this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Note about the second bullet: Not all TCL TVs are Google TV, which can be switched to Protectivity - Roku TVs at this point, as far as I know, cannot disable ads if connected to the Internet.
If this is the case for you (I have both in my house), I recommend putting your RokuTV behind a Pi Hole DNS. It will block the TV ad requests at a DNS level while letting content and video go through.
The only problem I found with this is that Roku knows it’s being blocked so it’ll kill some apps over time (like the Plex app) in a way that forces you to fully reinstall the app. Which means unblocking their domain and allowing them to phone home (or disabling/bypassing pihole), because the app downloads go through that domain as well.
Before I just factory reset them and denied them any internet at all, Plex would break and need to be reinstalled about every 2 months like clockwork, and it wasn’t due to app updates or anything. I know this because I did a test once; reset on one tv, and 2 weeks later on another one. The first called for an update at roughly the 2 month mark, and the other exactly two weeks later. Meanwhile an absolutely ancient Samsung tv still has a copy of the Plex app that hasn’t been updated in like 5 years (it’s a fully obsolete tv)… works fine.
My speculation is that it records the data for that period, and then breaks things you use so it can phone home when you are forced to connect it to fix it.
Yeah, this is the answer. My wife does a lot of arduino/pi stuff so this is on our to-do list, but we just can't find the time (building in cushion for inevitable network and setup troubleshooting).
You can spin the pinhole up in a docker image and have it run as a secondary DNS server. The rest of your network can use the existing DNS and only point the TV at the pi. If you sit down to watch something and it requires tweaking, just flick back to regular DNS :)
No way, that is so smart. I'll have to look for a guide.
I’m struggling heavily to find that OS to learn more about it (literally just got a google tcl tv delivered today, as my old one died last week), can you provide a link of some variety?
I was very heartened to find out that it’s just big android, so there’s likely a lot that can be done with it (but I got it to be dumb).
Sorry, do you mean a link to a Roku TV? Assuming you mean a link to Projectivity, here's a link:
https://xdaforums.com/t/app-android-tv-projectivy-launcher.4436549/
You can scroll to the bottom - basically you should just be able to enable installation from third party sources in your Google TV android options, and install the APK. I don't have Google TV, but worked fine on Android TV. I forget if you have to fiddle with any other settings to get it to boot into Projectivity, or if you just change the launcher app in settings.
Nope, this is the info I was looking for, thanks :)