AppleTV is the media box to use if you hate ads and value your privacy. Its Home Screen is just a grid of apps. No ads. None. It’s also way faster (CPU speed) compared to the competition.

Replacing a smart TV OS with a device made by Google or Amazon defeats the purpose. You’re still going to get ads plastered all over your Home Screen. And they still lag and stutter unless you pay a premium price for an 5 year old Nvidia shield. Either use an AppleTV or build your own HTPC.

I haven seen my LG OLED’s smart OS for years.

My LG OLED TV can be configured to load directly into a HDMI input. I keep it disconnected from wifi at all times. I never see the smartTV OS. It’s probably the best option because OLED panels are the best current display technology.

I use an AppleTV as an external media box for all my needs. But the same would apply for an Android box or HTPC setup etc.

The grain isn’t the issue. They are straight up AI upscales filled with artefacts and barely any use of HDR colour capabilities. Fan edits have done better jobs.

High of Sauron

I just want posts or communities to have category tags for me to block by tag. So I can block all anime and every non-English community.

I have nothing against them. They’re just not of interest to me and I don’t want them on my feed. Blocking a community is mostly useless because there are so many of them it’s like playing whack a mole.

They are: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-additional-states-join-justice-departments-suit-against-apple-monopolizing-smartphone

I’ve been in similar situations while renting. I ran ethernet cables along skirting boards and around doorframes and hid them inside adhesive cable raceways.

I dont understand why you want to keep a TV offline for privacy/ad reasons, but also say you’re using a Chromecast or Roku media devices anyway? Thats like wanting to keep your windows locked but leaving your front door wide open.

Anyway, LG and Sony OLED TVs offer the best image quality and will work just fine without an internet connection.

I have my LG TV offline and use an AppleTV for everything. I never see the LG OS or Home Screen or any ads or logos once it’s configured to boot straight into external HDMI device.

It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t get coverage in half the media in the country. And most people don’t even watch the media, anyway. It’ll be bullshit stories and anti-liberal memes as per usual.

Apple lay out some details here: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

They control the cloud hardware. Information used for cloud requests is deleted as soon as the request is done. Everything end-to-end encrypted. Server builds are publicly available to inspect. And all of this is only used unless the on-device processing can’t handle a request.

If somebody wanted to actually create a private AI system, this is probably how they’d do it.

You can disagree with this or claim somehow that they are actually accessing and selling people’s data, but Apple are going out of their way to show (and cryptographically prove) how they’re not. It would also be incredible fraudulent and illegal for them to make these claims and not follow through.

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I have a 50 terabyte NAS for storing my movies and TV shows. And access it from any of the TVs in my house.

For music…I have a music streaming subscription for convenience, but also have some vinyl records for the small-ish number of albums I want to keep forever.

My high end PC from 3 years ago won’t run Windows 11 because of TPM bullshit.

The show wasn’t perfect, but it felt like something fresh and different. I really hope they can get more of it. I guess HBO would rather pump out something derivative.

It’s the tech business model. Slowly building up a sustainable business has been replaced with coasting on investment money while attempting to capture an entire global market. Because these products can scale so easily. Now they’re entering the “oh shit we need to make money now” phase of the business model.

It’s not evil capitalists. It’s people acting rationally. The incentive structure leads to this behaviour. Eventually these services will consolidate into 2 or 3 major ones, like they do in every global tech market. Everyone will complain about it. But they’ll keep paying for it, because what other (legal) choice is there?

Better support for Dolby Vision. I also prefer the Infuse UI.

Sideloading and customisation is a downside. Like other Apple devices, the App Store is the way they want you to install things.

There are ways to sideload things like Kodi through pre signed certificates but I don’t know much about it.

Dont need another Apple device.

No need for other Apple devices. It can act as a standalone box. It may want an AppleID account during setup. I’m unsure about that part.

I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but…AppleTV with the Infuse app.

I tried a bunch of different media boxes and HTPC options over the year. But this is by far the best setup in my experience.