Yes, I’m fully aware that the best way to have a streaming box is to run Linux on a Raspberry Pi, and if anyone has a guide for how to best set that up, connect to various streaming services, and allow casting from a phone then I’m very happy to check it out. However, I’ve heard Android TV boxes/sticks are still relatively customisable so I’d really just like something I can run SmartTubeNext on and cast YouTube to the TV without any ads. I’m not going to be putting much in the way of personal data on it so it’s obviously doesn’t need to be the most secure/hardened thing in the world, but I’d still rather avoid the dodgiest of boxes. Any recommendations for something cheap-ish and private-ish?
As far as I’m aware, the only way to get a private streaming box would be to use a RaspberryPi. You could use Google Chromecast but then you get Google, Nvidia have Nvidia Shield but that costs a lot and I’m not familiar enough with it to know if it has spyware.
With RaspberryPi, all you really need is to just install the Raspbian OS (they have detailed instructions on their website) and you basically have a mini PC with an Internet browser and all that. So you could just do that?
There is also this Chromium DRM compliant browser which supports Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. Which you can install on the Pi for streaming support. Here’s the link
The first sentence in the post acknowledges that…