Hello!
Regarding what Gamers Nexus recently disclosed regarding LG TVs in their latest video I think its finally time to do what I can to mitigate it.
I cant root it since the firmware is too new and I cant afford a new TV either. My best bet would be blocking all LG IPs network-wide and disconnecting it from the network. (Although I understand even that might not be enough, its the best I can do right now)
I was thinking of using an old Raspberry to atleast access youtube and my media server, however I dont know what would be a good OS/distro to run this on. Preferably I would want to use something like an old PS4 controller as the remote.
Anyone here who has any suggestions or living room setups to suggest? Any and all tips are welcome.
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@Epzillon
I use #LibreElec with #Zattoo and #Netflix addon on an old Laptop. For remote control, I use a Remote with Bluetooth and Infrarot.
Currently I play around with #GamesOnWhales and its fork #Quasar for game streaming.@Epzillon I have been using Plasma Big Screen for a while now and cant be happier. I use Jellyfin as my main media source, Fred TV for my IP TV service and PWA for Youtube and Netflix. My TV has been disconnected from the internet for a while now and I dont feel my kids know the difference. I also use the Rii bluetooth remote to access Plasma Big Screen interface.
Does Fred TV work with a remote? Jellyfin was great but I couldn’t find an IPTV service that worked well with a remote. Fred TVs interface is also not great compared to something like Tivimate
That’s really good to hear. I’m liking the direction my Chromecast is going less and less and I’ve been thinking about making the transition. It would go over a lot smoother with my partner if it’s more fully featured. Have you tried it with Amazon Prime Video? That’s one of the only streaming services we’re still holding on to.
@Valon_Blue I created a PWA for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and it works great. I am unable to get 4K but I only watch in 1080p so it does not make a difference for me.
If you have nay knowledge of networking (or want to learn), start setting up restricted VLANs to isolate your smart devices. Only allow them access to specific services/devices like your media server.
For dedicated hardware, there are plenarily of options. A Raspberry Pi will work to start with, there are Linux images with Kodi such as LibreELEC and osmc (I have used both in the past and they worked fine), and Android TV images also that can run apps. I suppose you could also set up a generic Linux install and run the Jellyfin client or similar - not sure if there any turnkey options for that.
We have a couple of Apple TV boxes and they perform well, the Jellyfin apps for them have really improved in the last year or so too.
Two approaches:
Network isolation/DNS blocking - put the TV on a VLAN and only permit specific ports through to a media server (whatever the TV will support). If you lack VLAN capability, run PiHole as your DNS server (it works best as DNS and DHCP, but that’s just my opinion for things I like, such as proper name resolution for all devices).
Second option: (your idea with a Pi) disconnect TV from network entirely, then run something like Kodi (or whatever media center you prefer) on an old laptop, mini-PC, whatever, and have that device connect via HDMI. HDMI can passthrough the navigation controls from the TV remote (not guaranteed, but it’s part of the standard). I looked into this a long time ago but the performance wasn’t there yet. Today I’d probably try any distro and run Kodi on it.
Even my POS Samsung passes through enough of the controls to navigate Kodi on a 2017 laptop, while retaining power, volume, settings, etc for the TV itself.
My current setup is a Jellyfin server and Jellyfin client on the TV. I run PiHole with a blocklist for all the Samsung BS which has had the side effect of making the TV menus faster as it doesn’t retrieve any “what’s new” info from Samsung. Its actually kind of fun to monitor the FNS log and see the domains the TV hits, click Deny and see what breaks in the TV. On average about 30% of all DNS requests on my network get denied, and nothing of value has been lost. That’s how much crap is being sent all the time.
Hope that gives you some ideas.
check out: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/
This looks exactly like what I was looking for! Thank you!
Can I flash it over the TVs OS?
This is installed on existing linux, so probably no.
There are builds for Android TV lineage os for the raspberry pi. If you are willing to put in some work for alternative apps it’s a great interface with no Google integration. I’ve used kodi before i moved to jellyfin always found the kodi -> jellyfin integration to be clunky. Google TV would be much cleaner
I could never get those Android TV builds to work with CEC which kind of defeats the purpose for me. I’ll try it out with the next update. Librelec had no issues.
Not a popular answer, but Apple TV is the best out of the box experience. Zero ads, massive longevity. Mine is like 7 years old and still running the latest tvOS.
If you have the cash and inclination, Nvidia Shield is the hackers choice. Zero hardware upgrades in years tho, but software aplenty.
Just don’t let your smart TV access the internet in any situation, there’s no need. It’s just a stupid display.
Are apple TVs not phoning home?
If anything I’d imagine they’re one of the hardest companies to block, considering most apple users have a thousand idevices that could smuggle messages, even with all communications turned off.
“Find My” network is pretty strict by its nature, if you’re talking about that. Realistically speaking, I wouldn’t be scared of it, because I can’t see any vector from which it can be dangerous to the end user.
Nonetheless, “Find My” is an optional feature and can be fully disabled. Other Apple web-services can be blocked on a network level, if you want it for some reason. But, IMO, at this paranoia level, the only right option is OSS with a strict firewall.
Not at this scale. Remember that Apple is a hardware company first. They make money from hardware and app stores.
Google is the worlds largest ad company who dabble in hardware and services to increase their ad revenue.
They’re still a public company, and Im sure the heat is on their C suite cause they haven’t had any successful hardware releases since the M series processor was first released.
Not selling “anonymous” data would look to shareholders as thrown away profit, which they’re even able to sue for.
So I’d be insanely surprised if they weren’t surveiling their users - but unlike google and all, they own their entire closed-source software and hardware empire, so the likelihood of catching them is also valuably low.
Just to check, would Apple’s commitment to DEI policies look as thrown-away profit to shareholders?
I got an even better question for you: Is that relevant here?
Cause I don’t think it is at all, but to answer anyways I think DEI is a valuable tool to assist picking the best person for a job, independent of race - as there is a racist bias in many hiring positions. I don’t think its perfect, but honestly I don’t think anything in US is.
And I think apple cares about DEI cause their marketing team said it makes money. Full stop.
People love when their obsession might align with their morals, but its important to remember if 2028 goes Republican in US they probably won’t even do a logo change that pride month, cause all rainbow capitalism ever is is marketing.
Yes, it’s relevant, because DEI inherently limits what the company does, and yet the shareholders voted to keep it. Apparently Apple’s shareholders aren’t bigoted idiots.
if 2028 goes Republican in US they probably won’t even do a logo change that pride month
Nice job showing your ass here, because Apple never ‘changed the logo’ for the pride month. Where the fuck are they supposed to change it, on the Macbooks?
Not killing customers is also technically a limitation on companies, doesn’t inheritly mean it stops them from maximising profit.
Hell the reason companies don’t kill and do dei are the same reason, public perception (and also why there’s not a sneeze of either of those in poor countries)
But also… genuinely you thought I meant they like physically tear the logo off the back of every customers laptop and replaced it, only for a month, every single year?
Cause you know what fuck it, you’re right I do believe this 100% - you’re telling me Tim apple doesn’t visit you yearly??? man you gotta get your money back
And Google spyware is all open source?
Google’s just using linux for its price, but the GPL of AOSP does a lot of heavy lifting for reverse engineering efforts like this.
edit: not that that matters at all to apple spying on users - like them scanning all Iclouds openly wasn’t even that long ago
Every cloud provider scans their storage, because the law is like that.
People have gotten their MS accounts closed when Onedrive was still called Skydrive due to automated scans finding suspicious activity
Damn, I forgot we all live in America - and so do all tech companies in the globe
People do pick up Pixel phones to install GrapheneOS on. How many people pick up Apple phones/tablets and are able to install another OS on it and have it as functional as GrapheneOS?
Same with smartwatches which from the Android side can be used offline with apps like Gadgetbridge to retrieve data without giving your watch internet access and not using the official apps.
Apple is very account and OS centric wanting to funnel everything through them. Exception has been MacOS devices which has had better luck with stuff like Asahi Linux.
Apple TV’s launcher was recently “updated” to showcase whatever latest content is being pushed through Apple’s own services. Which is advertisement.
What ”launcher”? The TV app? You can just move it away. There is no launcher anywhere, every service along with AppleTV+ is just a separate application
Launcher, home screen, app screen, whateveryouwannacallit of an Apple TV unit.
Remember, we’re talking about a replacement for shitty ad-infested “smart” TV interfaces - not an app. Apple’s TV app is not relevant here.
Apple TV the device has no ads, zero, nada.
You are very wrong. We have two Apple TV units. They absolutely have ads now. The homescreen background used to be clear, and now it’s a non-stop showcase of bullshit games, shows, and other nonsense that nobody asked for.
Wtf? Where? I have three and zero ads.
If I select a top row app, that application can “advertise” what’s new on the top half of the screen. That’s it.
If I select a top row app, that application can “advertise” what’s new on the top half of the screen.
Yes. They are advertising to you. That’s what “ad” is short for: “advertisement”.
Apple TV units have ads.
Zero ads
The launcher is a massive ad for Apple’s services though.
What? There’s one icon that says “TV”. You can move it to the bottom and you won’t see any apple stuff beyond that.
There’s no best answer right now, Plasma Bigscreen is making good progress.
I have to imagine they’ll soon be putting cellular antennas in the TVs to circumvent all that anyway.
plasma-bigscreen looks nice, would it go on a RPI 4? and are they spy-ey? they have google as a patron.
Not running on a Pi yet, any spying would depend on the distro. There’s no dedicated Bigscreen distro yet but I’m pretty sure it’s being worked on.
So I would need to put Linux on my device then put plasma big screen over that?
Yes but I recommend waiting until someone makes a version of Linux specifically for Bigscreen because it’s not really ready yet
That’ll be expensive so I don’t think it’ll be happening. They’ll be OK with collecting data from the 95% of their customers who don’t know how to block the TV from having internet access.
That’s true even the premium brands won’t halfway decent CPUs in them to keep the giant bloated menus from stuttering.
My living room set up has been TV not connected to internet and hooking up a minipc running Fedora. Could run Windows if DRM content from streaming services is important to you.
My answer is… excessive. So keep that in mind. If its just you or you and another adult, just set up kodi in some form.
I wanted something that would have profiles for my kids, a remote, and easy access. Where I am currently is:
- Flex Launcher - 10’ UI. The same person started Big Launcher after but never completed. I’m hoping to finagle Plasma Bigscreen into doing what I want, but I’m not there yet.
- Media is all Jellyfin, now with my older game emulation there as well.
- Logging into the machine also auths against JF, so its per user at the OS level for each member of the family. Currently working on NFC for login so my kids can tap a toy or something to get their account logged in, rather than me or my wife doing it.
- PC is an industrial pc I picked up, its light on usb ports but I added a wifi/bt card from another machine, bumped up the ram with some spares I had.
- I have a usb soundbar and usb audio processor, all audio goes through there, managed via pipewire.
- I couldn’t get CEC working well on it, so I made use of an overly expensive video switcher for this purpose that I picked up a while back. Corp conferencing switcher. Now I can send CEC programmatically.
- Current remote is just an older android tablet with lineage on it. I want to replace this with a keyboard/remote combo, but haven’t found what I wanted to yet. This will just get broken accidentally by a kid, so I’d prefer a remote.
The experience is pretty decent, just login and browse. In any case, this is the (overly complex) way I’ve addressed things for me. That said, a few notes / to-do items:
- No streaming platforms (I will not use them anyway)
- I still need to stand up a youtube front end (I don’t use it much so low on the list, more for my wife)
- I want to set up something to show family photos from immich as the background
- I need better controllers for gaming. I have one 8bitdo pro wired, an old 8bitdo NES controller, and a gamecube usb adapter (but my gamecube controllers have all gone to crap now, so thats useless). I also connected up the balance board from the wii, but haven’t gotten much use out of it yet.
- I want to get my AudioBookShelf on there as a dedicated setup with login by desktop account automatically, haven’t even started this yet. May have to do something a bit different here too as I want a read-along style for the kids.
- I would never buy all this stuff, I used things I picked up on the free or cheap via hardware replacements through my work and tech liquidation/“recycling” companies.
@curbstickle @Epzillon What’s the “overly expensive video switcher” that you’re using? I have an android TV with broken CEC (a Pi running Libreelec works fine one my other tv, but not this one).
I have a setup very similar to this. Although I’m fully on the Plasma Bigscreen bandwagon. But then again, I don’t have many custom services such as NFC login/custom background image logic like you do, and I doubt Plasma Bigscreen would play nice with that stuff. A couple of things I learned through my many attempts of setup:
- HDMI CEC doesn’t work on pretty much all x86 devices except for like some particular mini PCs, the Framework desktop, and the Steam Deck dock. Most ARM devices do though which is how I got around this by just using an Orange Pi 5. Another option is tunneling over DisplayPort if your device has a DisplayPort and you have a supported DP-HDMI adapter. Then finally, there’s also the PulseEight USB adapter if nothing else works.
- I’ve been using Waydroid for any application that doesn’t support Linux natively like YouTube or most streaming services (although I only use YouTube and Jellyfin for all of my content). You can use Waydroid Android TV which launches a near-native Android TV translation layer running Lineage OS which is de-googled and privacy protecting by default. You can launch the normal Android interface which has the entire Android TV UI, or you can enable multi window mode and just launch specific Android apps directly from whatever Linux launcher you use and they launch and work like normal Linux apps with TV controls. Very useful since Android has a much larger TV app ecosystem.
Tech liquidation/recycling companies? I’d like to hear more about that
When companies decommission their hardware, they go to a large scale “recycler”. Most of the time that means pulling the drive on the PCs and maybe dropping another in before reselling it for less.
Some companies also recycle things like digital signage players, which could be purpose built hardware and mostly useless or purpose built software and fairly useful if you know what to check for. Or sometimes speakers, audio dsp’s, monitors, etc.
Other times when a company is being liquidated (like being sold off to pay for debts), it’ll get auctioned off. You don’t get to look at the details much (maybe one device pulled out in front of the crate the rest are in), you are buying in quantity, etc, but there can be good finds there.
I’m big on making use of perfectly good hardware with just a few years on them.
I use ONN Android boxes. Fairly inexpensive, but I think it’s difficult to set up without a Google account (you can create a dummy account on the setup).
Side-loading is trivial. Some favorite apps: TizenTube to replace YouTube (or any of a dozen or so frontends), Projectivy launcher to replace the awful default. Add an always on VPN.
Not sure why you got downvoted. I use similar Mi boxes. I hate google but the tv has a throw away tv email. I would love to not have google involved.
I then have productivity launcher which i quite like. If i am wrong happy to be pointed in the right direction. generally use stremio/jelly/smartube
Jellyfin for shows and movies, Chora for Navidrome Music, and it works as a perfect little access to your homeserver.
I haven’t found an Android box that runs without Google services.
Kodi on a Pi is just meh at best imo.
Probably because those android set-top boxes are usually malware top to bottom.
Yeh, agree. But for a lot of people they are the easiest option after Amazon/google/apple etc
Not everyone is techy enough to have means to pull components together and configure, And then put up with semi reliable solutions. People need to acknowledge this rather than downvote. It’s weird.
Hey welcome to the hobby!
We personally have the whole TV on a Vlan, so it can’t acces anything at all. While our server/HA can still send a WOL command to it, and jellyfin can stream our movies to it. I run all of it on top of TrueNas, most as an app or else an VM.
I have never tried to set something up for YouTube specifically, since that runs on a Chromecast (for now…)
Let me know how your journey goes
I’m still using an old Apple TV. I’m not happy about it but haven’t found a good replacement yet.
There’s a few interesting options for software in this thread. In terms of hardware - maybe a NUC or something? Would have to be small, quiet and relatively cheap.
For the real “TV feeling”, try ErsatzTV. It basically creates multiple real-time streams of TV shows and movies from your media library. You can switch between them like channels.
Abandon ware now
Really? https://github.com/ErsatzTV/next looks pretty active to me…?
Huh. Must have gotten someone to take over, last I’d heard the maintainer was archiving it. At least according to Chris on Linux Unplugged a couple months ago.
