Vero[0] from the OSMC project has been around through several iterations. It's custom hardware for their media center OS, based on Debian and the Kodi media player. (They also release images for Raspberry pi.)

I don't own one, but the latest Vero V "supports a trusted video pathway with HDCP2.2 and Widevine L1 support"[1] -- which can (hypothetically, eventually) allow streaming services at full quality. SD-only streaming (or none at all) is one of the biggest drawbacks to these projects.

[0] https://osmc.tv/vero/ [1] https://osmc.tv/2023/11/vero-v-is-here/

What features are you looking for? The Nvidia shield is still a good option.

This is going to sound incredibly cynical, but I'm convinced the primary reason for Smart TVs to exist is to sell TVs.

My current TV is 17 years old. It's 720p, plasma, and yes I want to replace it. But functionally it's as good as the day I bought it. I've used it with appletvs since the first generation - if you're not into apple, there's android and amazon boxes and sticks too.

When my appletv goes EOL, I'll buy another $99 appletv - and they're usually supported for about 5 years.

I do fancy upgrading to 4k and all that jazz, but every time I go looking at my options - they're all "smart". They're rarely supported for 5 years, let alone 17. Obviously yes you're going to airgap it once it stops being supported in 2-3 years, but having to click through one OS to get to my STB's OS sounds like such an ugly kludge.

So back to my original premise - I can't help feeling that annoying me into upgrading in 3-5 years rather than clinging onto it for 15-20, is the entire point. The primary reason I want to upgrade today is to go from 720p to 4k. In 17 years I'll be touching 60, and probably won't be very fussed about 8k. If I could buy a current version of my venerable old plasma today, it'd likely be the last TV I buy. And that's not what they want. They've seen the lifecycle on phones and they want in.

(rant aside: when I got my current set, I naively thought CableCard was going to evolve into pluggable smarts. So you could buy a brain from your cable company, or apple, or msn, or tivo, and slot it into your TV. And when Real10 needed more grunt than your card had, you'd get a new card. Instead we ended up with disposable TVs.)

Because you can unhook a "smart box" and prevent the collection of your data and the showing of ads. Also because TV manufacturers who want your data and want to push ads at you don't want the extra cost in making and selling an extra box when they can just put their consumer hostile garbage right in the TV itself.

Yeah I agree too...

Someone found a way to solve a problem they posed as a problem.

Smart TVs consolidated buying the "extra" device for older consumers... Or maybe it's as simple as it's really that's all that is left to buy?

TVs, I mean TVs made to be TV sets, don't have PCs so to speak running them. I don't know what proportion of them use that, but there are lots of chips made to lower the chip count while providing the specific functionality needed to do a good job of rendering compressed video. So between "single chip" TVs where lower chip count is the objective and "high end processing" where a better image quality is the goal, I expect most TVs use rather dedicated solutions.

For example, chips like:

https://www.nxp.com/products/no-longer-manufactured/connecte...

https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers...

https://news.synopsys.com/home?item=122891

(who in the world thinks it's a good idea to do press releases with no date? These people is who)

https://news.synopsys.com/home?item=122565

So anyway, that doesn't mean it's impossible to free them - mods / reflash are available for some DSLRs for example. But it's more difficult.

There are however "universal" TV main boards for replacements... And these may have more documentation available? Maybe?

Nope, and probably never will be.

Roku TVs have signed boot and boot loaders, and the attack surface is so small, they haven’t had a public root exploit in about a decade (edit: there was one in 2021 I missed.)

Google TV is just Android TV, complete with reusing Android chips and Android Secure Boot.

The other manufacturers might have more weaknesses (perhaps webOS would be more open), but it’s very vendor and board specific.

So the question: A. Who can reliably defeat secure boot; B. Who wants to write Linux drivers for every TV ever sold?, and C. Who wants custom firmware if you well never get 4K or 1080p because the DRM isn’t happy?

I was doing this too except Apple TV couldn't offer me a web browser, so now I switch between rpi for browser and ATV for everything else.

> all can be had better elsewhere with smaller, cheaper, quieter, more discrete hardware with lower power consumption

Would you mind sharing a link to a nice write-up?