Howdy y’all, I’m currently using an Amazon firestick on my living room TV, (running Wolf Launcher, Jellyfin, and SmartTube) but I’m considering upgrading to something more privacy friendly. Especially since Amazon is starting to crack down on “Side Loading” installing my own damn software.
The most open alternative seems to be an android TV box, but Google is walling up the android garden more heavily now too.
On the software side of things, I need something that:
- Is remote controllable
- Won’t harvest my data
- Let’s me install what I want
- Specifically will run the 3 programs I use. Jellyfin, SmartTube, and Kanopy.
On the hardware side of things, I’m pretty open, whether that be a rasberry pi, or a modified android TV box (provided I can flash an OS that isn’t infected with Google).
Has anyone else done anything like this? Steaming devices all seem like locked down, data harvesters, which just so happen to also show you movies.
I opted for a pc, but I guess a rasperry pi should do the trick provided you can get one that doesn’t cost an arm (see what I did there?) and you can slap a disk on it, SD cards wear off quickly. A mini-pc/nuc or similar would pack more punch, I don’t know about prices compared to a rpi.
Once you have gnu/linux installed you can do whatever you want.
About remote control kde connect does wonders if you choose to use kde plasma as desktop environment, I heard a port for gnome exists that works well though.