I see this sort of thing as a tax on the less-technologically-sophisticated. That's the essence of the whole tech business culture: Morlocks and Eloi.

SPOILER ALERT

> A work of future history and speculative evolution, Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_time_machine

Here the "classes" are derived from technical skill and knowledge. It might seem bizarre to us here on HN but just knowing about e.g. ublock origin let alone how to install it makes you one of the elite.

I don't really know how to feel about all this. On the one hand, it seems regressive to me to herd folks into silos and milk them (FAANG). On the other hand, people have to take some personal responsibility for their own education and agency, right? Computers aren't really that hard? No one's holding a gun to their heads to make them use FAANG products and services. Certainly, the options to live a more free and open life are there, eh?

Mickey Mouse finally goes out of copyright next year.

It's really 50/50 because many people don't know it's even possible to have the better experience. Exploiting them and herding them into silos is extremely unjust. They should be educated or they should at least ask some techies. But I partially agree that even they should strive to inform themselves better because nobody is going to go to them and strike a conversation exactly on this topic.

As for the others, there I am fully with you. They are quite aware it can be done and they just can't be bothered to do it. To me that's an informed choice and thus -- consent. They don't get to complain about squat because they made the conscious choice.

When casting to the TV you get ads, even though you don't in the browser! I just tried it, since I had the same idea.

Plug your laptop directly in via HDMI/DP.

Buy an air mouse/keyboard to control it from your couch.

Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Keyboard-W1-Multifunctional-...

The flexible sovereign combo of a general purpose computer and a user agent.

I use a forever-docked ThinkPad x230 under my TV, which can do 1080p and 802.11n (5GHz).

I second the wireless mouse/ keyboard and will add that I bought a trackball mouse just for this, and it's a wonderful fit. No worrying about a proper surface for moving a mouse around.

I've been doing this for many years. The latest incarnation is an Intel NUC, which you can also use for other random home server stuff, and for vintage console emulation.

What we need is a good, simple dumbtv interface for a computer with network access and a DVB card/stick. One that can also bring up a full-screen browser window to deal with streaming service DRM. Have been considering getting something together with rust+gstreamer starting by cloning my old Philips dumbtv interface while using mplayer/mpv hotkey standards for everything else.

The all-encompassing, endlessly complicated yet somehow still inflexible Kodi is a bad solution for people like me. Let's start by making a dumbtv out of a cheap linux box + a monitor.

Thanks for the tip. It works with both an HDMI cable and wirelessly via AirPlay.

Perhaps too inconvenient for some, but use an hdmi cable for a direct hookup instead of (I'm assuming) a chromecast. Maybe I'm just old fashioned at this point, but my "TV" is just used as a monitor to a dedicated media tower running windows.

I have an Amazon FireTV and one day, when I had my work Windows PC at home, it could stream via Bluetooth (like an external screen). There was lag when starting / changing videos, but otherwise it seemed to work well enough.

Don't most smart TVs have Bluetooth today? In my case, the FireTV is plugged into my (dumb) PC monitor.

It is called Miracast, via Wi-Fi Direct.

A chromecast, from my understanding, is just a web browser. Your device pushes a URL to the cast and the cast loads the web page.

It's not surprising you can't cast without ads - adblock would have to be installed on the chromecast not the device doing the "casting."