this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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How do I free my television?

(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In principle, yes, and I believe a few small hobby projects have attempted to do this and support specific TVs. However, interest in developing a custom Smart TV platform tends to get siphoned away into a project where the output from your actual platform is displayed on the TV rather than running directly on it. Simply, it’s easier to develop and maintain support across different models.

Why would you develop a custom TV OS that runs on one TV when you could develop it for any mini PC and immediately support all TVs? You’d have to develop your OS to run on each specific TV model which will make it quite hard to reach a critical mass sufficient to attract attention from developers and users alike.

The juice isn’t really worth the squeeze. It’s not like TV vendors are publishing detailed hardware specs and drivers. Writing or even porting an OS is hard. Look at the state of the Android ROM scene, and that’s about as good as it gets when some vendors are actually attempting to open source their drivers. The difficulty is much higher and the interest lower due to the existence of a viable alternative.

With that said, motivated minds have done it anyway. You just need to have the right TV for it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Get a dumb TV and plug in a cheap computer where you can pirate everything

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

If it has an HDMI port, it can be a dumb TV. Just don't connect it to wifi, easy

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not sure they exist, but either way, just plug something in and don't connect the TV itself to the internet.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Sceptre has some dumb TVs. You can also still get the display TVs that companies use. I'm drunk so I forget what they're called.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Cathode ray dude recently did a video on them
https://youtu.be/q9a3dCd1SQI

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They simply don't exist anymore. The only choice is to do this with a smart TV and never connect it to the internet.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Usually that means trying to get Android TV working through USB, but it depends on what tv you have. If you already have an Android TV, just use a launcher like Projectivy. Most people just buy a media box: either an Android based one or apple tv and disable the "smart" tv altogether

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd imagine you could probably get into the android developer settings and disable all the telemetry stuff through adb and install a custom launcher like projectivity and that'd be the closest you could get to running a custom tv OS at least if you can't flash it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Just use the TV as a display and try to dink around with some open source media player box if you want to create your own custom OS.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It's better than dealing with whatever terrible nonsense they put on LGs and Samsungs. I was really close to getting an LG because everyone says it's the best looking but I just couldn't imagine going back to completely unmodifiable TV OS, so I got the Sony instead which still looks absolutely fantastic and I have my custom launcher on it set exactly how I want it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'd think most people woud go for a cheap used ultra Small Form Factor pc or raspberry pi set up as an htpc. Plug in to either tv screen (via hdmi ) or monitor / projector directly. Never connect the tv to the internet - or even to your LAN if you're really paranoid. You can arse around with a remote control a bit bodgy, or just use wireless Keyboard/mouse.

I cant imagine spending the time to jailbreak a tv to get less functionality for more hassle - but i'm sure some crazy will have done it - good luck finding them though.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's much easier to run a HTPC on something small like a Raspberry Pi, or an NVIDIA Shield. The hardware on your TV is probably the bare minimum to run its own smart features, and replacing the firmware doesn't guarantee that the TV isn't still phoning home with your data.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you literally replaced the firmware, what else could possibly be phoning home?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Best is to try to get the dumbest TV you can and plug in an android tv streaming box to it imo

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I believe that's called a monitor. Just buy a bigass monitor or projector.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

A TV usually comes with a remote, a monitor doesn't. Additionally, you can use it to watch linear TV if you don't feel like making a selection.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have a "smart TV" and I plug it into my receiver and use it as a monitor. I use the term smart TV that way, because it is more than 10 years old when TVs were just starting to have these features. I should also point out that the receiver does all of the spying that the TV isn't doing. Not sure what I'll do when the TV dies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Similar for me. I have an old Philips "smart" TV (actually today it is very dumb as basically all services are disabled and all apps heavily outdated) which I occasionally use for watching TV, but most times I use the attached Raspberry Pi with Kodi for watching German public broadcaster's Mediathek, Youtube or Amazon Prime.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Like a TV that flunked kindergarten? j/k

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Yes, it's called jailbreaking. That said it basically never happens because TV's are pretty much shitty monitors with cheap digital encoders, and you can buy an encoder and a good monitor for way way cheaper than rewriting an OS.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

This is a damn good question that I would also love an answer to!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yes and no, but mostly no
If you have a samsung tv there would be stuff like: https://www.samygo.tv/
webos has an open source version: https://www.webosose.org/
but anything else is even fewer and farther inbetween

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I have another question.

Can we reprogramme the remote buttons that open Netflix, YouTube etc., so that they open other apps like Jellyfin or something?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

Those companies paid to have their buttons on the remote. Your TV manufacturer is not going to threaten their sponsorship deal by letting you use those buttons for anything else.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes. What brand or model number do you have?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was thinking that if somebody knows how to do that, they probably also have an opinion on which brands of TV are better or worse for it.

I don't own a TV right now but plan to in the future.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

It is possible but it needs people to develop the OS for each brand of TV and jailbreak the TVs to run another OS.

Most TVs are like phones in that they have a locked down system and their bootloader/BIOS/UEFI is also locked down which is what ultimately needs to be unlocked to allow another OS to be installed.

Why there isn’t?

Just not really many developers interested in creating an OS for it. Probably because of so many different brands and models of TVs that would require lots of work since each one is pretty different from another.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

i'm in the EU. if i order a screen/panel that can do tv or is smart i pay more on import taxes. so the obvious is to buy the dumbest panel you can get and slap some SBC on it yourself. still want to use cable and sat? tv headend is just great for that amd more as you can mix cable, sat and ip tv. your sbc (or nuc etc) can run stuff like kodi and you're good to go. you still want android apps for a tv? go add some cheap fire tv stick. i dont know of any droid app i still would need. used to have "pluto" but turns out thats just boring too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

you can yes but it is hard

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