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Hello again, enshitification
This is why I never connect a TV to the Internet. I usually get an Android TV (EDIT: note NOT “Google TV”) box that I can mod to my heart’s content to run my apps on. If that ever stops being an option, I’ll connect the TV to my router, but with the router set to block Internet access to everything except what’s needed to cast to it with pi-hole or similar playing the enforcer role.
The only smart TVs anyone should be getting are ones running Google TV that can have the default launcher replaced with an ad-free option such as Projectivy Launcher.
If Google locks down Android APK installations further, even Google TV might no longer be viable, but for now it is the only option with a user-friendly TV interface (versus using a Linux device) with an app library not limited to the degree that Roku and Apple TV devices are.
I couldn’t replace the launcher on my Onn Google TV box (the model with the built-in Google Home Mini), unless there’s some way of doing it via ADB? This is why I prefer Android vs Google TV, but if that’s only the case for the Onn device, then that may broaden my options significantly.
The Launcher Manager app is also necessary to change the default launcher to the custom one you choose. Here’s a guide I wrote a while ago on my recommended configuration steps.
It should work on both Android TV and Google TV; they’re both Android, just different official launchers, so the best device to run is the one with the latest version of Android and the highest specs.
That’s why I got a Hisense TV a few years ago because it had the stock Google TV on it. I immediately installed Flauncher on it. No issues since.
And yet people will keep buying that shit.
If every CEO who made the decision to implement enshittification suddenly dropped dead (of natural causes, surely) shortly thereafter, maybe it would stop happening.
Meanwhile, on planet Earth…
