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Self-hosted TV interface solutions (lemmy.world)
submitted 21 hours ago by Epzillon@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hello!

Regarding what Gamers Nexus recently disclosed regarding LG TVs in their latest video I think its finally time to do what I can to mitigate it.

I cant root it since the firmware is too new and I cant afford a new TV either. My best bet would be blocking all LG IPs network-wide and disconnecting it from the network. (Although I understand even that might not be enough, its the best I can do right now)

I was thinking of using an old Raspberry to atleast access youtube and my media server, however I dont know what would be a good OS/distro to run this on. Preferably I would want to use something like an old PS4 controller as the remote.

Anyone here who has any suggestions or living room setups to suggest? Any and all tips are welcome.

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[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 4 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

My answer is... excessive. So keep that in mind. If its just you or you and another adult, just set up kodi in some form.

I wanted something that would have profiles for my kids, a remote, and easy access. Where I am currently is:

  • Flex Launcher - 10' UI. The same person started Big Launcher after but never completed. I'm hoping to finagle Plasma Bigscreen into doing what I want, but I'm not there yet.
  • Media is all Jellyfin, now with my older game emulation there as well.
  • Logging into the machine also auths against JF, so its per user at the OS level for each member of the family. Currently working on NFC for login so my kids can tap a toy or something to get their account logged in, rather than me or my wife doing it.
  • PC is an industrial pc I picked up, its light on usb ports but I added a wifi/bt card from another machine, bumped up the ram with some spares I had.
  • I have a usb soundbar and usb audio processor, all audio goes through there, managed via pipewire.
  • I couldn't get CEC working well on it, so I made use of an overly expensive video switcher for this purpose that I picked up a while back. Corp conferencing switcher. Now I can send CEC programmatically.
  • Current remote is just an older android tablet with lineage on it. I want to replace this with a keyboard/remote combo, but haven't found what I wanted to yet. This will just get broken accidentally by a kid, so I'd prefer a remote.

The experience is pretty decent, just login and browse. In any case, this is the (overly complex) way I've addressed things for me. That said, a few notes / to-do items:

  • No streaming platforms (I will not use them anyway)
  • I still need to stand up a youtube front end (I don't use it much so low on the list, more for my wife)
  • I want to set up something to show family photos from immich as the background
  • I need better controllers for gaming. I have one 8bitdo pro wired, an old 8bitdo NES controller, and a gamecube usb adapter (but my gamecube controllers have all gone to crap now, so thats useless). I also connected up the balance board from the wii, but haven't gotten much use out of it yet.
  • I want to get my AudioBookShelf on there as a dedicated setup with login by desktop account automatically, haven't even started this yet. May have to do something a bit different here too as I want a read-along style for the kids.
  • I would never buy all this stuff, I used things I picked up on the free or cheap via hardware replacements through my work and tech liquidation/"recycling" companies.
[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

@curbstickle @Epzillon What's the "overly expensive video switcher" that you're using? I have an android TV with broken CEC (a Pi running Libreelec works fine one my other tv, but not this one).

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 1 points 3 hours ago

Conferencing hardware from lightware (upstairs) and crestron (downstairs). Not something worth bothering with though, just get a CEC adapter like the pulse eight.

[–] Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Tech liquidation/recycling companies? I'd like to hear more about that

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 1 points 7 hours ago

When companies decommission their hardware, they go to a large scale "recycler". Most of the time that means pulling the drive on the PCs and maybe dropping another in before reselling it for less.

Some companies also recycle things like digital signage players, which could be purpose built hardware and mostly useless or purpose built software and fairly useful if you know what to check for. Or sometimes speakers, audio dsp's, monitors, etc.

Other times when a company is being liquidated (like being sold off to pay for debts), it'll get auctioned off. You don't get to look at the details much (maybe one device pulled out in front of the crate the rest are in), you are buying in quantity, etc, but there can be good finds there.

I'm big on making use of perfectly good hardware with just a few years on them.

[–] echo@lemmy.ml 2 points 16 hours ago

I have a setup very similar to this. Although I’m fully on the Plasma Bigscreen bandwagon. But then again, I don’t have many custom services such as NFC login/custom background image logic like you do, and I doubt Plasma Bigscreen would play nice with that stuff. A couple of things I learned through my many attempts of setup:

  • HDMI CEC doesn’t work on pretty much all x86 devices except for like some particular mini PCs, the Framework desktop, and the Steam Deck dock. Most ARM devices do though which is how I got around this by just using an Orange Pi 5. Another option is tunneling over DisplayPort if your device has a DisplayPort and you have a supported DP-HDMI adapter. Then finally, there’s also the PulseEight USB adapter if nothing else works.
  • I’ve been using Waydroid for any application that doesn’t support Linux natively like YouTube or most streaming services (although I only use YouTube and Jellyfin for all of my content). You can use Waydroid Android TV which launches a near-native Android TV translation layer running Lineage OS which is de-googled and privacy protecting by default. You can launch the normal Android interface which has the entire Android TV UI, or you can enable multi window mode and just launch specific Android apps directly from whatever Linux launcher you use and they launch and work like normal Linux apps with TV controls. Very useful since Android has a much larger TV app ecosystem.