Google has Google TV. It’s rancid with ads too. Basically the top half of the home screen is ad space, with more sponsored content recommendations below. There for a while it was running fried chicken video ads on that top half. That’s when I decided to replace my ChromeCast with Google TV with an Nvidia Shield that has all the Google crap gutted out of it. Not exactly perfect, but so much better.
Unfortunately, digital rights restrictions prevent an open source option from taking off. None of the streaming services want to allow their content onto a platform they can’t easily manipulate.
Oh, it’s worse than I even made it sound. Their sponsored video recommendations would often recommend me a show on a service I don’t subscribe to, even though the show was available on services I do subscribe to, and Google would recommend videos from the one I do subscribe to as not an ad, so they know I could get it for free, but still tried to sell it to me.
It’s sad, because Android TV was a very solid experience for years, and it slowly enshitified to being a pain in the ass to use, just like Roku. I feel the same about a lot of streaming services though. They started removing downvoting videos, made it so you couldn’t hide certain content, started changing the recommendation to recommend what they wanted me to watch instead of what I might want to watch. Half of them force sports in my face too, with no option to hide sports content. Hell, even if you had a sport you loved, that doesn’t mean you love whatever sport that streaming service has, yet it gets top billing on my screen for some reason.
Google has Google TV. It’s rancid with ads too. Basically the top half of the home screen is ad space, with more sponsored content recommendations below. There for a while it was running fried chicken video ads on that top half. That’s when I decided to replace my ChromeCast with Google TV with an Nvidia Shield that has all the Google crap gutted out of it. Not exactly perfect, but so much better.
Unfortunately, digital rights restrictions prevent an open source option from taking off. None of the streaming services want to allow their content onto a platform they can’t easily manipulate.
Gross.
You lose SOME extra functionality not being in an Apple ecosystem but the Apple TV is a pretty amazing device especially for the price.
I imagine the device is a loss leader for them
Oh, it’s worse than I even made it sound. Their sponsored video recommendations would often recommend me a show on a service I don’t subscribe to, even though the show was available on services I do subscribe to, and Google would recommend videos from the one I do subscribe to as not an ad, so they know I could get it for free, but still tried to sell it to me.
It’s sad, because Android TV was a very solid experience for years, and it slowly enshitified to being a pain in the ass to use, just like Roku. I feel the same about a lot of streaming services though. They started removing downvoting videos, made it so you couldn’t hide certain content, started changing the recommendation to recommend what they wanted me to watch instead of what I might want to watch. Half of them force sports in my face too, with no option to hide sports content. Hell, even if you had a sport you loved, that doesn’t mean you love whatever sport that streaming service has, yet it gets top billing on my screen for some reason.
Arg, I’ve been forced to a new solution.