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Comment by ipython | Hacker News Reader

Glad I kept my 10+ year old TiVo equipment around. Sounds like time to switch back to “old school” cable tv.

I bought a "tiny PC", installed Kubuntu on it, bought a USB remote control and used KDE's insane configurability to set it up to look and feel like a TV OS in order to turn my "smart" TV into a "dumb" one. One where I can watch YouTube in a full-screened web browser with an ad blocker installed.

A potential alternative for those with AndroidTV devices is sideloading SmartTubeNext[0].

I've been using it on my nVidia Shield for a while now. No ads, a lot of UI customisation, and Sponsorblock is integrated as well.

[0] https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext

This app also works on Fire TVs. The Fire TV UI is kind of a dumpster fire but installing and using SmartTubeNext on them is pretty easy.

That's interesting.

Would you share the details of the hardware setup (MiniPC, USB remote control) and screenshots of your configured KDE/Plasma desktop?

Yeah, I plugged a NUC into my TV, installed Pop OS on it, and got a Pepper Jobs USB gyro-remote to control it, and it instantly upgraded my living room.

I previously used my PS4 for watching everything, but having a full desktop OS is just way better: I can browse the web on my TV, control it remotely with my laptop's keyboard and mouse using Barrier, open multiple live feeds in picture-in-picture mode, play music in the background of whatever I'm watching, etc. Also, when I'm watching sports and they go to a side-by-side commercial break, I use the zoom accessibility feature to zoom in on the tiny live feed so I can watch that full screen without seeing any ads haha.

I'd be curious to know more about how you configured KDE. I run a pretty vanilla Pop OS setup right now, which is more usable than I expected with my USB remote, but I've been meaning to explore how to set up something more "smart TV"-like that's a bit easier to navigate. My initial thought was to write a browser extension or a custom app with an embedded browser, but that feels like a bit too much work for something that's supposed to be a leisure/entertainment setup.

Basically I removed all of the default panels and setup desktop widgets. The launcher widget is the most used. Within it I created custom launchers to open a web browser in full screen mode directed to a particular site like Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video etc. and downloaded icons for it. Other widgets I use is a task tray, weather widget, clock, external HD manager and power. I also found that I had to add the volume widget to get the volume controls on my USB remote to work for some reason.

I also configured font sizes, cursor size and mouse acceleration for usability. It works really well.

Sounds like a lot of work to avoid paying $12 per month and getting a much inferior quantity and quality of service.

It's 20% less inefficient than it was when YT Premium was $9.99. It'll be paying for itself in a couple of years.

You can homebrew a modern replacement with Plex, HDHomeRun Prime and a cablecard.

I did that for a few years until I realized I wasn't really watching TV.

Yeah, I still have a streaming cable subscription but I pretty much only watch sports on it. If ESPN goes full streaming, that's probably where I'll end up. Between ESPN+ and AppleTV+ I'm most of the way there already.

Nah, time to move on to a single board computer running Kodi or Jellyfin, time to access YouTube only through a proxy like Invidious, time to become self-sufficient.

Or pay a pittance for YouTube Premium.

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