Can you put together a guide in response showing where the inefficiencies are and how to mitigate them with more simple software?

It sounds like the author was aware of at least parts of your comment. The post is very thorough. They benchmarked using python and c++ and the final impl doesn’t even decode protobuf. They used various mitm solutions. They are using pfsense for more than just “it’s muh security router”—they are vlanning and vpning the traffic so they can target inly the appletv on their network.

Your comment is cheap and dismissive. The author’s post is not. You owe it to the community to put your money where your mouth is.