311
Roku and TCL are being sued for allegedly bricking smart TVs with bad updates
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
311 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
84512 readers
5362 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Everyone wants to access Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, etc through their TV interface and I just don't get it. The best experience is when you hook up a PC to your TV... not some TV-centric Android OS or Roku's thing.
Install Kubuntu on some old PC with a GPU that can handle 4K @60Hz and you're good to go. KDE and Firefox let you crank up the zoom so everything's easy to read and it even has HDR support (though I prefer going without it... Old person eyes).
It's such a vastly superior experience. Not only do you get the usual stuff, you can use a real keyboard to type into that search bar. You can also access all those pirate streaming sites and do normal PC stuff like play games.
I want my tv to turn on instantly; not to wait for a pc to boot, have to log in, and only then opening my streaming app. Such a hassle.
I personally have a tcl with custom launcher, debloated the most I could, on a network with adguard, streaming only from jellyfin (Wholphin client) and Navidrome (Chora), and sometimes Youtube (Grayjay). I click the power on button, it instantly turns on into Wholphin most often, then I click the play button. Litterally 2 seconds. What's the big deal? Ok, it still has traces of google and other stuff, but it sounds like a decent compromise. Ofc, if someday somebody out there makes a custom rom I'll be the first one to install it, but until then..
I use a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU.
It literally has a peak consumption of 15W, though I seldom see it go above 10% CPU usage (which is nice because even the small fan it has almost never goes on) so even when I'm actually using it as a TV box it consumes a lot less than 15W. It consumes even less when idle.
So it's always ON.
As a side benefit it's my home NAS and a bittorrent server managed via a web-interface, both things for which it makes even to have a machine always running.
Haven't actually seen any difference in my power bill.
That's cool that you're using it as a nas, and I'm glad it's working out for you
Myself, I want something easily controllable from a remote, so that when I come back from work I can just relax without seeing a keyboard and having to work with a pc.
I tried Librelec and lineageOS TV into a mini pc, but they all had various quirks, so I'm sticking to my TCL for now.
Absolutelly, if you can't use it with a remote and have to use a keyboard and mouse it's not the same thing.
However, my setup is easilly controllable with a remote: I have Kodi running always on top in it and use one of these.
With that the sofa experience is the same as with a dedicated TV Box (except that the remote can't power it ON, only OFF, but for me it's fine since I leave it always ON) because that remote just sends the right "keypresses" to control Kodi (apparently the shortcut keys are standard) so from a user point of view one interacts with it the same as with a TV Box or Smart TV.
The PC-ish stuff (such as managing the bittorrent server) I do remotelly from my main PC via SSH and web interfaces.
Mind you, I have a keyboard and mouse connected to it because sometimes I want to use the browser, but if all you're doing is watching stuff like with a TV Box, that's not needed.
Whoa, that's cool. For the power-ing on, I know that its possible to do via bleetooth, my steam deck does it.
It's USB rather than bluetooth, though maybe there are bluetooth versions.
Suspend the PC instead of shutting it down. It will use almost no power and wake up in a couple of seconds. Whatever you left open will still be running.