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.
You don’t even need to do that, all you have to do is hold shift when you right click, and it circumvents any hijacking.
Depends, but yes in most cases. Also just adds attack surface and consumes extra resources, so its generally a good practice to keep extensions to a minimum and only use what you need.
For microG (what I would recommend, since its much more private than regular GAPPS/full Play Services), you can just flash a LineageOS for microG build for your device instead of the official LineageOS. You can get them here. It covers the same devices that Lineage itself does. Same installation process, just using their files instead of Lineage’s.
DivestOS added optional support for unprivileged microG fairly recently, so its definitely usable.
They both should work, you won’t get notifications for Teams though unless you flash microG or GAPPS.
My biggest issue with Jellyfin is the downloads. I hate not being able to downscale or compress files. Its really the main reason I still leave Plex up in conjunction to it. Though I hope to be able to get rid of Plex entirely in the future, Jellyfin just needs more time.
It does, it works better and covers more sites, but at the cost of security (increasing attack surface) and using more resources. Pros and cons to both.
Yes, this has been a major issue for NewPipe, see here.
Brave is not spyware. That website you linked is horrible and full of misinformation. They also claim that Firefox, and even Tor Browser, are spyware. They act as if any and all connections a browser makes are automatically bad and used for spying/tracking.
I won’t disagree with the other criticisms of Brave that you made, but just wanted to point that out. That website is just highly unreliable and makes verifiably false claims about the browsers it reviews.
Side tangent but god, just unbelievable how an app like YouTube would ever be a system app on Stock that you can’t just uninstall without needing to go through hoops like ADB. Samsung includes so much fuckery on their variants of Android, but to be fair, I believe even on stock Pixels, YouTube is a system app as well, so can’t even entirely blame them for this case. Still unacceptable and insane to me.
Stock Android just sucks, can’t see myself ever going back to it unless I absolutely had to. Props to you for making it work.
Not Chromium, Extremely customizable and configurable, and add-on support on mobile, to name a few reasons.
I usually use Signal.
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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. :/
Yeah, Pixels are great, basically reference Android. Developers even usually use them for testing and making apps, so you know you’re getting the best compatibility. Overall can’t recommend them enough.
Is this the part where I act surprised?
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.