(Repost ish, from Technology), So I just bought a new telly and to my surprise, not, the OS is rather bad and has very limited amount of apps. Therefore I’ll invest further in either Apple TV or the Firestick. Anyone got any recommendations, tips or hot takes on this in terms of pirated content? Which is more accessible and I reckon both support Jellyfin?
Android TV, I have the Shield Pro and nothing can’t beat:
- SmartTube, no ads with SponsorBlock
- TiVimate, IPTV
- Kodi, best video player.
- Jellyfin and Plex
- Stremio with Real Debrid.
SmartTube is great. Can even link it to the mobile app and push videos with no ads for free.
An Nvidia Shield Pro is hands down the best but it is much more expensive. Slap a third party launcher over the top and use it for streaming Jellyfin or Stremio or Kodi or whatever floats your boat. Super responsive and is android-based so you can sideload whatever you want. It also has the most compatibility with most codecs so you’ll be able to direct play more through Jellyfin rather than transcode.
And if you want to go even further: it has active official LineageOS support, I flashed mine two months ago
I still need to de-Google my Shield. How’s the performance of LineageOS on the Shield? HDR and DV content still playing well?
Sorry but that is sth that I cannot answer properly; I have a fullHD TV from 2012 connected, so HDR is not sth I can even test… I have not experienced any lags or hickuos so far though, just some general problem with fullscreen on newpipe but that has an open issue on Github for six months already. (And downgrading to an old version solved it for now)
Yeah the Shield Pro is amazing, even though the last update was 2019. And even with an earlier version of their AI upscaling, 1080p content looks great on 4k. Hopefully with the Switch’s successor leaks swirling around it means that they’ll do a 2024 update. Probably wishful thinking.
I love the Apple TV. It has a super fast ui. I use infuse on it to play content from a network share, and Plex.
AppleTV + Infuse = zero transcoding. Add that Apple will be allowing VPN on device with the release of tvOS 17 and it’s pretty much the perfect kit if you’re willing to spend the extra dollars.
Chromecast with web video caster app and fmovies. It doesn’t get any easier, just pay for the pro version of the app and no ads.
I have a Firestick with VLC on it that can browse my PC where I’ve got all my downloads. Not the most straightforward, but sometimes I want to watch on my PC and this keeps everything central.
Firestick 4K is a cheap yet beasty device, and being Android you can install third party apps easily.
Plex/JellyFin, Kodi, Stremio. No need to spend so much on an AppleTV when the firestick is more than enough.
Also apps like SmartTubeNext and SoundTV.
What about Chromecast Google TV 4k? I just got one and loving it. Installed Stremio and SmartTube and works great. Got a custom launcher as the default one focuses a lot on streaming services. Also tried Kodi but seems worse than my dedicated Vero 4k with OSMC / Kodi.
Absolutely loving ours like this. But we also still use a bunch of streaming services occationally
firetvstick is android based so you can sidelode a lot of apps that aren’t in the store
Fire stick has too many ads and hostile decisions, you can’t even turn it off
A decade ago I had a jailbroken apple TV 2 and it was great with what now is called infuse, it took videos directly via SMB and showed them with a really slick interface.
So between the two… I’d buy an Androidtv (real, not a fake Chinese one, like that "Chromecast with Google TV)
If it wasn’t so expensive I’d buy an apple TV again just for infuse. A decade ago was more reasonably priced compared to the competition, right now…
