I had tried before disabling them with a Pihole or by blocking domains. It didn't work. Also, on a Samsung TV, you can't really install another front end.
They also aren't stalking you around everything you do on the Internet in the name of targetting.
2. Install SmartTubeNext on the Android TV. Now you have something better than YouTube Premium: This app supports SponsorBlock, which not only gets rid of YT ads, it also skips filler segments, self-promotion segments and sponsor segments.
3. You can also install a SponsorBlock browser extension.
Both of these are Open Source Software.
Tried attaching an ARM SBC with Librelec but the state of the Youtube apps are extremely broken in a way that you need api keys from a google cloud account and that allows you to only play videos. Your subscriptions and everything are not imported. PS4 runs fine but I don't want to run a 100W console to watch YT videos.
Meanwhile I've found out that most of my favorite channels (mostly tech and retro stuff) are also uploading to Odyssey as a sort of backup strategy. That works very well for me.
I also tried some Android distribution called Slash TV which seems to be kinda complete but the videos keep defaulting to 480p even after I set my preferences to high quality. It seems Slash TV is a one man's project and it hasn't received an upgrade in a while.
I was surprised how much of a nice product Librelec is but all the YT apps for Kodi (Youtube, Tubed) are in this broken state due to some API changes.
Edit: overlooked your comment and did not see you mentioned a smart TV.
It seems to me that Android TVs offer at least some degree of customization because it is possible to install apps there. But the value you get from them depends on whether you can get the root access and on other restrictions the manufacturer has imposed on it. So, in general it is not an ideal usage model.
In my opinion, a pure Linux TVs would be much better. For instance, running Kodi as a frontend with TVHeadend or minisatip as a backend. They would of course have plenty of possibilities to play other media and would be fully customizable, giving the customer a _choice_ to consider and utilize that capability. In my opinion, there is a reasonably sized market for such TVs.
For starters, it supports sponsorblock which is even more adblocking. Secondly i think ux is miles better
You dont need root but you need to manually download and install it
I rolled back the update for my home screen app, which works for now. I think you are able to use entirely different home screen apps but I didn't want to go that far yet. The moment I can't disable ads is the moment I will start using PI and using my TV as a dumb screen
This works very well.
Edit: nevermind, I've completely misread your comment to be about Pi-hole :)
Can it also turn on/off tv? I think HDMI allows that but not sure if Pi can do that
To turn on and off a TV you need an HDMI port that supports CEC. The Pi does, so you just need to install cec-client.
As for OS, you should use the general purpose Linux distro that you are most familiar with. If in doubt, use Gunnar Wolf's Debian for Pi, which is as close as you can get to 100% Debian on a Pi.
When I occasionally see YT on other peoples TV without it I'm shocked at how many ads they get. I'm not sure what's the alternative to YT but this insane ad spam might start driving people away to alternatives.
Also you can just use invidious on mobile (and presumably on your TV) for the same experience (minus the sponsor / merch flogging skips which are fantasic)
You're going to pay about $10 a month for music streaming anyway, and I watch YouTube so much. If I didn't have premium, I'd be wasting at least an hour per day on ads.