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 use a nvidia shield with lineageos installed. It works perfectly for me with no tracking. I have Jellyfin, SmartTube, Dropout and Nebula installed (from F-droid, obtanium, and Aurora respectively) I think your TV has to be HDMI CEC but our shield remote can turn on/off the TV (I’m 90% certain HDMI CEC is the name of the standard) Outside of that, it is technically a smart TV but it is not connected to our network and will never be connected.