This happens all the time in FOSS

Someone comes in, contributes a bit, then forks, then closes it off once they realize there’s a path to monetization.

Plex is a particularly egregious example: the initial author forked xbmc to make a mac port. This led to a crazy amount of popularity very fast and they saw the path to monetization. They soon after created plex server separate from the client and went to the crazy step of rewriting everything GPL so they could fully close source.

This is legally fine but ethically fucked; they had a derivative app that technically no longer shared code with kodi but there was the fact that design cues, data structures, etc were mostly inherited. Plex wouldn’t exist without kodi. And that’s totally fine, derivative works should be allowed and encouraged. But what’s fucked is that they made serious efforts to close source and give nothing back to the community that they were built from. Code? Nothing. When they got 40 million in VC? nothing.

See also a bunch of players in 3d printing, notably Bambu at the moment. But they’ll keep getting away with it thanks to a combination of governments that are like “money is more important than fairness or progress” and idiotic consumers that are like “oh I have to spend 30 seconds longer figuring something out? Ugh fuck you im gonna buy what some YouTuber was paid $400 to recommend”

https://youtube.com/shorts/jm2c--qzSbk

If you buy these things you’re a fucking creep

that’s true but they’re more expensive, sometimes prohibitively so. If you want an oled panel they’re basically unfeasible, especially if you want a larger panel >55”

It’s true that things are worse on a cheap tv but even if you buy a $5000+ flagship model it will still have advertising baked into the os

I saw it too. It also made no sense because his fears are not addressed in any way. He lays out all these intense concerns about AI in his home and the result is literally having the AI go “oh hey don’t worry about that here’s a thing to distract you”, he takes the bait, and then it just ends.

DNS Adblocking although you’ll need special rules for your tv (each vendor varies) and it has limitations. The ad networks have known about dns Adblocking as long as it’s existed so they circumvent it. On a pc with something like ublock (especially the old manifest 3 version) you can also stop scripts used to get around this but obviously on tv that’s not an option (plus it doesn’t always work, cat and mouse game)

I’d really like the ad industry to burn and everyone who works in it to go to jail

Always did, especially so with anime

On this note: if you root your webos tv there’s an app to truly disable Bluetooth, assuming you don’t use it. Imagine my surprise when one day my tv turned on with a request to allow my neighbors phone to connect to it? Modern convenience. I’m sure my neighbor just fat fingered the device list while trying to connect something else but the fact that it was even an option is absurd

People have been screaming this since right to repair, since FOSS, since Microsoft in the 90s, since stallman. Consumers consistently lose because the vast majority of people don’t give a shit and politicians that could regulate our way out of this are easily purchased.

$600 last month to run my heat pump. Can’t really disconnect it because it’s 30 degrees here rn. Awesome

Haha! The audacity of that is astounding. Piracy at least gives you autonomy and equivalent quality, in many cases it gives you superior quality at that

Well good thing they’ll own hbo max soon

Just out of curiosity I tried downloading the Netflix app and while that does work I couldn’t be bothered to make a trial account as it appears I need to give them a host of info including cc.

Looking online in kodi forums it appears the issue you describe is correct and ugoos lost Netflix certification though a newer option, the kinhank g1 may retain Netflix certification and still provide profile 7 FEL dv playback.

This is why I don’t support Netflix and instead keep media in jellyfin. Dolby/dts and even hdmi are fucking awful but I can at least work around them and ensure my hardware is in a working state. As long as I ensure new hardware and software additions will work I’ll be okay because worst case scenario I can just freeze things as they are and kick myself for adopting an lg oled or whatever. Netflix/hulu/disney/etc control of my content library? No way, it’s constantly at their whim. Revoke a license for perfectly capable machine because fuck you that’s why

The android side should be able to run Netflix with Dolby vision/hdr/atmos though I have not tested this because I don’t have an account.

The reason it works for Dolby vision playback in kodi/core elec is because it’s licensed. That’s why you end up having to dual boot, you need to retain the blobs on the android side to make the DV profiles work. It’s fucking dumb and Dolby vision is dumb and proprietary but technically superior but hdr10+ is open but lg doesn’t support it, it’s all fucking dumb. HTPCs dont work great with DV, at least for pirated content (not sure about streaming). They’ll play some profiles with specific software configurations but not all. Generally you end up tonemapping

Anyway it’s licensed for Dolby vision because it’s primarily meant as a box for streaming apps, so I assume Netflix/hbo max/etc would work. I don’t have accounts so I don’t know. I only use the android side for iptv

Raising the importance of both having a rooted tv and independent analysis of network traffic related to these devices

You buy a $400-$3000 tv and eliminate big parts of the feature set (dlna, phone/laptop as remote, airplay/casting, etc) because you let their nonsense prevent you from connecting something you purchased to the internet so the vendor won’t ruin it.

Or you buy any other brand where rooting isn’t even an option and the ad penetration is often worse because they’re almost all based around amazon, androidtv, or Roku, all of which are much more developed and mature. With tricks like not allowing you to set a custom dns for Adblocking (Roku does this) or hard defining a cloudflare DNS to circumvent ad blocking dns if you set it at the router level (android does this).

If all the options are shit, make one that works

Modern replacement as a kodi box for both shield and pi is ugoos am6b+. ~120$ on aliexpress (probably more with tariffs) and once you flash it with coreelec it can natively playback pretty much any format except av1. You still dual boot to android so can also run all the streaming apps too, if you want, and the android is really stripped back vs the shield (especially the later releases where ad bullshit creeped in quite a bit) though not fully degoogled because the play store is still present.

Main downside is some issues with hdmi-cec. It works 99% but power on doesn’t when in coreelec. Ugoos locked the bootloader for some reason and refuses to unlock it. Fixes for this depend on equipment and use scenario. Some people on the forum that watch tv a lot just disable power on/off cec and leave it running 24/7, it’s pretty low power. I have an avr that works with hdmi-cec and home assistant so I have hdmi-cec on/off turned on, it will turn off when I turn the tv off with remote, and when I turn the tv on the avr turns on via CEC then home assistant sends a wake-on-lan packet to the device, which turns it on. A bit of a delay, but works.

Only device on the market that can properly play back Dolby vision though, including commercial bluray players. If you download 2160p remux with the dv layer for lg oled this is literally the only thing that plays it back correctly. Alternatively just get hdr rips

If you root your lg oled you can truly block automatic updates. You can also install ad free youtube with sponsorblock integrated plus a bunch of other stuff that is of varying utility depending on your use case.

In general though just don’t connect it to the internet and get a $100 box for jellyfin from china (ugoos am6b+ works great and can playback basically anything but av1 natively if you flash Coreelec, the android side can still run streaming apps if you insist or iptv apps like tv mate since iptv support in kodi/jellyfin suuuucks).

Lg has proven they don’t respect consent by silently opting you in to data collection with updates. The updates never add features or bug fixes, just ugly UI changes and shit like this. It’s almost never worth updating unless someone is specifically saying “you should update, it fixes/adds ____

In the future don’t support them but at the same time it’s the “who the fuck can you support/oh you use an iphone under capitalism” problem. Yeah you don’t need a big tv, you don’t need an oled, you can buy a far more expensive commercial display, etc. I dunno

Do you not realize they were created on the backs of oppression? This is part of why the middle class is a myth, we are all working class comrade

so just the imperialism meatgrinder of stuff like the vietnam war and a time of racial segregation domestically and the immediate aftermath of its end (bc everyone totally respected the change and that’s why we aren’t still dealing with the impacts to this day with elder boomer maga shitheads that literally grew up with it). these were definitely great times and a wonderful country to want to return to and you’re definitely not holding up some whitewashed bullshit in your mind.

Like literally telling someone they can’t use a water fountain because they’re too black and violently invading a country for decades because they chose a system of government you disagree with seems pretty right wing authoritarian but maybe that’s just me. America has literally always been fascist, there’s just a few times in more recent history where ultra fascists like the Nazis gave us a villain to be like “well at least we aren’t that” as we send the cia into Latin America to overthrow a democratically elected government that once again doesn’t align with capitalism