this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
72 points (93.9% liked)

Selfhosted

39918 readers
260 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
72
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
 

Hi and hope all are well today. First, thanks in advance for any / all responses. Second, apologies if this isn’t the best place to ask this question.

I’m curious if anyone, has moved completely from using an AppleTV to something else. Current use case for the ATV is a few streaming apps (Crunchyroll / HiDive, Tubi, etc.) and Apple Arcade (a few casual games).

If you did completely switch, what did you decide on using? Did you go back to buying movies / using a DVD/Blu-Ray player, setup a mini PC and stream from websites / rip music and movies, use a gaming console instead, etc.?

Exploring options and entertaining thoughts for right now. Again, thanks and have a good day / evening.

Edit - 2024/01/01 - Just wanted to thank everyone for the lively discussion and resources (links, recommendations, etc.) related to my question.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] plz1 45 points 10 months ago (35 children)

ATV is the only box I recommend. I'm anti-Google, don't trust Amazon (and now their service is going to do ads on a paid Prime membership), and Roku has major privacy issues at least in the past. Curious why you're seeking an alternative to Apple.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm curious why you would trust Apple and not the others you have listed. All of them will do literally anything to just earn more money and exploit you as much as possible.

[–] plz1 32 points 10 months ago (39 children)

Apple is the least terrible of my list.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I mean, neither of you is wrong. On user privacy, Apple is probably the least worst of the big providers. At the same time their business model is to lock in users to their platform and hardware. "Once you've gone Mac you're not going back" is the result of a deliberate design choice on Apple's part.

Sounds to me like OP is aiming to bypass the entire corporate cloud service mess by going self-sufficient via FLOSS?

load more comments (38 replies)
[–] TORFdot0 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Apple is a hardware company first, not an advertising and services company like Google and Roku, and not a literal massive online retailer like Amazon.

Apple TV is the only one that doesn’t have ads on its home screen. I use an Apple TV to play all my physical media that has been ripped to mov and re-encoded with handbrake

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the comment. I should've provided more context in the original post. Without getting too deep, I'm starting to reconsider my personal views on privacy, content ownership (vs. streaming), where / how I spend my money, etc.

I'm in the Apple ecosystem but wondering if going back to open source, purchased media (music, movies, etc.), donating to projects, etc. is "better". Which is highly subjective and personal, of course.

The reason for the question was to see what other folks may be doing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If privacy is the concern, you should really read the breakdown from Mozilla someone shared. Can’t miss it, large wall of text in this thread. Apple ecosystem is much better than others in the privacy department. The other players are much worse when it comes to personal data collection and selling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yup, I did go down the rabbit hole and read the links and stuff. Interesting reading and something to consider. I guess it's back to a non-networked DVD/Blu-Ray player and get stuff from the local library or Craigslist :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also aim for non-networked TVs or they might be doing ACR and phoning home, even if you’re watching your own physical content. A former coworker on ad selling side mentioned before ACR on smart TVs, companies like Nielsen and alike would track content using digital fingerprints hidden in the overscan part of your TV. So there’s all sorts of creepy tracking tech all over.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (33 replies)