this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 44 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.

[–] [email protected] 31 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?

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[–] [email protected] 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

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

Apple is a fashion company.

[–] [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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah, a sad side effect of the subscription/advertising economy. Current TV has as much of that turned off, that I can find at least. Although I haven’t gone full “remove everything from the network”, yet 🙂

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