A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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If you're happy with the Roku hardware and you're going to cancel all your other streaming services, why not just firewall block the Roku from reaching out of your local network?
If you do that, Jellyfin will still work fine, and you won't have the ability to get posted ads or anything else from the Roku, so it'll just become a Jellyfin box.
I've taken this approach, sometimes these boxes will act up when they can't phone home. Definitely worth trying though.
Worth that at least before you start looking at different hardware.
Otherwise, it's the same thing if you have a smart TV, download the Jellyfin app, and then just completely stop it from being able to connect anywhere else.
AppleTV connected via Ethernet.
You’re chasing a unicorn with your requirements.
This ^
Simple, no ads, and handles HDR super well
And the Ethernet port is actually gigabit.
We have a couple Apple TVs. As much as I dislike the walled garden, they are very good for what they are.
For my parents, I got a $150 N100 mini PC (tiny little thing), installed Bazzite, installed Jellyfin, and got the Pepper Jobs W10 Gyro remote. You have to configure Jellyfin to know it’s running on a TV and to accept keyboard input (the remote acts like a keyboard), but then everything works great. It’s a little over your budget, with the added remote.
Excellent - thanks for the remote recommendation, it's one thing I've been struggling to find.
Not sure I like the gyro idea - I had a gyro presentation mouse in the past. Worked well, but how do your parents like the gyro element?
They don’t use it unless my dad is watching a perfectly legal sports stream in the browser. It works really well though. I have 3 of those remotes, cause I love them.
If you don't want ads creeping in everywhere, the only prebuilt option is appletv. otherwise you have to build it yourself :/
Not true, unless by "build yourself" you mean install Projectivy Launcher on any Android box that supports it.
What boxes support this then?
I run it on an NVIDIA Shield. Can't speak to any others with certainty, but from a quick search, there are guides for installing on Fire Stick and ONN devices too.
I suspect it'll run on just about any Android or Google TV device as long as the default launcher setting isn't locked down, and even then you can probably enable it with a couple quick ADB commands.
The aTV will give you the best experience when it comes to dark patterns. But just note, a new model is on the horizon, so hold out a little longer.
I use the ONN 4K Pro and the ProjectIvy launcher. You can completely hide the standard Android TV OS launcher and its ads. Button Mapper is another good app to have on Android boxes. The remote is full of app-specific buttons that I've either disabled or remapped to alternative apps
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton
I have no idea which codecs are supported.
I second the AppleTV recommendation based on your disgust with the Roku UI ads, I am completely on your side there, but my similar search has bought me to AppleTV.
I currently run Amazon Fire Sticks which also have UI ads but my pihole is catching most of them and it’s dirt cheap with h.265 support. Plus it runs various hacked apps like TVMob, Cinema, and Cyberflix. That’s what keeps me from moving to an AppleTV or an n100 box already.
How good is Jellyfin on AppleTV? My understanding was the app was a bit lacking...
Swiftfin is the official Apple TV jellyfin app. Swiftfin is great on iOS, but hasn’t been updated on Apple TV for a while. It also lacks a lot of polish and features but it is being worked on. There should be an update soon.
I’ve been using infuse on Apple TV. Infuse isn’t open source and needs a subscription to watch most 4k hdr content. I think it’s worth it if Swiftfin gets an update soon.
Apple TV is definitely a better experience compared to Samsung and Android. Apps are nicer and there isn’t any ads, privacy controls and privacy statements are much better. Recommended content can also be disabled and only shows when your hovering over the relevant app.
Use SwiftFin app instead on Apple TV, but better than the Jellyfin app.
I use Kodi with the jellyfin plugin, but I can’t recommend that for ‘normies’ because the interface is not simple, and I still have glitches with it.
I’m also looking for a solution like yours, but wanted you to have that feedback.
I don't know how Kodi still goes on for this long. I messed around with it over a decade ago and had all the same issues back then.
I mean, it's free and it does work, so I won't complain, but I wouldn't push this on any but my most technical friends.
Technical friends are the best friends.
Some people want local serverless playback.
Nvidia Shield. The regular version is $150 US and from what I understand it gives flawless playback. I have the pro version which is more powerful, but that's specifically for running games.
It's Android TV OS, so app selection is great. You can load Smart Tube Next on there to get YouTube without ads, and there's a very solid Jellyfin app. You can also use Kodi for local direct playback. Remote is perfectly functional, and you can use an app to rebind most of the keys.
Nothing to add, but also interested in this same scenario. I could only think of the Nvidia Shield.
Nvidia shield is less user friendly than Roku I think
And it runs Google services, and it costs a fortune, and it hasn't seen a refresh in 6 years.
I'm currently using a raspberry pi 5 flashed with Konstakang's Android TV image, it works pretty flawlessly and takes less than an hour to set up, assuming you have the APKs of everything you want to install. You don't need to mess around with Google play services because most TV android apps are also designed to run on firesticks which don't have it.
The one issue I have encountered is that the Jellyfin client very occasionally won't play some 4k HDR media in the default player (all my 1080p stuff works fine) so I also installed MPV and I turn on alternative player in the Jellyfin settings in the rare case something doesn't work.
I did not like the Rpi5 with Android TV as a jellyfin client. There is no support for Dolby Vision HDR content and playback of other 4k media was stuttering. With DV content I got the purple/green tinted picture. Sometimes the pi would only display a quarter of the picture.
I used Konstakangs AndroidTV image with a flirc USB Dongle for use with a tv remote. F-Droid store apk for all necessary apps.
If you have any recommendations how to fix stuttery 4k playback I would be interested. For now I just stick with the built in Android TV of my sony television.
I remember trying the Android TV 14 image a while ago and it was basically unusable as you describe, the new Android TV 15 image has fixed virtually all those issues for me. YMMV but IMO it's worth experimenting and seeing if it works for you, there's a chance I just got lucky though
Thank you for taking the time to respond! I guess I'll pop in another sd card and give the android 15 image a chance!
Way over-budget for your taste I guess but I still wanted to make a note here for representation sake. Look into the brand Zidoo. I have Zidoo Z9X 8K, it's the best client I could dream of! ~250$
Cons:
Pros:
LibreELEC on an old chromebook!
If you are in the USA. The Walmart onn 4k (20$) and 4k pro (50$) are amazing for the price. The remotes are really good too.
It’s just a matter of time before those are enshittified as well.
Edit: ok my bad… apparently you can side load different launchers. I may check one of those out then.
I use Chromecast with android TV, it's about perfect with jellyfin, and if I were to domit again I'd probably spend the little extra for the 4k model even though my TV is 1080p (more horsepower). You can run a different homescreen to somewhat degoogle it.
Probably not what you're looking for given what you've lined up here, but I live and breathe with it every day and it's great, and as an added benefit you can cast from a lot of services or websites as well.
👋😢
My plan is to use the $20 Onn (Walmart store-brand) Android TV box LTT recommended as being eminently jailbreakable about a year ago, but I haven't actually gotten around to hooking it up yet so I can't authoritatively endorse it.
Been using Onn boxes for years and absolutely love them. They are about as pure android TV as you can get. I would definitely recommend the 50$ pro version over the 20$ original though.
Get one of those miniPCs with the Intel N95 or Intel N100 chips. Install Kodi on Ubuntu or libreelec Install the jellyfin plugin and you're good to go.
You can control it via one of those remotes on amazon with a USB dongle and it powers on the TV and the device.
You'll have to install the artic theme on jellyfin and mess with the view options a bit for something more polished but once done it just works I've been using mine for 3 years and it's been pretty solid.