(Repost ish, from Technology), So I just bought a new telly and to my surprise, not, the OS is rather bad and has very limited amount of apps. Therefore I’ll invest further in either Apple TV or the Firestick. Anyone got any recommendations, tips or hot takes on this in terms of pirated content? Which is more accessible and I reckon both support Jellyfin?
An Nvidia Shield Pro is hands down the best but it is much more expensive. Slap a third party launcher over the top and use it for streaming Jellyfin or Stremio or Kodi or whatever floats your boat. Super responsive and is android-based so you can sideload whatever you want. It also has the most compatibility with most codecs so you’ll be able to direct play more through Jellyfin rather than transcode.
Yeah the Shield Pro is amazing, even though the last update was 2019. And even with an earlier version of their AI upscaling, 1080p content looks great on 4k. Hopefully with the Switch’s successor leaks swirling around it means that they’ll do a 2024 update. Probably wishful thinking.
And if you want to go even further: it has active official LineageOS support, I flashed mine two months ago
Android TV, I have the Shield Pro and nothing can’t beat:
- SmartTube, no ads with SponsorBlock
- TiVimate, IPTV
- Kodi, best video player.
- Jellyfin and Plex
- Stremio with Real Debrid.
SmartTube is great. Can even link it to the mobile app and push videos with no ads for free.
Chromecast with web video caster app and fmovies. It doesn’t get any easier, just pay for the pro version of the app and no ads.
I’ve got both a fire TV stick 4k and acorresponding Mi tv stick, both mainly for jellyfin, and would recommend the latter. Basically same price, both work fine for the purpose but fire has their ads on the home screen whereas Mi is more clean and has the Google play store, making some things easier to install. The Mi apps you can just disable.
I love the Apple TV. It has a super fast ui. I use infuse on it to play content from a network share, and Plex.
My friends who have them are also super satisfied, but obviously anything Android based has the advantage of sideloading apps to consider. Depends on what you want in the end, Apple has Plex and Jellyfin apps which I think is enough for the average pirate.
What about Chromecast Google TV 4k? I just got one and loving it. Installed Stremio and SmartTube and works great. Got a custom launcher as the default one focuses a lot on streaming services. Also tried Kodi but seems worse than my dedicated Vero 4k with OSMC / Kodi.
firetvstick is android based so you can sidelode a lot of apps that aren’t in the store
Fire stick has too many ads and hostile decisions, you can’t even turn it off
A decade ago I had a jailbroken apple TV 2 and it was great with what now is called infuse, it took videos directly via SMB and showed them with a really slick interface.
So between the two… I’d buy an Androidtv (real, not a fake Chinese one, like that "Chromecast with Google TV)
If it wasn’t so expensive I’d buy an apple TV again just for infuse. A decade ago was more reasonably priced compared to the competition, right now…