alt Hacker NewsWhat is a better solution here? What is something that lets me stream from the major services, has a good-enough remote, and doesn't require any fiddling on my part?
I've always seen Apple TV as the least-bad option compared to Roku/Fire/whatever Google is doing these days/literally any built-in solution.
Replies
I think it depends on what you prioritize. I have an Apple TV, but also LG and Samsung smart TVs as well as Google TV Streamer.
They come with different tradeoffs wrt price, A/V quality, user interface, privacy, etc.
For me, the #1 thing is A/V quality. I don’t care about price, but most people do.
I believe you could buy a random Android streaming box with an unlocked bootloader, and then install LineageOS on it. Not sure about the “streams from all the major services” part re: LineageOS, but last I heard it’s improving.
(There are also some boxes made specifically for this, usually sold as development platforms for STB products, marketed based on what SoC they contain. Though they’ll tend to be $200, while the random “finished product” streaming box will be more like $30. Both come with decent remotes.)
> I've always seen Apple TV as the least-bad option compared to Roku
If this was your original statement, I think we all would be on your side - I even use an Apple TV 4k personally and love it. It definitely is the best in the market for what it does.
> it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data.
Instead, you framed it as the only privacy-friendly option and that is logically and factually incorrect.