Pretty much unfortunately. The good thing is its trivially easy to change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield or Google TV devices, plus you can even go a step forward and debloat them entirely with ADB. Amazon’s really the only manufacturer I’d say that forces home screen ads with no choice around it, since they actively prevent changing launchers and such. But Apple is probably the only one out of the box with no advertising.
If you have the money, I’d go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.
Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.
You can easily change launchers on the Shield and remove all of Google’s nonsense through ADB as well though, unlike Amazon who locks down the OS very tight. Plus like another commenter said, you can just flat out install LineageOS and you’re good.
What shell would you recommend? 🤔
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Yep, they’re horrible. I always disable internet on them, uninstall any apps I can, and generally do what I can to avoid using the built-in smart TV, but I shouldn’t have to do this, its unfortunate and sucks to deal with. They just take advantage of consumers who don’t know better, wish the TV market wasn’t like this. :/
This list has so many weird and obsolete recommendations, looks like its being refined and improved according to this, so until that’s finished, I’d take it with a heavy grain of salt.
I think this goes for open source in general. I guess its just because of Apple and how locked down and restricted they make things. AOSP is open source and as a whole is pretty open with allowing things like sideloading and more freedom and control to developers and users in general, so I guess that encourages more FOSS developers to support it and the platform, over something like iOS for instance with its locked down ecosystem.
True, that’s why its probably good for a distinction to be made, I agree.
I generally avoid Cloudflare where possible personally because at the the end of the day, they’re a giant big tech company based in the US, with pretty much unprecedented control over the internet.
With that said, last time I looked into their privacy policy, I thought it was acceptable, but that’s been a while ago, so not entirely sure nowadays. Either way I’m not a huge fan.
The WebView on Android at least is Chromium based though, but I agree its probably best to make that distinction.
Thanks, I’ll check that out then.
Welcome!
How hard was it to set up? I’ve been considering making my own personal instance for a while now but haven’t fully properly looked into it
Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV’s, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon’s, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.