this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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Isn't there a saying about this? "Leopards ate my face" or something like that?
It's like TVs... Google TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Fire TV... it's all ads, all the way down. Apple TV though? Just a grid of apps. Certain apps on the dock (the top shelf as it's called) could display ads because they're allowed to display content in the top half, but I haven't seen it done. Video apps typically just show what's up next in your queue and maybe something suggested. But you can control what goes on the dock.
Can't block ads on it and YouTube is fundamentally broken for it (despite there being no ad blocker between the app and the service). I'm looking into getting a gently used M1 Mac Mini for my TV, and wiring one of those Bluetooth keyboard/mouse things up to it. That way I can just run Firefox with uBlock Origin and call it a day.
Fuck all these "smart" devices. Can't win with any of them. Meanwhile you can get a Raspberry Pi and be running Linux on your TV. That might introduce some challenges, but hey, you got Plex (/Jellyfin/whatever) anyway.
"Leopards at my face" comes from claiming that your face would not get eaten while advocating for leopards eating faces.
If you would use it in the context of ads, it would be more along the lines of claiming you will not get ads because you are "special" while the thing just straight up says it will serve you ads.
I don't think the thing is advertised as something to serve you ads, so it's not the same.
Not entirely true, but necessarily false either.
Projectivy launcher for Android TV is great and will remove home screen ads, and provide a much more streamlined interface overall.
Apple TV is really nice though, clean, smooth, and stable. I honestly would recommend that to most people, especially if they already have Apple products.
Even without having other Apple products. The only real benefit I see with the Apple TV — I do have other Apple products — is I can AirPlay to it. But, it isn't very stable for whatever reason. The connection will just drop. So I AirPlay to the TV itself instead, and that works, though sometimes the audio doesn't, so I just route it back to the MacBook, which has very good speakers, and it's fine. Or I grab my Thunderbolt to HDMI and plug in directly, turn the TV into a monitor — but, this bypasses the Apple TV (but, so does AirPlaying to the TV itself). Oh, and I can use my phone or watch as a remote. All in all it's perfectly fine if you don't have any other Apple stuff.
The one thing it's really lacking is some Dolby codec that people need to play Blu-ray rips. People in communities like Plex and Jellyfin complain about that. But those are like 50GB+ per movie, I don't have that kind of storage to even come close to caring about that issue. It can still play 4K content, just not with that one codec.
In fact, it's probably one of the best Apple devices out there, just because the competition is so much worse. I'd also say the same thing about the iPad, and the MacBook. You can make a case for a gaming PC, but for a laptop that isn't gonna game because battery is an issue, you're going for efficiency, it's really hard to beat the MacBook. As for the iPad, it's hard to tell which Android tablets are good and which ones aren't — or which ones will never get updated. And iPad got a lot of love this year, it's basically a desktop OS now (it's like macOS lite at this point). No, you still can't install whatever you want — need an actual computer for that.
Yeah, it wins by default. I have to say though, I’ve had one for years now and aside from it noticing it not able to bitstream Dolby TrueHD (decoded internally and sent as LPCM) or play some forms of Dolby Vision content (falls back to HDR10), it’s worked flawlessly as a media appliance. Some minor connection issues with screen mirror airplay from laptop to TV or music airplay from phone to TV but not enough to keep me away. I have the first gen 4k and if a family member needed a streaming box I’d buy a used one off eBay and a new remote. A solid setup for cheap.
SmartNextTube can be installed in <2min if you know what you're doing on Android devices and is better than ublock.
Boo Amazon
Boo Google
Certain Lemmy users using Apple devices adn advocating for it:
Hypocrisy at it's finest.
In this case, they are explicitly talking about serving ads on the device. Apple has a much less problematic track record for that particular issue.
excuse me i'm on an hp they've never ever ever done anything wrong
why yes i buy brother printers why do you ask