This is just a reminder, if you think some subscription from a gigacorp is a good deal. It even might be, for a while. Then the price will go up and up once people get used to the idea.
It’s one of the problems of subscription services in general.
Yes, I know. Raising prices is and has always been a normal part of life. The thing is, the more services are subscription-based, the more these price hikes can be bothersome.
If the cost of toilet paper goes up more than you find comfortable, you can at least to try to budget it better and use less of it. Maybe you can stockpile it or borrow some. If it were a subscription toilet paper, you either have it or don’t have it. Or maybe you’ll get paper that prints ads onto your…
I’m getting silly. You get my point. Subscriptions can make sense, but also be a major trap.
If someone can point me towards a tutorial on blocking YT ads on both Roku & Android TV I’ll cancel my Premium subscription as soon as I see it working.
zoot’s suggestion is probably the simplest, but if you’re feeling adventurous you could get a raspberry pi and setup a pi-hole server to intercept your internet traffic and redirect ad requests to a null domain
When I first got the Roku, I had a “Oh, HELL NO!” moment when I saw that the Youtube app delivered fresh, sticky ads to my eyeballs–for which I have zero tolerance on all my devices.
A little research resulted, and I ordered a Pi 4. A couple of days later, after it was set up, I realized that PiHole (and later, AdGuard Home) would NOT filter out Youtube ads (although they work quite well for OTHER ad-filtering).
Shortly after that, Youtube offered me a free, 3-mo subscription, upon which I bit.
$11.99 felt steep to me, but I begrudgingly complied. At $13.99? That might be a deal-breaker.
On Android TV you can just use NewPipe, SmartTube, SkyTube… With some apps you can use your account and subscriptions directly.
Or YT (re)vanced I guess
This is what I did on my Chromecast TV. I actually installed SmartTube and then used another app with special permissions to override the YouTube button on the little remote it came with to launch SmartTube instead. I also swapped the Netflix button to go to my personal server of content.
Now that’s a solid suggestion!! I’ve had NewPipe on my phone forever–it never occurred to me that it might work on my Shield Pro! 🤦♂️ 👍
If I invested in a lesser Android TV for the bedroom (there’s a Roku in there) and cancelled the subscription–it would pay for itself (eventually)?
You can just use any 30-50 €$£ Android stick and stuff it with Android apps. Keep the TV as a monitor.
Until a month ago I was using an old Android 5 TV. It can still do so many things.
I suggest using NewPipe (or NP x SponsorBlock) 0.24.1 as that had a better layout for large screen. Not sure if they fixed it in 0.25.x yet.
Some other YT apps are actually specialised for TV use so you may wanna try more of them too.
When I said “lesser Android TV”–I meant a lesser Android BOX…
Yup
Well, I’ve installed and tested NewPipe, SmartTube and SkyTube. SkyTube Extra crashes on opening. NewPipe works, but isn’t nearly as polished as SmartTube–which is our winner so far. 👍
Neat. And no need for subscriptions either, which is always a plus 😁
I have a month to test it. (My luck the instant I cancel my subscription, it’ll stop working!) 😜
I dont know nothing about those. 3rd party on the phone that i broadcast to my tv. Simple as.