• DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I pity the poor fool who sets up their smart TV instead of just grabbing an HDMI cable and plugging in their computer.

    • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      That is beyond the capabilities of normies.

      My wife would agree with this:

      Media PC

      And I’ve got Plex running on an always on NAS.

      • BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        Lmao that greentext was literally me before I finally set up arrstack. One of the best investments of my time, it has definitely paid off over many years of just having things automatically download.

        • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          My Arr’s are unreliable. The trackers they search keep becoming unavailable for some reason. Flaresolver doesn’t seem to work with my VPN setup. Sometimes the file it finds to download turns out to be 54GB for a 1080p movie and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on there either. I haven’t got the time to look into Usenet any time soon. If I try to deploy something and it doesn’t work 100% right off the bat then the “wife acceptance factor” drops to zero, so I’ve got to be damn certain before I start tinkering.

          This comes off the back of a device on my network causing router issues and making Plex unreliable for a couple of weeks. By the time I diagnosed and fixed the issue, the damage was done and wife acceptance factor was lost.

          • BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            Man that sucks. I must have gotten lucky or something with my setup. I also have trackers go unavailable all the time but I enabled 8 different ones and usually multiple will have the same torrent so it usually has no problem finding something even if 1 or 2 are down. I also don’t VPN tracker searches, just my BitTorrent client so flaresolverr seems to work fine for me (I only have it enabled for 2 of my trackers since most of the ones I use don’t seem to require it).

            If you end up trying it out again I would look into the quality settings and make sure you’re not using the remux quality profile (edit: apparently the default 1080p quality profile has the 1080 remux quality enabled so this might have been the problem). By default most of the quality profiles seem to limit at 100MB/min, so a 2 hr movie shouldn’t allow anything over like 12GB. Whenever I tweak quality or custom formats I refer to trash guides which has a lot of battle-tested rules you can copy. I have my main quality profile set to only download qualities between hdtv720 and br1080 (which is just below remux) with custom formats copied from trash guides set to prefer hevc with surround sound since I have 5.1.

            • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              Thanks. Really helps to know where to start looking when I get time over the weekend.

              • TrenchcoatFullOfBats@belfry.rip
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                1 month ago

                You may also want to look into Usenet instead of torrents when you’re researching. Sonarr/Radarr/Readarr etc all work (in my opinion) better with Usenet.

                You’ll need to pay some, but the reliability is amazing, which is extremely helpful for the partner acceptance factor. I pay for two providers (newsdemon is primary and eweka is a backup) and two indexers (drunkenslug and nzbfinder), and everything has been rock solid reliable for years. Download speeds are also MUCH faster than torrents.

                Combine this setup with overseerr (or jellyseerr) so your partner can find their own things to download and you might be able to get them back on board.

                Plus, no flaresolverr required!

          • Wildly_Utilize@infosec.pub
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            1 month ago

            My gf loves stremio + torrentio + real debrid I set up for her

            It does go down occasionally and she is more techy and patient than most but give it a try if you havent.

            Its dead simple compared to what you’re doing now and good to have in your back pocket even if you want to maintain a local library. Having an issue? NP just open stremio and everyone’s happy

    • toynbee@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That is my preference, but my wife says she prefers only one step (turning on and using the TV) over multiple (turning on the TV, turning on the secondary system and using multiple controllers) so we go with the simpler setup per her request.

      I did put my TVs on a Wi-Fi network separate from my main one so, while they do show ads as much as my pihole allows, at least they’re theoretically only spying on each other.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Don’t give your TV the wifi password, kids. No, you don’t need to ‘finish setting up’ your TV; it works just fine as a dumb display.

  • ItsComplicated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    Average users will not have the knowledge or patience for work arounds.

    Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection just to watch a movie or series.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      They’re not “fine with ads and data collection” so much as they don’t care and can’t be bothered to look for a better way.

      It’s just apathy and a bit of lazy inertia.

    • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      Yeah that’s well put. All this advocacy for adblockers and not accepting the awful state of things fall on deaf ears, most people don’t care, they accept the state of things as it is, and technology as magic.

      • Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org
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        1 month ago

        Oh man, I’d hate to be the dude twiddling his thumbs on Ad 2 of 8 on Twitch.

        “Dum de dum dum, wonder what the streamer is currently up to. Oh well, another 45 seconds to go. Dum de dum dum”

    • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection a lax and ineffective regulation.

      “Voting with your wallets” is a false premise dreamed up by corporate to avoid govt regulation and has not and will never be a real thing that works in this world of monopoly and lack of option.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        1 month ago

        It only works in competition which we don’t have for the most part.

        Instead we have the illusion of choice through multiple brand product names. There’s a couple choices, sure, but few enough to function as an effective monopoly.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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        1 month ago

        You can either vote with your wallet or do nothing…

        Working people have no way to lobby government, shortage of a revolution, real people make decisions for benefit of other real people.

        NPCs are just here to enrich them both.

        • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          You can either vote with your wallet or do nothing

          I don’t want to fight here, we agree. In fact i bet we agree on a lot. But VWYW is, i can not stress this enough, not a thing. If it ever was in our lifetimes, it ain’t now. Its time the phrase was dropped outta everyone’s mouth.

          You can purchase something that thru your effort does not do most of the awful things you are trying to avoid, that’s being a smart customer. It’s not like I’m dismissing the entire idea behind VWYW, just that it is simply that now, it’s an idea that doesn’t work with the facts on the ground.

          The power of our “wallet ballots” gets lower when Monopoly power gets higher. Monopoly power is very high. VWYW power is in this world, in this moment, not a thing.

          My point, is a simple but strident one. VWYW is not voting! It just isn’t.

          It has absolutely no effect on the world around us. Puts no pressure on companies. Is not a thing except in our heads. It is time to let go of the idea.

          And yeah…working people like you and me have no power period. “Voting with your wallet” is now simply a power fantasy pushed by capitalists to keep regulations at bay and held by the powerless clinging to an illusion of agency.

          • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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            1 month ago

            I don’t agree but you can either vote with your wallet or mindlessly consume.

            One is better than the other but yeah 80% of spending is not really discretionary… Gonna need to get a rental, gonna need healthcare, transports education etc

            But you can stop drinking soda for example… It ain’t much but it is something.

            People don’t have to pay subscriptions either…

            • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              I … think i understand what you’re saying. You don’t agree with my definition of VWYW? I don’t wanna assume, but i think maybe you define it as reckless vs thoughtful spending?

              Mine has to do with the effectiveness of our purchases in driving market trends. They do not.

              You don’t have to buy a subscription to Netflix, but deciding not to isn’t changing anything for anyone (besides saving you 15 bux).

              • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month ago

                Is $6 too much for a bag of Ruffles?

                After nearly three years of price increases, signs that buyers have had enough are starting to mount. On Thursday, the food and beverage giant PepsiCo reported a 0.5 percent decline in revenues in the second quarter in its Frito-Lay snack business from year-ago levels, a result of a 4 percent drop in volumes in the category.

                I think maybe we voted with our wallets against $6 chips but you could probably convince me otherwise in a paragraph :)

                • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 month ago

                  Well sir I’m always down for a nice discussion, you had me at hello. But youre in trouble if you only wanted a paragraph 🤣

                  Your link is great evidence to your point. It absolutely does reinforce the idea, with evidence that voting with your wallet does indeed affect change. I should say also my point isnt VWYW doesn’t ever work but that it has very little power.

                  I’d like to suggest that same article also helps mine, at least some.

                  Point being it shows VWYW (at the consumer level) didn’t have the power to stop the inflation of chips in the first place. Leaving aside the illusion of choice, the current system has taken the power of VWYW out of our hands almost completely.

                  The fact that PepsiCo even has that kind of market power is beyond question at this point right?

                  I’m not saying anything controversial if i take it further, that supply chains between our bag of chips and Pepsico, (distributors, grocery stores etc) are also consolidated, yeah?

                  At each step of the process, market consolidation reduced the ability of the companies within that chain to VWTW, and they pass the costs on down to the next link who also has no ability to VWTW. At the end of this chain we sit with our wallets, but the power has been diminished before we got to open them. Just like the lesser evil, VWTW becomes a choice of voting between ALL chips that cost more across the board or no chips at all.

                  That’s what i mean when i say VWYW in this system, at this time, is meaningless.

  • Justin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    Server to host media. Super easy to set up and can run on a Windows client. Don’t even need an independent server to run it on. https://jellyfin.org/

    https://kodi.tv/ (or https://libreelec.tv/ for an OS that boots to just Kodi)

    Application to watch through Kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellycon

    Client to run Kodi on: MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick https://a.co/d/1EGnekO

    If you didn’t want to install LibreELEC to the PC and just want to keep Windows, you could run Kodi in Kiosk mode and it would boot directly to it just like LibreELEC.

    I have not watched normal TV in years, let alone an ad on my TV. I spoke to my neighbors one day and figured out they were paying ~$60 a month for all their streaming services, and they’re STILL getting ads…

    Stuff like this is unacceptable, and I refuse to partake in the lunacy and delusion that is modern television.

        • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
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          1 month ago

          I bought a lifetime plex pass once and have no issues since. HW encoding works out of the box, the scanners do their job and I can use their apps on every platform. I had to disable the Plex offered free movies once, the horror. Don’t act like Plex is some Google level shit of annoyance or ‘enshittification’.

          Jellyfin on the other hand has atrocious UI that basically screams the absence of any sort of UI designer into your face, the HW encoding is a mess to set up and the apps are a jungle of different 3rd party apps…

          • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            I never said Plex is google-level enshittification, don’t project words in my mouth. What is a fact though is that it is undergoing enshittification and that it’s a buggy mess and video transcoding might work for you, but it’s a well known source of pain for others. It could be better on Jellyfin too, but nowhere near as difficult to set up, even on weird/unsupported systems.

            UI screams no designer

            Idk what you’re on about, not even LTT Linus pointed out any issues with the UI and he is no Linux CLI wizard.

            If anything it’s far simpler to use than Plex because it doesn’t have the dark pattern bullshit into it.

            You load the app, you hit movies or TV shows, hit your favourite movie or TV show and play. It’s not complicated at all, no need to click past the various upsells and no need to buy battle passes just to watch a film.

            The only thing this supposed absence of a “UI designer” seems to have brought is the absence of upsells and enshittification/dark patterns.

          • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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            1 month ago

            Don’t act like Plex is some Google level shit of annoyance or ‘enshittification’.

            Close enough for me.

            The UI has always been pretty terrible to navigate but when they started trying to push all their streaming services I jumped ship. I don’t respect companies that don’t respect their customers. Jellyfin is better and is constantly improving where Plex is doing the opposite and wants to charge you for the privilege.

            • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
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              1 month ago

              What streaming services is plex pushing? They offer integration for other services you subscribed to like Netflix or Disney and they also offer free, ad based services that you can permanently hide with one button. And the UI? Jellyfin is so convoluted, especially the settings.

              • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 month ago

                You answered that yourself.

                Question:

                What streaming services is plex pushing?

                Answer:

                They offer integration for other services you subscribed to like Netflix or Disney and they also offer free, ad based services

                Honestly thought it was just one service, not services, didn’t know it was that bad. Yikes! Commercialisation strikes again.

                Plus, there’s the “Plex pass” as you mentioned. I’m sorry but I’m not buying some bullshit battlepass just to watch movies lol.

                Convoluted

                How are Jellyfin settings convoluted in the slightest? How is the UI convoluted? You keep saying it, but you can’t give a single example so far. Can you mention at least one?

                As for the settings they’re all neatly split by categories and pretty straightforward, not that you have to use the settings much if at all tbh. Outside of “scan library” I don’t think I’ve been in the settings once after setting up the automatic subtitles download plugin.

                Jellyfin is a great example of how FOSSware just works, and doesn’t stop working like the competing capitalist enshittificationware when it decides to rake it in.

          • golli@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            Since he mentions enshittification, I assume he means Plex.

            However I am pretty sure both will have some bugs. I use jellyfin, so I can only speak about that. But one annoyance is that the androidTV app sometimes doesn’t have the best subtitle support. However it allows you to open movies in external players, which is a workaround.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      The number of people suggesting this shit as a replacement for streaming services is way too damn high.

      The monetary cost of the hardware is insane if you want to have any sort of hardware to store your data. But the time investment to get something like this running is 10x more. And at the end of the day it’s all 100% illegal and liable to get you in tons of trouble.

  • daddy32@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue.”

    Fuck me, this is the amount of money that’s enough motivation for them to ruin my experience and make me angry?

    I guess regular users have much higher tolerance to ads than me, but our home has a strict zero ad policy.

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      A quick check online says that Samsung–which has about 25% of the global market–sold at least 1M OLED televisions and 8.3M QLED televisions in 2023. So, let’s say that they sell 9.5M televisions annually (I’m not sure if the numbers are global or US-only); that’s $190M in pure profit from advertising alone. For a billion-dollar plus corporation, that might seem small, but it’s certainly enough to get them to take notice.

      • ItsComplicated@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Samsung is also trying to make its ACR data more valuable for ad targeting, including through a deal signed in December with analytics firm Experian.

        This should add to their profits.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s even better for them: those $190M are per-year for the lifetime of that TV.

        So if for simplification we said they also sold 9.5M TVs in 2021 and again in 2022, in the year of 2024 the will be making $570M from the TVs they sold in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

        If Samsung TVs are used in average for 10 years, in 2033 they will still be making money from TVs sold in 2024 and all the years in between. If their rate of sales remains 9.5M per year and how much they generate per quarter in data and advertising revenue from those TVs remains $5 (true, all big simplifications), by 2033 they will be making $1.90 BILLIONS from just this in addition to what they make from selling TVs.

        No wonder they’re full in on this monetization of users even whilst making user experience significantly worse - they would need to lose a huge number of sales due to this for it to not be worth it for them.

    • Zwiebel@feddit.org
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      1 month ago

      I’ve heard somewhere else that it’s a 50/50 split between the TV sales and ad revenue

    • Ugurcan@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Point is, it’s near impossible to find a dumb tv with good specs. Like LG is producing no-smart version of LG C3 (best display ever so far), but it’s only sold to businesses.

  • 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    Pihole on your network… And block Internet access to the TV…

    Tho… a while back the wife and I bought a dirt cheap 32 inch TV from bestbuy… it will literally turn itself on to deliver an advertisement if you power it off while in an app. (Skipping the home page)

    Pihole crashes it.

    We bought it for watching football outside so it’s unplugged for the majority of the year… but that’s still absolutely unacceptable. Imho

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      it will literally turn itself on to deliver an advertisement if you power it off while in an app.

      Name and shame that brand.

      The more the word is spread about who the worse offenders are, the more people can effectively vote with their wallet.

      • 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        It’s a visio.

        Literally the cheapest 32inch TV that best buy had.

        It’s absolutely unusable with the ads disabled.

        Horrific television.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      …bought a dirt cheap 32 inch TV from bestbuy…

      Pihole crashes it.

      I wonder why…

  • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    Problem is getting an 55+" Screen with an OLED panel and support for HDR in a non-smart package

  • Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org
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    1 month ago

    My phone is a billboard. My TV is a billboard. My PC is sometimes a billboard.

    Like, what hasn’t advertisement infected?

    I think it’s about time we just harass marketers back, but not with advertisements, but with other means. Enough so they get the message.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      Ironically the billboards in my town seem to be disappearing due to lack of use.

      The billboards are the only thing that aren’t billboards.

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      “We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento