I got a very cheap second hand HP G4 mini PC with a Bluetooth remote control.
It sits under my TV, and I use it for all my downloading needs (away from any computer that gets used for email or banking, etc), playing videos, and emulated games with an old Xbox controller.
Works faster than anything built into the TV, and the remote is better because it has a proper little keyboard on it :-)
TBH the experience is so positive I don’t understand why anyone would want to use the smart features of a modern TV when they could be doing this instead.
After my first pihole setup (I hate SD cards with a passion now), I saw what my “smartTV” was doing and I pulled it off the internet. The TV really did not like being off of the internet but I found ways around that. I have an Apple TV as my smart stuff.
I have 2 pi5’s with NVMe drives and a pi4 booting off of an external NVMe drive. Last night I thought about figuring out a way to download the youtube videos and setting up a jellyfin sever. Or breaking and getting using Firefox and attaching one of my pi5’s to the TV and just doing it that way.
When my smart TV was attached to the internet, because a friend helped me get it into my place she was fairly insistent on setting it up to the internet, I had no idea how much data it was sending places. I set up my first go at a pi-hole and say that a good majority of the internet signals coming and going from my place was from the TV.
Smart TV’s are not cool, I bought it to display video not spy on me and sell ads to me. I have since ditched that email address it’s only used for YouTube now. I would ditch the email entirely if the Google did not own YouTube. It breaks my buy Canadian heart that I am stuck using YouTube and Reddit, I am however trying to cut down on the groups and channels I subscribe to or pay attention to.
I got a very cheap second hand HP G4 mini PC with a Bluetooth remote control.
It sits under my TV, and I use it for all my downloading needs (away from any computer that gets used for email or banking, etc), playing videos, and emulated games with an old Xbox controller.
Works faster than anything built into the TV, and the remote is better because it has a proper little keyboard on it :-)
TBH the experience is so positive I don’t understand why anyone would want to use the smart features of a modern TV when they could be doing this instead.
After my first pihole setup (I hate SD cards with a passion now), I saw what my “smartTV” was doing and I pulled it off the internet. The TV really did not like being off of the internet but I found ways around that. I have an Apple TV as my smart stuff.
I have 2 pi5’s with NVMe drives and a pi4 booting off of an external NVMe drive. Last night I thought about figuring out a way to download the youtube videos and setting up a jellyfin sever. Or breaking and getting using Firefox and attaching one of my pi5’s to the TV and just doing it that way.
I looked at smaller things like the Pi and in the end decided I had more flexibility by just having a little PC and bunging Linux on it.
I just got a new smart TV, but it’s never going on the internet, lol
When my smart TV was attached to the internet, because a friend helped me get it into my place she was fairly insistent on setting it up to the internet, I had no idea how much data it was sending places. I set up my first go at a pi-hole and say that a good majority of the internet signals coming and going from my place was from the TV.
Smart TV’s are not cool, I bought it to display video not spy on me and sell ads to me. I have since ditched that email address it’s only used for YouTube now. I would ditch the email entirely if the Google did not own YouTube. It breaks my buy Canadian heart that I am stuck using YouTube and Reddit, I am however trying to cut down on the groups and channels I subscribe to or pay attention to.