The only downside is that more recent versions use the Google Android TV launcher which is filled with a garbage truck full of ads, often for things I would never want to watch (horror movies? Nope!). Yes you can replace the launcher, but that's a pain.
Would love to pay more for a device that has updated codec support, no ads or tracking, and is basically identical.
Sidebar: I like Jellyfin but it is nowhere as turnkey as Plex. Otherwise I’d advocate for that too. That being said, I am slowly trying to get mine nice and stable and user-friendly because the way Plex is going does not give me great confidence about the next 2 to 3 years. But at least right now, it is by far the best experience out there.
Google TV apps leak memory like a sieve, so it's pretty common to need to manually close all other apps to make the one you're trying to use work. Even !y wife just dies of now as soon as any one of the apps starts acting up.
Overall, it seems like a recipe to end up in an unknown state where you can no longer easily get updates and the only recovery is to wipe the system.
I've seen similar methods to "Clean up Windows 11", and it always seems like you're just putting the device into an unknown state. A few ads you can become blind to is not as bad as a totally broken system.
Once your find your comfort, you might even find other items of joy that are being gatekept from you like SmartTube.
How different is this from say installing Debian, then picking out a bunch of globally installed software that supports "make install" and spraying files all over the root filesystem, then expecting the next run of "apt update" to work properly without things breaking?
Maybe my concerns are unwarranted, but the vast majority of Android mangling I've done over the years has not generally resulted in long-term stability, for a variety of reasons. Recall that the point of this article is that it's 10 year old hardware still in support!