Life is so much better after I gave up on these atrocious media boxes and TV operating systems and just use a small computer connected to the TV.
I control the interface, I control the connection, it works perfectly. Steam Link for games, Jellyfin for media - always working, never showing ads, never bothering me with accounts or updates.
I have a NAS running my JellyFin server in a container, i'd like to have the box/pc connected to my tv running something open source with the respective clients for my streaming services.
Kodi seems like it's a hassle to get streaming apps working seamlessly.
I have a little cheapo Chinese Bluetooth keyboard thingy. It's very small, with a keyboard and trackpad. I also use my Xbox controller, which works great with Steam's UI.
I didn't follow a guide, but there are many good ones online.
For games, really just install Steam on your main computer and the TV client, make sure Remote Play is configured to use the most out of your connection and set to the desired resolution. This is about it.
For torrents, you want a downloading client (I use qBittorrent), software that will automatically download movies and TV shows based on what you want (Sonarr, Radarr, all the *Arr stuff) and some server that will store the media and organize it in a "Netflix-like" easy to use interface, for that I use Jellyfin on my main PC.
So in short, for games, I open Steam Big Picture, select the game, I'm playing. For media, my PC downloads everything I want at night and during the day it's all there with subtitles, episodes, descriptions, etc, ready to play by opening up Jellyfin. It's mostly hands off, but the initial setup can be a bit painful if you've never used these tools before, specially dealing with the *Arr setup.
I feel like Jellyfin is a better solution than something like Plex, but I still feel like there is a trade off. I’m not dealing with ads, accounts, and content appearing / disappearing. But I was the TV and media library’s sys admin in the house, and that came with a different set of inconveniences.
That's absolutely correct, and something to keep in mind in case you're already stressed out with work or lacking free time.
Nowadays, after the initial setup, tools like Sonarr rarely give me trouble - but once I a while I'll have to sit down and resolve a conflict with file naming, for instance. Or when series have weird releases like animes breaking naming conventions for seasons.
Hey, at least their research is focusing on serving you ads through HDMI instead of security, so even if you're not using the Roku, you can still get their ads over HDMI.
I'm thankful Roku has had data breaches. Mostly because I have a Roku TV that was somehow compromised and now, even after a couple of years and several full factory resets, whoever used my throwaway account signed up for all the streaming services at the highest tier. Hard to be mad when I havent had to pay for anything.
And no, before anyone says anything, it's not putting my home network at risk, as it's just the Roku account that's compromised. Nothing tied to me personally, not even a card/address on the account, so I just chalk it up to "as long as it keeps working, Im not worrying about it".
Free stuff is great and all, but I imagine they’re using a stolen CC to pay for those subscriptions and they’re exploiting someone who’s not great at paying attention to their credit card bill.
You may want to report it so that someone isn’t getting fucked over.
But it’s probably using a stolen CC. I wouldn’t feel too great about using someone else’s credit card without their knowledge. I’d report it and try to get the card suspended.
I used to blame my cousin, as she has a raging drug addiction and does shady crap like steal people's credit cards/checks and it was only after she had been over that I had noticed. But nope, still going despite time and resets. If I knew a way of pulling login info off the TV, I'd probably share it, because hell, why not.
The only thing that would have prevented this in this context would be mandatory MFA. Did they have that? No, but there's a huge number of places that are way more sensitive than a streaming platform that don't have mandatory MFA (coughETradecough).
It is wholly misleading to characterize this as a "Roku data breach," and it's disingenuous to portray Roku in this instance as somehow glaringly worse than everyone else.