.

It's an "implementation detail" that has a very significant effect on startup times and thus user experience. Practically no power use (even if true, which often it isn't) is still power use and there are many other reasons for not having devices powered when not needed (fire safety, lightning resistance, cybersecurity concerns).

There is also no reason to wear out flash since you only need to update the fast boot image when things actually change.

To his credit, there's no technical reason that a processor running tens of billions of instructions per second couldn't immediately respond to menu inputs on the next frame.

Sure, the network might add a perceptible delay, but but the interface could load right away and populate the videos titles and thumbnails as they load.

At least show him how to use SmartTube, that will improve his experience by a lot.

Modern TVs use a max of 5 watts on standby. Does he think it's higher? Maybe a watt-meter plug is a simple solution (or it may make him obsess about the power usage when turned on!)

4.9 watts too much.

It's more along the line of 0.5 to 0.75W on standby for modern OLED TV like the LG C5.

Good job at missing the point. Try to comment with a little bit more effort and substance on HN.

In past one week, there has been a lot of Projects on debloating Smart TV's.

I think it all started with a guy making a plex app [0] in rust thereby reducing the launch times of the app.

Then lots of projects started coming up including replacing the browser itself. All these projects seems to be created with claude code.

This is truly a golden age of Personal software.

[0] Reddit Post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1x043yp/i_used_...

I came across this klauncher on playstore when i was searching launcher for my tv. it doesn't has much downloads or may be new but it is so simple and also has a feature which doesn't allow android default launcher to takeover when pressing home and also has an option to type custom dns for ad-blocking. glad i found it.

Anybody remember MythTV and what a pain in the ass it was to setup? "Hand this article to an AI agent (like Claude Code) and have it guide you through the setup." Wow times have changed. https://www.mythtv.org/

Yes! In fact..

The first version of Google TV, an internal demo, was based on MythTV. We had MythTV running against some HDHomeRun tuners, then a transparent webview (a fork of Petit Four-era Android builds since it had great d-pad nav support) running on top of it.

"Apps" were pure JavaScript gadgets, inspired by iGoogle, with custom DOM methods for anything TV-specific: channel changes, tuning info, and so on. With the MythTV demo, we managed to make some pretty fun hybrid apps that did things like pull up related stories about the TV show you were watching (maybe sounds lame now but was kinda cool seeing it for the first time: an iframe over my TV show, holy shit what can't I do with this). Adware was never discussed; we wanted to be a free and hackable OS for the living room.

After heading in this "widgets" direction for about a year, Android had been released and we strongly believed in a strategy based on it, so made the pivot. It was pretty tough, and educational, trying to build consumer products at Google in this era and without any singular unifying vision across the company. I longed for a top-down dictator like Steve Jobs who could cut the crap.. (even if we were judged to be the crap!)

I'm guessing the ad-infested OS from OP has some lineage back to the original Google TV, but of course I'm sure it's barely recognizable now.

Remember? I'm still using it! As great as streaming is it's always an arms race with blocking the ads, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. They're now streaming the actual content off pubads.g.doubleclick.net to make sure if you block ads you don't get to see anything. It also embeds ads in the stream that ffmpeg merges.

MythTV lets me record free to air and skip through the ads.

This is pretty much the exact setup I have on my Chromecast minus button mapper since I use a Sofabaton remote for control. I ended up finding Wholpin after getting especially angry one day at the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking the requires manually pressing play to start the video again.

This is entirely too much effort, which truly drives home how the business model of televisions is now highly influenced by razors.

I buy a screen. I choose to control what outputs to said screen. The discussion should end there, were the product the screen. In reality, people actively pay money to become the product (i.e paying to be advertised to, and paying for your own data yo be sold).

I see this as no different than brand allegiance. With clothing, many individuals paid for brands to advertise on their bodies, whilst in turn they signal to others. The incentives are different, though the incentives similar.

There's a reason that so many of us see beauty in Thoreau.

> This is entirely too much effort

It really isn't. I've done this on like 4 different Android TV devices and it's like 30 minutes of effort at most and you only need to do it once.

If the alternative was a totally open Linux box you'd almost certainly spend way more time than that tweaking config and stuff (even if you'd mentally categorize than as "voluntary" time for a hobby and therefore not actually wasted).

I'll happily take that insignificant one time setup for a 100% ad-free experience (including Youtube) with a customizable launcher I can adjust to my liking on a 4K Android TV stick that cost me $39.99. And automate basically any function via ADB, including remapping the branded Netflix/HBO/etc buttons on the remote (I have a "Free TV" button that now goes to .... Stremio which I still laugh at occasionally).

I couldn't do any of that on a $199.99 Apple TV. An N100 Mini PC would cost 6x as much as I spent on an Onn stick, plus I'd need to buy a remote and would have to work around a keyboard/mouse centric UI and couldn't navigate with HDMI-CEC either.

I can't even think of anything I'm unable to do with my Custom Launcher/Sideload/Remote ADB Android TV setup like OP. It's just about the perfect couch-based interface. It does what I tell it without distractions and fades into the background completely like any good UI should, so I can focus on what I'm actually watching instead.

The point is not for me. The point is grandma. She can never have this without increasing needless complexity. People should be able to click a button whilst having their privacy respected.

I've done something similar earlier in the year[0] and was happy with the results, but it seems that one of the packages we disable affects the "chromecast" feature.

Not a problem if you never stream anything from other devices, but we do from time to time, so I was forced to revert everything to stock.

[0] https://www.celsoazevedo.com/replace-launcher-chromecast-goo...

If you're not as concerned about the tracking/privacy aspect of the unused Google launcher (or use DNS blocklists), you can keep the default launcher enabled and just intercept the home button to go the custom launcher.

That's what I always do and except on one cheap Hisense with a shitty built-in Google TV, there's no lag or stuttering and I see Projectivy immediately without ever triggering the default launcher (unless I want to open it for some reason).

I wish there was a reasonably cheap, sufficiently powerful TV box compatible with a free distribution Android TV. Something like Graphene/Lineage for TVs. Lineage does in fact have some TV builds, but there is basically no suitable new hardware for it AFAIK.

At the moment the best option still seems to be a somewhat old mini-PC with Linux and Plasma Bigscreen. But you need to add an HDMI-CEC dongle, and airmouse remote, and Waydroid if you want a more typical TV box experience.

The Onn 4k Pro from Walmart has a pretty powerful processor, is pretty easy to unlock, and seems to be a common target for customizing. The non-pro version definitely works with LineageOS: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/dopinder/

Are you sure this isn't just the 2021 version? That's precisely the kind of limitation I had in mind when I said it's difficult to find hardware.

Only the older non-pro one has the LineageOS wiki entry, but the faster pro version's software isn't that different, and it is easily unlocked, so it will probably accept LineageOS just as well.

Your best bet is indeed a mini PC. I think you can probably still find N100 based mini PCs pretty cheap. As for keyboard, you can find a micro 6" keyboard + touchpad (ie K808) for like $25 on Amazon.

As OP said, N100 boxes (at least the ones I have) don't support HDMI CEC natively. So you'll need another dongle.

> But you need to add an HDMI-CEC dongle

Little tip, but at least with my AMD card and the right DP->HDMI cable you can get CEC tunneled over Display Port without the dongle.

I'm running a very similar setup and am looking for a better way to stream games from my local gaming pc. The current steam in-home-streaming is too delayed in reaction for my liking and my nvidia shield doesn't really support the latest and greatest like av1 or pyrowave. Has anyone a good idea how i could achieve it in one machine? I don't really want to buy into a steam machine or something just to play games.

With Gigabit LAN, I'm using Sunshine on my PC and the Android Moonlight client on the TV.

For Input, I've a Logitech K400 via USB dongle on the TV and Xbox controllers via Bluetooth.

Is there a slight lag? Yes. Are the majority of games I want enjoy on the couch and play on the big TV playable? Absolutely. I wouldn't play CoD but many many games just work well even with a Little lag.

PS: can also recommend playnite, giving a unified tv/Controller experience with access to multiple game stores , local Games and emulator support.

Adding a USB 3 Gigabit adapter to my Onn 4k Pro box was a massive improvement. I wanted to get the Onn model with built-in Ethernet but later discovered it was 10/100 and more consistent than the built-in Wifi, but much slower top speeds.

Plugged in a 15 dollar gigabit adapter and now I can stream anything instantly from my LAN with super low latency, even with huge uncompressed media.

Highly recommended upgrade, for sticks without extra USB-3.0 port, best option is a cheap USB-C dock for tablet/laptop with Gigabit ethernet. Amazon sells various versions for <$20 these days.

There's probably something with sunshine / moonshine /artimis or something but I'm not up to date on that cluster of things.

I'll try vibepollo and moonshine again, but at least for the games i've tried it wasn't good enough for me.

50ft hdmi cable

Unfortunately; this is the only true answer. After a lot of trial and error; a good long AOC cable is what I settled with in the end.

I recently discovered (I knew of it but had never tried) debrid and now I resent all the time I wasted on private trackers over the years. Next step is trying an easy and stable alternative to Stremio (which has been down the hill for quite some time). This serves both my laptop and my old fire stick (which is fire os ← android tv) as of now.

I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years. But the number of clients is interesting.

The web experience on a desktop/laptop is pretty much the only tolerable experience.

And I appreciate that the alternative clients try and address the poor UX of the default but I still find so many of the basic behaviors missing or inconsistent.

I can't offer anything better but I find it curious.

Just try them, it's not a big investment as they all work with vanilla server. You will appreciate default Jellyfin client more :)

I'm on Moonfin right now. I tested a few of them. They all looked super good, but turned out they were all super buggy. Unusable, even. Moonfin is OK.

Yet still, I come back to Jellyfin all the time. It's missing some bells and whistles, but it works in a predictable way.

I needed a good screen, but I hate google. So I've just turn off internet and use my PC as the source. Thankfully, I don't nitpick on browser vs native app quality (and thank god for Kodi), else I'd be fuming and cussing at Google everyday. Or doing exactly this.

I just opened YouTube and this was recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP2SGGVsaB0

It uses Claude to connect to your TV and clean up ads and other junk.

As far as I'm aware Projectivy Launcher gets a lot of permissions it should not have, and it's closed source.. Feels like trading one privacy invasion for another.

Great advice here would add to perform these steps in a Shield TV so no need to give your TV internet access. This will cost much more.

Realizing I could replace the launcher was so nice. Apps only mode was my default for a while on Android TV. We use Pleezy for our Plex client

Would love a debloater for Samsung Tizen TV's

Same. I would love to jailbreak mine and remove the bloatware and tracking

Well, here's something it seems. Have not tried it, I have an other model. https://github.com/chris-ritsen/samsung-tv-root

At this point of time, I just want a display.

I wish I had seen this two years ago; it could have saved me some money trying other setups.

Fyi. The following repo and it has been getting a lot of traction, PRs, commits, support. Better to use the one debloater that is popular, than the one made by only one person. https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv

Why did you link to a smaller project, made by one person, when the article's recommended Projectivy, SmartTube, and Wolphin projects are all better according to the metrics you've listed?

It doesn't cover some of the same areas though, like replacing the youtube app with an ad-free alternative.

I came here to mention this as well.

I'm not a fan of AI in general, largely because I am convinced it's going to be economically devastating, but things like this actually bring me some joy.

Another one is the Vibe coded Adobe suite [1].

A lot of hardware and software companies don't seem to realize they're sowing the seeds for their own destruction.

[1]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/10/11/theres-a-vibe-cod...

I'm feeling weird trusting this. Is there any security review on this project?

Projectivy, Wolphin, and Button Mapper are all on Google Play with positive reviews. SmartTube isn't on Google Play, as it bypasses ads on Google's YouTube platform, so Google won't host it, but it is hosted on GitHub where it is well received, with plenty of stars.

Each has their own installation instructions, but the article consolidates them into a list of adb commands. If that's a method you like, it's nice to have everything in one place, but they can still be installed the normal way.

What "project"? It's just some adb commands that you can run on your TV/streaming box to disable built-in apps and change settings. The rest are just Android apps that are safe/legit.

Here in the UK you can buy a normal TV without any tracking. Its expensive (200-250+ pounds vs 120-150 pounds for normal spyware)

But it doesnt matter. Normal people dont care about this shit, only the Hacker News types. My wife put her foot down when I said we should get dumb TV, and we ended up getting a Samsung even though I wanted to avoid Korean companies (as they have worst privacy features), mainly because it was in our budget and available

Its feasible up to 32" to use a computer monitor and android box, but over that monitors seem to be up to 3x the price for equivalent specs versus televisions.

A 65" 4K TCL is about $400-500. Cheapest equivalent monitor is over $2k that I can find.

At my house, we love our Roku devices. Pair a nice quality OLED panel (never, ever connected to the internet) with a $50 Roku stick and you're good to go. The Roku UI has been consistent, fast, and clean for 10 years now. Roku's updates somehow haven't enshittified the experience like so many other platforms do. They did introduce video ads on the home screen a few years ago, but also provided an option to disable them in the accessibility menu. We do see a static ad on the home screen but we find it tolerable for the 10 seconds it's on the screen before we open up one of our streaming apps. My only gripe is that sometimes the ads are for R-rated shows and can be not kid-friendly or provocative.

I think the main issue people have with Roku is that it also does pretty extensive tracking of you, what you watch (ACR), what devices on your network, in some cases, what you say and so on.

And they shared this collected data with a bunch of third-parties.

In other words, they do the same stuff that OLED panel that you recommended never, ever be connected to the Internet does.

But don't take my word for it:

https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy

This is pretty slick - thank you for sharing

Any good tips on Samsung TVs?

> Google TV, the default interface on most Android TV devices, puts a large banner at the top of the home screen promoting whatever Google wants you to watch next.

You know, I don't give a shit about that, that's fine. Recommend me some stuff to watch, I'm here to watch stuff, I might even like what you're punting and give it a go. I might have forgotten there's a new season of whatever it is. I even quite like some of the inline recommendation stuff.

What made me switch to App-only mode was that ads started appearing for general consumer products. So this writeup is interesting, if/when they make app-only mode advertise shampoo at me I'll probably have a go with that launcher.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com