I have run into a small hiccup in my self-hosting journey. Youtube on my TV in the living room has ads… and they become more unbearable by the day. To that end, I’d like to set up a Raspberry Pi (Or something) to run as a one-stop for media. Ideally, I’d like it to have YouTube (Or more likely NewPipe/FreeTube), Steam Link and access to my Jellyfin instance. More ideally, I’d like this to be controllable with a controller (TV Remote, Steam controller, doesn’t matter). The reason for the latter is that I’d rather not create too much trouble for my wife when she uses the TV.
I’ve done some looking, and I seem to be able to get an Amazon Firestick to run NewPipe, and Jellyfin, and maybe even the Steam Link but from the stories I’ve read it’s… less than ideal. So, I was hoping there may be an alternative.
The goal is to get all three in one system, with decently user friendly functionality.
Has anyone set something similar up, and could you point me in a direction.
FreeTube does not have controller support, and for AndroidTV I’d recommend SmartTube.
Kodi/LibreELEC is able to do all of it, but IMO it’s not a good experience for browsing YouTube and I don’t know how well the third party Steam Link integrations work.
This is why I’d also recommend LineageOS Android TV, which supports Pi’s thanks to konstakang. But I’m not sure why it’d work better than a FireTV stick, since both run AndroidTV.
Edit: I’ve had an issue where the Pi 5 wouldn’t boot AndroidTV, until I tried to turn it on again after a few weeks. So I’d recommend sticking with the FireTV + SmartTube + Jellyfin + Steam Link (unless you’ve got a Pi 5 lying around anyway).
Edit 2: The Pi 5 + Android TV had issues with HDMI-CEC of the TV, so I had to buy a remote with a USB adapter. This sends the wrong signals (e.g. keyboard enter, not what Android TV expects), which is fixable with some app remapper. Maybe it’ll work better for you, but the FireTV is likely the easier solution.
Was actually unaware of SmartTube. Looks like it may cover that part for me :). I had also never heard of LineageOS, I’ll take a look there too. I have a Pi4 laying about I was going to use.
As for FireTV I may just end up going that rout, I was just curious what the options looked like. Thank you for taking the time to enlighten me :).
Could also run pihole or adguard on your network to just start blocking ads all across your devices as a starter step. Get an OpenWRT router to make it super easy, or just run a standalone pi as a DNS server.
While you should do this to block your TVs telemetry and other undesirable behavior, realize that YouTube native TV app ads can’t be blocked at DNS level alone without also blocking the core functionality of YouTube, due to the way it serves the ads.
Eh, not quite accurate. YouTube was battling DNS ad blocking in browsers. Took them awhile to push to mobile apps to try and do the same, and I still largely never see any YT ads across any of my devices just by using AdGuard in my network. TVs and media players are even further behind in updates of official YT apps that do so. Hell, if your smart TV or whatever isn’t getting regular updates, you may be set just by DNS blocking.
You can sideload newpipe on the TV directly and jellyfin usually. I never had that great experience with steam link so I ended up just running a long fiber hdmi and usb ethernet extender
I’m not the person you replied to, but I think my experience could be relevant.
I have a MiBox TV S 4K, which as far as I know runs pretty pure AndroidTV (but I might be wrong). This is still going to try to connect to Google and Xiaomi servers for tracking and ads… but I have set up a custom DNS blocking trackers and ads.
I found this Reddit post and followed the instructions to change the DNS server on the MiBox to NextDNS, where I could later activate relevant blocklists (SmartTV, Xiaomi, Google). I also perform monitoring of the domains the MiBox connects to and have blocked a couple manually.
Finally, for AndroidTV forget about NewPipe and use SmartTube. It’s the same idea, but optimised for the AndroidTV experience where you have a remote and not a touchscreen.
Thank you. This is more aligned with what I was hoping for. I wanted a way to access these services but still lock the device down as much as I can. Thank you for sharing.
I would highly discourage getting a fire stick, they’ve locked it down so much its just annoying. Yes, you can get there but found it much easier on android tv boxes, specifically the Xiaomi Mii TV ones. Which one you get probably depends on whether you need 4K and/or dolby
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !selfhosted@lemmy.world
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.
Rules:
Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
You could probably run Android on a Pi
Actually hadn’t though of this. Thank you!
FreeTube does not have controller support, and for AndroidTV I’d recommend SmartTube.
Kodi/LibreELEC is able to do all of it, but IMO it’s not a good experience for browsing YouTube and I don’t know how well the third party Steam Link integrations work.
This is why I’d also recommend LineageOS Android TV, which supports Pi’s thanks to konstakang. But I’m not sure why it’d work better than a FireTV stick, since both run AndroidTV.
Edit: I’ve had an issue where the Pi 5 wouldn’t boot AndroidTV, until I tried to turn it on again after a few weeks. So I’d recommend sticking with the FireTV + SmartTube + Jellyfin + Steam Link (unless you’ve got a Pi 5 lying around anyway).
Edit 2: The Pi 5 + Android TV had issues with HDMI-CEC of the TV, so I had to buy a remote with a USB adapter. This sends the wrong signals (e.g. keyboard enter, not what Android TV expects), which is fixable with some app remapper. Maybe it’ll work better for you, but the FireTV is likely the easier solution.
Were you able to get 4k working on the Konstakang build? Last I tried it 4k was not working which was a deal breaker for me.
You can do the browsing on your phone and then share the link with your media center through Kore/Yatse and it will play it automatically.
Was actually unaware of SmartTube. Looks like it may cover that part for me :). I had also never heard of LineageOS, I’ll take a look there too. I have a Pi4 laying about I was going to use.
As for FireTV I may just end up going that rout, I was just curious what the options looked like. Thank you for taking the time to enlighten me :).
Were you able to get 4k working on the Konstakang build? Last I tried it 4k was not working which was a deal breaker for me.
No, I haven’t connected a Pi to a 4k TV.
Could also run pihole or adguard on your network to just start blocking ads all across your devices as a starter step. Get an OpenWRT router to make it super easy, or just run a standalone pi as a DNS server.
While you should do this to block your TVs telemetry and other undesirable behavior, realize that YouTube native TV app ads can’t be blocked at DNS level alone without also blocking the core functionality of YouTube, due to the way it serves the ads.
Eh, not quite accurate. YouTube was battling DNS ad blocking in browsers. Took them awhile to push to mobile apps to try and do the same, and I still largely never see any YT ads across any of my devices just by using AdGuard in my network. TVs and media players are even further behind in updates of official YT apps that do so. Hell, if your smart TV or whatever isn’t getting regular updates, you may be set just by DNS blocking.
I do have a pi-hole set up, but alas it won’t stop YT ads.
You can sideload newpipe on the TV directly and jellyfin usually. I never had that great experience with steam link so I ended up just running a long fiber hdmi and usb ethernet extender
I use an Nvidia shield pro.
Certainly handles Jellyfin and Moonlight (for gaming, I could never get Steam Link working smoothly).
I assume there’s a YouTube client you can drop on it but I don’t use YouTube for much because I can’t stand YouTubers.
Can this be de-googled? I’m really just trying to get something that is pure android with jellyfin and newpipe.
Actually this is a more clear idea of what I was looking for. A device I could get these apps on and still have control over the device.
I’m not the person you replied to, but I think my experience could be relevant.
I have a MiBox TV S 4K, which as far as I know runs pretty pure AndroidTV (but I might be wrong). This is still going to try to connect to Google and Xiaomi servers for tracking and ads… but I have set up a custom DNS blocking trackers and ads.
I found this Reddit post and followed the instructions to change the DNS server on the MiBox to NextDNS, where I could later activate relevant blocklists (SmartTV, Xiaomi, Google). I also perform monitoring of the domains the MiBox connects to and have blocked a couple manually.
Finally, for AndroidTV forget about NewPipe and use SmartTube. It’s the same idea, but optimised for the AndroidTV experience where you have a remote and not a touchscreen.
Thank you. This is more aligned with what I was hoping for. I wanted a way to access these services but still lock the device down as much as I can. Thank you for sharing.
Glad that I could help. If you need help with setting the custom DNS or choosing which domains to block feel free to ask me here.
+1 from me.
The Shield is a couple years old, but it handles everything you throw at it perfectly.
SmartTubeNext is is the good (no ads) version of YouTube for AndroidTV devices.
Well I use a fire stick with smartube and jellyfin. Works just fine for my needs. YMMV
I would highly discourage getting a fire stick, they’ve locked it down so much its just annoying. Yes, you can get there but found it much easier on android tv boxes, specifically the Xiaomi Mii TV ones. Which one you get probably depends on whether you need 4K and/or dolby
Thank you for the tips! This seems like it may be a good option.