Technology

I want to make my TCL Roku Smart TV dumb.

Fortunately Roku is still not that bad. 3 rows of items to choose from, select and go.

It basically is a dump app launcher if you go into settings and make it one. Even more so once you use a network adblock to stop the single ad they display on the right.

OK gang my point is not that this is impossible to DIY. In fact we really enjoy you all sharing your setups and appreciate everyone taking the time :3

We just like for something like this as a cheap (enough) commercial product to finally catch on. At the end of the day folk just want to have a TV, plug something into it, and have it work.

We were already tired of the overpriced TV boxes that shady broadband companies forced into everyones livingroom. Nowadays that horrible experience comes physically fused to every TV further out in the markey than a sane person could reasonably be expected to look.

It just super sucks to see so many pay for devices that actively fight you in general. Most electronics already inherently feel like an accesability issue simulator to most people anyways. It being deliberately opaque, confusing and facilitating dark patterns on top of that is such a PITA. Not to mention if you already have inherent accesability difficulties from any number of conditions.

You can!

You’ll just be limited in your app selection and then there’s DRM.

I've been using Pi 4s with a lineage OS build that has the Jellyfin Android TV client on it and thats been a pretty sweet setup.

MSI cubi fanless with KDE Neon autologin to Plasma Bigscreen with Vacuumtube, steam big screen mode, jellyfin... Remote controller is a Rii F8 mini which has a few programmable IR buttons for the old dumb TV.

The future is now...

Raspberry Pis have CEC support. I've used it with OSMC (formerly either LibreElec or RaspBMC, one of those? It's Debian Kodi). It was much better without. So, if you turned the TV off with the TV's power button, the Pi would turn the TV back on.

The Pi has a 3.5mm audio jack. I have a set of desktop PC speakers that are hell and gone better than anything built into a television in the last 20 years. Not only is it not straightforward to get it to control the Pi's audio output level with the TV's remote via CEC, OSMC absolutely did not want to do this. Not only would that setting get revered to HDMI audio out, it would disable the analog out option, and you'd have to SSH in and change a config file to re-enable that option in the first place. That would happen either during updates or even just power cycles. I swear the phraseology of the line you'd have to put in that config file would change; the same line I'd put in there would still be in there and not working.

The thing with open source software is, it's always going to have the UX of a sinus infection, especially since the manufacturers of hardware gimp their devices to not work well outside of the walled garden.

Lol, just when I said I was going to take a break from tinkering, you tell us about this. Oh well! 😆

Thanks for sharing this!

++Projectivy, it's top tier software. It's so clean by default, has lots of customization options, and no ads whatsoever. It's so good that I worry Google will try to take away the option to use a third party homescreen on Android TV.

I also use Projectivity on my NVIDIA shield. No ads, no recommendations, just the apps I want. Everyday I'm glad I installed it.

Is there something similar for Linux people like? I have an old computer hooked up for freetube but would like it to be the default input for my Frame TV.

i use Flauncher on my Nvidia Shield Pro and have for years

What do you see that makes a difference? Lack of ads or is performance also better?