this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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Watched something on YouTube on my TV for the first time last week. Never again. 12 minute video had like 6 or 8 ads, 2-3 were 30 seconds. Fuck. That.
plug in $20 laptop from craigslist and disable internet on your tvs
Or some cheap Raspberry Pi box or those sail the high seas streaming sticks or a Nvidia shield, so many better options than giving the Spyware and adware filled TV OS from getting access to your internet
yea I used to use a raspberry pi but it is way too slow with a massive library. and for youtube even the 4 performance is dwarfed by some random half broken laptop. I haven't tried the pi 5 but doesn't really matter
When we replaced our computers years ago we used the old parts to build a low-spec, but functional, computer to hook up to the TV. Paired with a wireless mouse/keyboard we dont really notice a difference in ease of use compared to a streaming device.
SmartTube
I love SmartTube. Every time someone comes over and they want to play something via YouTube, they're like: "holy fuck, no ads? skipping straight to music part? this is divine technology"
Right! Why is an adblocker such a foreign concept to the bulk of humanity.
I can’t find it on my Roku or AppleTV or TIZEN or WebOS.
Just checked, sounds like that program isn't working anymore.
plug in $20 laptop from craigslist and disable internet on your tvs
DV is difficult to get working properly on PC, and last time I tried to set up an HTPC I ran into tons of remote control issues and it wasn't simple enough that I could just hand the remote over to a guest (or my spouse).
2019 Shield has plenty of issues sure, but it still seems like the best option for me, personally.
Agree about disable network on the TV itself.
Not sure when the last time you tried doing this is, but it's pretty easy these days. KDE connect can pretty much handle most of the HTPC necessities. Alternatively, a debloated Onn box will do the trick quite easily
onn 4k googletv box is amazing. $20 and a launcher swap and it's like ads don't exist any more
SmartTube is the best. There was a small period of time recently where it stopped working and it was so bad going back to regular YT that I just stopped watching entirely.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be designed to work without an account.
I think I remember being able to switch to anonymous user with it.
Yeah, normal YouTube is totally unwatchable. If you have a Roku device, the Playlet app can let you watch without ads. There are probably methods for other devices too.
Sure, after you've waded through the swamp of Roku ads, you could get an adfree youtube experience with that
I dunno, all I see on Roku is an image banner on the home screen. I never even look at it.
Holy shit this is the first I've heard of Playlet. Giving it a go now and it's already impressive.
Yeah, it's not worth it. Maybe sometime I'll get something like pihole set up so YouTube is usable on my TV, but for now, I just plug in a laptop w/ proper ad block.
I'd totally pay for YT if it was reasonable for my usage. But I honestly watch so little that their monthly sub just isn't worth it for me.
I have a pihole and the youtube app on a smart TV. Trying to block the ad domains from the TV just bricks the app. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but, I got no luck.
You can't block youtube ads with DNS blocking; youtube serves ads from the same domains it serves the actual video from.
You need a custom youtube client like Revanced.
Yeah I figured they went the Twitch approach. Desktop YouTube I still have ublock for, but there's no hope for the TV.
I'd pay for it if their first-party experience wasn't so horrific and gave me any control over my feed.
I pay for it so the TV and web experience is ad free. I use PipePipe on my phone because the native client won't stop pushing shorts at you.
Yeah, I mean, you don't need to pay for it to get that.