Still the best way to watch movies and shows.
Even if we pay $100 dollars every month to streaming services they will never not be too dumb to know how to make a convenient player that isn't hostile to its users.
While traveling I was so pissed with the Apple TV player's performance on less-than-lightspeed internet connections, I ragecancelled my subscription and just yo ho ho'ed the last couple episodes of Severance
- Kodi on a TV that has been stripped of as much of Google as I could find, streams from the shares
- VLC on my PC, streams from the shares
- VLC on my phone which is always VPN'd to my local network and streams from the shares
- VLC on iPads on which I usually drag and drop some shows/movies ahead of time so I am not wifi-dependent
They aren't dumb. They've realized that a large section of people will not bother, and aren't capable of sailing the high seas. Hostile behaviors won't change until it hits their bottom line, and because they are an extremely profitable company, it won't happen for a very long time.
Whatever happened to the media players that had built-in torrent searching and streaming?
Let them enshittify their apps and just tell your friends and family offline how to have a sane video viewing experience.
- Netflix
- Youtube without ads via Firefox+uBlock Origin
- Ripping DVDs and converting to .mp4
Those Small Form Factor PCs have only gotten cheaper over time - the most powerful PC I've ever owned in 30+ years is a $300 Minisforum (16 Cores, 16GB RAM) that's doing similar duty in the garage.
seems pretty obvious to me:
netflix wants to charge separately for mobile device vs television.
if you "cast" you don't need two subscriptions/account options.
We've rebuilt cable boxes, but somehow they're even shittier than before.
My family won’t adapt to anything in the living room with a keyboard and mouse, and getting a reliable remote on any PC based solution is often problematic.
But Windows 7 is gone, and so is the TiVo Slide remote.
Turned out after I had already bought all that stuff due to flakiness that it was just some bad RAM that, really, was overkill - I could have just taken out the bad sticks and kept on rocking, in which case it probably would still be our DVR.
A bit convoluted I guess but it's still under 1k loc so w/e.
Or what about the Steam Controller? It's UX is similar to some nicer smart TV interfaces.
The real solution is you build an app that is nice for your family to use and just tells the boxes what to play. Sure hope your family doesn't use iPhones!
Cable TV wasn't perfect, of course, but it was pretty damn good, especially in allowing everybody to have access to just about every show that was produced.
That the "replacement" model is disappointing and a worse experience, really shouldn't come as a surprise.
These days, you'd have to pay me $20+ per hour to watch cable TV.
I did have basic cable for a few years in the early 2000s, and I did enjoy watching Star Trek TNG reruns. Because there wasn't any good alternative back then in the dark ages.
Netflix has produced a few decent shows but most of its stuff is "targeted towards morons" or "pure garbage that insults my intelligence" - Love is Blind, Is it Cake.
Commercials arent great but they are passive - easy to ignore. Much rather have a 3-minute commercials break where I can go to the bathroom or check my phone than having to actively scroll for 90 seconds switching from app to app and navigating their awful interfaces to get back to the show I was watching the other day.
But that's just me - glad you like our new television overlords, they certainly love anyone bashing cable tv!
I expect there to be more aggregate junk on Netflix just because there is no floor: networks have only 168 hours a week to fill, while Netflix can throw anything at all on the pile.
But it doesn't matter, since unlike the networks, they're all available at once. If something insults your intelligence, you don't watch it.
> But it doesn't matter... they're all available at once
I'm sorry but streaming everything is not a panacea. The spigot of worthwhile content is not endless. Ok great you binge-watched the entire season of Stranger Things over two nights. What will you watch tomorrow? And the day after? How much of the show do you actually remember? You lose out on the fun of discussing each individual episode with like-minded people, the wondering about how the next episode will resolve the last episodes drama, maybe watching an episode a second time and catching some additional detail.
I can assure you that watching great television - Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Larry Sanders Show, Homicide: Life on the Street - one episode per week is vastly superior to binge-watching it, even if it feels inconvenient in the moment. (Of course this is with the convenience of DVR so you can time-shift occasionally)
I use Fedora for this purpose, used to use Debian. You really just need a system with a web browser, file browser, media player and torrent client, and some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone).
Sadly, I don't know of any nice off the shelf solution for that last part. KDE Connect is an option but it kinda sucks. I've always had my own Remote Desktop web interface service type thing running on the machine (though Wayland has kinda thrown a wrench into that for now...)
That said, at some point I think yes, you just get a bluetooth mouse/keyboard to go with it.
If you use Kodi then you could try Kore (their remote app). I tried it once a long time ago and it was alright, but it's hard to beat a keyboard. I think similar apps exist for VLC and other media players, but I haven't looked into a solution that allows controlling the entire computer via a phone.
You need to be able to provide keyboard and mouse input from a phone. Not just control Kodi or VLC.
I don't do any live TV / DVR stuff. Most of the time I just use the browser or VLC.
Piracy
My guess is that adblock became too easy on smartphones, so by forcing people use the app on the TV it makes harder for people to bypass the ads.
That's pure speculation, as I don't have any subscription from netflix. But I've used this method with the HBO app and it works 90% of the time, so I'm assuming netflix has the same issue.
Not within native apps. Your only option is essentially dns/hosts based on both platforms however this can also be done on the router. On Android there is ReVanced I guess. But these are almost as technical as a pihole. What is the percent of people who know of DNS based adblock but not pihole?
Edit: And DNS adblocking can be done on android tv.
You also have the option to put a piehole in your network. It is pretty easy if you have some technical knowledge but I would say that it is generally out of reach for the general population(non-tech folks).
But on android you just open the settings, search for 'private vpn' and paste an url. This is way easier to do for someone with no technical background. Even chatgpt should be able to correctly guide you through these steps.