Fox Corp. is making a dramatic move to expand its streaming footprint, unveiling with plans to buy Roku in a deal that values the streaming platform at $22 billion.
One of the things on my FOSS wishlist is an open source alternative to Roku/GoogleOS/Apple TVos, etc. there are lots of FOSS apps on these various platforms, but those apps almost always have varying levels of quality and availability across them.
Right now the closest you can really get is media center PC, but what I really need is something relatively plug and play I can send to family members, preconfigured.
Until I read the last sentence, I had no idea what you were talking about. You sound like you could whip up a media center PC easy enough. The machine I’m typing this on doubles as our media center. I have to take the mouse to the coffee table for a movie remote, but that’s the only hassle, and it isn’t a hassle for me.
I feel like the tech is already in place. What do you want that isn’t out there?
Yeah, a jailbroken Roku OS would actually be fantastic. The actual TVs aren’t bad. Roku has actually figured out how to do streaming decently. It just sucks that the entire company seems to be going down the shitter, and they’re determined to drag all of their screens down with them.
I blocked by Roku TV’s telemetry BS with my pi-hole, at least. But that won’t stop them from trying. Having a way to flash a new FOSS/jailbroken OS onto it would be ideal.
Best solution would probably be a mini PC running a web app dashboard like they do with kiosks. I would tell you to get a rasp pi but they went up in price by quite a bit. You would still have to order it for them and spend a few hours tinkering and installing everything.
Yeah and the experience just wouldn’t be very good. I have a lot of experience with mini PCs auto loading into web dashboards and it never works quite as well as you want it to
As a family we rarely watch “on demand” or live TV. We have a mini hooked up to our TV and sail the seas for shows we want and watch them that way.
We have a Roku stick in our bedroom TV and it works great, but if I get the feeling it starts to go all Project 2025 its getting ditched, but I’m in the UK so it’ll be interesting to see how it changes here.
Because as of now their main financial structure isnt based on selling personal information for ads. They make most there money selling products and services. And I think trust isn’t the right word. Apple is normally the least shitty out of all the shitty big tech companies with modern day convenience.
They’re the only truly mainstream company with E2EE backups among other things. iOS is also much more secure than stock android, only Graphene OS is better.
Is Apple TV hardware any good because the app is appallingly bad. Even on a gigabit network connection it will drop connectivity and lag out. If you pause for more than about 1 minute it crashes and kicks you back into the main menu. It never seems to keep track of current shows and just shows a bunch of irrelevant stuff at the top which you have to always scroll past in order to get to what you actually want.
It makes Amazon TV look like a well polished product.
The hardware is actually one of the better streaming boxes on the market. Good direct play support for most of the big codecs, so your Jellyfin/Plex server isn’t having to transcode things. And it was (not sure if it still is) one of the few that wasn’t completely riddled with ads.
People have been trying to do that for a long, long time, with various levels of success. There are a dozen options out there to try, but the scope of that kind of project huge compared to a simple streaming appliance OS.
I feel like Kodi mediacenter app is one of the main things to consider putting on it. Like, booting some Linux and instantly launchung it, so it’s UI is the main UI for user to interact with. It covers most TV usecases of mid 2010s and shines if you have a medialibrary on the network.
But it doesn’t cover occasional web browsing, DRMed videostreaming platforms with their own apps, etc. Worse than that, if we don’t limit it to just Kodi, we’d need some UI to pick apps, swtich apps, etc, and if that’s critical, it’s probably worth it to rip an image of some WebOS, like on LG TVs, or an Android fork like on SmartTV boxes/sticks, whatever is less combatative, and methodically carve out bloat and adware, forming an image of inherently insecure/outdated OS that has the UI thing working right.
Outside of SteamOS idk if Linux (not Android) had slick console/SmartTV-like DEs/system-wide GUIs. But since the problem is on the surface, I believe there are some who tried, or configured/themed their environment to act like it.
Outside of SteamOS idk if Linux (not Android) had slick console/SmartTV-like DEs/system-wide GUIs. But since the problem is on the surface, I believe there are some who tried, or configured/themed their environment to act like it.
kde-bigscreen is available, and has that sort of ui, but does require some setup. Also don’t know how available it is. I believe it is already in some repos.
Same. I’m currently doing the mini PC media center. It’s nice but I don’t see my family doing something like that. It’s a bit too expensive and less plug and play than a $40 Roku/Chromecast unfortunately.
Those things are so cheap because they serve you ads and sell your data. They’re sold at a loss. Most brain dead idiots are fine with that trade it would seem. If you could get Linux running on one of those that would be great.
A FOSS alternative would likely be missing or have meh performance from many of the streamers. All the big ones use proprietary codecs that are expensive annual licenses. And even then the streamer controls what various access methods are allowed to see and at what quality. I think netflix still limits web browsers to 720p, for example. And straight web access isn’t great, you want an interface that can ideally be controlled with about 6 - 8 buttons (4 directions, OK, and Back are the minimum) which might require API access to these services, which introduces more access control. Netflix (and maybe others) even have hardware installed at the ISP level that give them a lot of control over individual access as well.
Basically for a full featured FOSS service you’d need to start with getting grants to buy to codec licenses, and then you’d need to hire people just to maintain your relationship with the streaming services to stay in their good graces while they know you’re working against their bottom line.
What would be amazing is if there was some way to have a fully declarative system that was integrated with a system update UI.
You would upload the config somewhere, your family’s streaming box would see a new update is available and either prompt them to install it or install it for them overnight.
For me it’s kind of JellyFin + TailScale, but that probably isn’t going to work with less tech savvy family members or on all devices. Plex works well enough, but then again it’s the same thing that someone has to be responsible for the ‘media’ portion, and a lot of people enjoy live sports, which seems difficult through the open source things.
Yeah, I just use the web interface, so I end up having a cheap PC with a keyboard/remote which works pretty well, then it doesn’t matter the TV and get’s away from Google altogether.
One of the things on my FOSS wishlist is an open source alternative to Roku/GoogleOS/Apple TVos, etc. there are lots of FOSS apps on these various platforms, but those apps almost always have varying levels of quality and availability across them.
Right now the closest you can really get is media center PC, but what I really need is something relatively plug and play I can send to family members, preconfigured.
Until I read the last sentence, I had no idea what you were talking about. You sound like you could whip up a media center PC easy enough. The machine I’m typing this on doubles as our media center. I have to take the mouse to the coffee table for a movie remote, but that’s the only hassle, and it isn’t a hassle for me.
I feel like the tech is already in place. What do you want that isn’t out there?
Coreelec on ugoos am6b+ is the best option if you want the broadest support for formats possible (though notably missing av1)
Htpc with streaming content or stuff like Dolby vision is a licensing nightmare. Some stuff works, some doesn’t, Linux support is trash, etc
Plasma Bigscreen is coming
Looks very promising
Yeah, a jailbroken Roku OS would actually be fantastic. The actual TVs aren’t bad. Roku has actually figured out how to do streaming decently. It just sucks that the entire company seems to be going down the shitter, and they’re determined to drag all of their screens down with them.
I blocked by Roku TV’s telemetry BS with my pi-hole, at least. But that won’t stop them from trying. Having a way to flash a new FOSS/jailbroken OS onto it would be ideal.
Best solution would probably be a mini PC running a web app dashboard like they do with kiosks. I would tell you to get a rasp pi but they went up in price by quite a bit. You would still have to order it for them and spend a few hours tinkering and installing everything.
Yeah and the experience just wouldn’t be very good. I have a lot of experience with mini PCs auto loading into web dashboards and it never works quite as well as you want it to
As a family we rarely watch “on demand” or live TV. We have a mini hooked up to our TV and sail the seas for shows we want and watch them that way. We have a Roku stick in our bedroom TV and it works great, but if I get the feeling it starts to go all Project 2025 its getting ditched, but I’m in the UK so it’ll be interesting to see how it changes here.
yes I totally don’t know why this isn’t more of a thing. here’s hoping that “plasma bigscreen” will change that. https://plasma-bigscreen.org/
Google TV is the least worst option in terms of open source optionality, Apple TV is best for privacy as is
Why tf does everyone trust apple for anything? They’re a pretty awful company.
Because as of now their main financial structure isnt based on selling personal information for ads. They make most there money selling products and services. And I think trust isn’t the right word. Apple is normally the least shitty out of all the shitty big tech companies with modern day convenience.
Again, how do you know that? Cook gave a gold bar to trump, they’re not a good company.
They’re the only mainstream hardware company that takes user privacy seriously. Bad on right to repair and openness though
Why do you think that? Is that what you’ve heard or do you know that?
They’re the only truly mainstream company with E2EE backups among other things. iOS is also much more secure than stock android, only Graphene OS is better.
Is Apple TV hardware any good because the app is appallingly bad. Even on a gigabit network connection it will drop connectivity and lag out. If you pause for more than about 1 minute it crashes and kicks you back into the main menu. It never seems to keep track of current shows and just shows a bunch of irrelevant stuff at the top which you have to always scroll past in order to get to what you actually want.
It makes Amazon TV look like a well polished product.
The hardware is actually one of the better streaming boxes on the market. Good direct play support for most of the big codecs, so your Jellyfin/Plex server isn’t having to transcode things. And it was (not sure if it still is) one of the few that wasn’t completely riddled with ads.
Yeah. The closest I’ve gotten without a media center PC is using remote adb to remove all the bullshit from my Nvidia shield.
Can you configure and ship it?
We need to develop an open, modular or all-in-one NAS with easily enabled services like Jellyfin, Navidrome, Paperless, Home assistant and so on.
With IPv6 we could avoid having to deal with CGNAT, but that could be solved as well.
People have been trying to do that for a long, long time, with various levels of success. There are a dozen options out there to try, but the scope of that kind of project huge compared to a simple streaming appliance OS.
I’d like for something like that to be sponsored by the EU
I’d like it to be sponsored by no one but the people that make it personally.
Yeah but as you said, that didn’t work so far
I feel like Kodi mediacenter app is one of the main things to consider putting on it. Like, booting some Linux and instantly launchung it, so it’s UI is the main UI for user to interact with. It covers most TV usecases of mid 2010s and shines if you have a medialibrary on the network.
But it doesn’t cover occasional web browsing, DRMed videostreaming platforms with their own apps, etc. Worse than that, if we don’t limit it to just Kodi, we’d need some UI to pick apps, swtich apps, etc, and if that’s critical, it’s probably worth it to rip an image of some WebOS, like on LG TVs, or an Android fork like on SmartTV boxes/sticks, whatever is less combatative, and methodically carve out bloat and adware, forming an image of inherently insecure/outdated OS that has the UI thing working right.
Outside of SteamOS idk if Linux (not Android) had slick console/SmartTV-like DEs/system-wide GUIs. But since the problem is on the surface, I believe there are some who tried, or configured/themed their environment to act like it.
https://plasma-bigscreen.org/
😳
Same. I’m currently doing the mini PC media center. It’s nice but I don’t see my family doing something like that. It’s a bit too expensive and less plug and play than a $40 Roku/Chromecast unfortunately.
Those things are so cheap because they serve you ads and sell your data. They’re sold at a loss. Most brain dead idiots are fine with that trade it would seem. If you could get Linux running on one of those that would be great.
A FOSS alternative would likely be missing or have meh performance from many of the streamers. All the big ones use proprietary codecs that are expensive annual licenses. And even then the streamer controls what various access methods are allowed to see and at what quality. I think netflix still limits web browsers to 720p, for example. And straight web access isn’t great, you want an interface that can ideally be controlled with about 6 - 8 buttons (4 directions, OK, and Back are the minimum) which might require API access to these services, which introduces more access control. Netflix (and maybe others) even have hardware installed at the ISP level that give them a lot of control over individual access as well.
Basically for a full featured FOSS service you’d need to start with getting grants to buy to codec licenses, and then you’d need to hire people just to maintain your relationship with the streaming services to stay in their good graces while they know you’re working against their bottom line.
What would be amazing is if there was some way to have a fully declarative system that was integrated with a system update UI.
You would upload the config somewhere, your family’s streaming box would see a new update is available and either prompt them to install it or install it for them overnight.
I’ve never used it before but it sounds like you’re sorta describing NixOS? That might be an option to sorta Jerry-rig this idea together.
KDE is able to release plasma bigscreen. That, or frankly gnome would be fine with an air mouse.
For me it’s kind of JellyFin + TailScale, but that probably isn’t going to work with less tech savvy family members or on all devices. Plex works well enough, but then again it’s the same thing that someone has to be responsible for the ‘media’ portion, and a lot of people enjoy live sports, which seems difficult through the open source things.
Yeah JF + Tailscale in one of them $20 Walmart Google TV boxes works well enough but like, I’d love to drop the Google part entirely.
Yeah, I just use the web interface, so I end up having a cheap PC with a keyboard/remote which works pretty well, then it doesn’t matter the TV and get’s away from Google altogether.