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Comment by zenexer | Hacker News Reader

Do not connect Samsung home media devices to the internet.[0][1][2][3] If you really want the internet-based multimedia features, get a separate, more secure device such as a Chromecast or Apple TV—and even those aren’t perfect.[4]

How many times are we going to keep making the same mistakes? There is no benefit to connecting a Samsung TV or Blu-ray player to the internet when a $35 Chromecast works far better, has all the same features (plus more), doesn’t break a year or two after you buy it, and is more secure. There’s just no excuse.

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-oper...

[1]: https://www.consumerreports.org/televisions/samsung-roku-sma...

[2]: https://threatvector.cylance.com/en_us/home/many-popular-sma...

[3]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681683/samsung-smart-tv...

[4]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/02/chromecast-bug-hackers-hav...

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Raspberry Pi + Kodi + Kore Android remote or other cheap hardware remote + YouTube + Emby/Plex + Netflix, solves a lot of usecases for dirt cheap.

Yup, if you’re willing to tinker, you can make a pretty nifty home media setup for practically nothing, customized to your liking.

But for everyone else, Chromecast et al are plug-’n-play. If you’re an Apple person and are willing to spend a bit extra, Apple TV’s UI/UX is hard to beat without making your own system.

I find Apple TV's UX incredibly annoying and inaccessible. Gesture based navigation with ambiguous rules, lack of clear contrast on selected items and modal UI make me wanna ditch Apple TV, but I don't know of good alternatives.

I prefer it primarily because it "just works". I don't use my TV often these days, so I stopped maintaining all my custom hardware (e.g., Retro Pie). I've found that my Chromecast can be finicky; sometimes it doesn't like to stay connected to Wi-Fi--and it has no excuse, seeing how I'm using Google Wifi.

That being said, I do like the UI. I don't mess with it much, though; I mostly just talk to it. It does a fairly good job of figuring out what show I'm telling it to play. It works, it updates on its own, it doesn't brick itself, it doesn't disconnect from the network (because it's wired in), it's reasonably secure, it plays what I tell it to play. Good enough for me.

Depending on your use case, you might want to give Kodi a try if you're not satisfied with the mainstream alternatives. I haven't used it in ages, but I hear it works quite well these days.

The plex and steamlink apps on my Samsung TV get daily use. So does the Chromecast connected to it for other things.

In the case of plex, having a native app on the TV is far superior than fiddling with my phone or tablet or starting something on my computer and running into the next room to watch it.

For steamlink, I've suddenly started playing some of my old steam backlog, and now that epic is throwing games at me some of those as well. And I've also got a serious retroarch habit that works great over the steamlink app.

I used to use apps on my Samsung TV, but it became clear that Samsung wasn’t interested in ensuring that the device was secure, so I had to look for alternatives. They stopped releasing updates for my TV about a year after I bought it, but security vulnerabilities were still being found.

Maybe my hardware is just on the older side—it’s a whole 5 years old now!—but Samsung TV apps are pretty slow compared to apps on third-party hardware and always have been. For example, my Samsung TV natively supports Miracast, but the latency is terrible compared to an external Microsoft Wireless Display dongle.

Here’s what I use for everything you’ve mentioned, no phone required, although it might be overkill for casual use:

Plex: Apple TV

Steam Link: Steam Link (although I should probably stop using that deprecated device and just use the app on Apple TV). I tend to favor Parsec over Steam Link, though; it’s less convenient but has lower latency and isn’t limited to games. I also have a Microsoft Wireless Display dongle, which is generally the most convenient of the three and still has low enough latency for casual use, although I wouldn’t use it for gaming.

Retro: RetroPie

I know it’s inconvenient to have additional devices for all of these when you could just use the apps on your TV. Strong passwords are also inconvenient. But is it worth getting hacked or dealing with Samsung’s problematic updates? Maybe someday the situation will improve, but until then, either choose a different brand or use external devices.

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