Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

Re:Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads by KozmoNau7 on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @07:27AM (#24626352)

I recently built a HTPC/home server based on a Gemini Lake Celeron ITX board in a compact case. The CPU/GPU is passively cooled and can decode 4 simultaneous 4K streams in realtime. It has hardware decoding of x264, x265, VP8/9. All-in, aside from the storage disks (for a Btrfs RAID1 pool) that I took from my desktop PC, it cost me less than a QNAP/Synology NAS with room for a similar number of disks.

I still use my Chromecast for Youtube, because the UI in a browser isn't great for couch use. On the CC, multiple people can add videos to the playback queue, I haven't found a good replacement for that yet.

For anything longer than a typical Youtube video, it's not an issue finding a movie and starting it from a wireless keyboard.

Our current TV is a 42" LG that I got for free from work. It's old enough to not have any "smart" features, it has no networking at all. The picture quality is great and no ghosting unlike a lot of older LCDs. I am not looking forward to the day I eventually have to replace it.

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Re:Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads by Zenbit_UX on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @07:37AM (#24626420)

This was my setup recently too but then Amazon disabled their cast button inside their prime website a few months ago which meant we had to switch to the app route. Despite their fuckery, we've found streaming from the phone apps (Amazon, Netflix, + Plex for torrents) is actually a better experience than the laptop on the couch or wireless keyboard option. Also YouTube Vanced + nextdns.io takes care of YouTube ads.

[ Parent | on HN ]