I have a Shield on my main TV that’s great, but I want to add a TV and streaming device in front of my exercise bike. I will only use Plex and YouTube (Premium), at 1080p or less. Budget is $50, or hoping to keep it under $40 on Black Friday.
Desires:
- Good remote - voice assistant, a YT button and a button that can be programmed for Plex, remote with headphone jack is intriguing.
- Home Screen - I want an ad free home screen that will give me decent suggestions from YT and Plex. I am willing to do some jailbreak type stuff for different launchers, as long as it’s stable and I don’t need to keep fixing it every couple months.
- Responsive - as good as the Shield I would hope.
Available devices:
- Onn UHD - seems well rounded, how’s the responsiveness?
- Google TV - being Google makes me assume it’s the king of this category, but is it?
- Roku- I am intrigued by the remote with headphone jack, do any others have this? I also read Roku will be losing the YT app soon if they can’t come to an agreement with Google
- FireStick 4K - good for jailbreaking right? I have a minor preference for Google assistant to Alexa, do you get Google after jailbreaking?
- Other - suggestions?
Thank you for your help
I'd go with the Google TV. I don't think you need to "jailbreak" the FireTV stick. You can sideload apps and it is easy enough to put an alternate launcher on it to hide all the ads. For suggestions, it may not work as they will push Amazon suggestions. I personally just use suggestions / recommendations in the YouTube app.
If you can find a $10-$15 TiVo Stream 4K on clearance at Walmart that would be the best bet. A few ADB commands and you can remove the TiVo apps and disable the TiVo restrictions. I bought one for my old 1080p TV (circa 2014) last week ($15) and it works great with Plex and YouTube. It is snappy and I can have it mimic the look / feel of my 2015 Shield TV. (I can even direct play Blu-ray rips from Plex -- granted I'm connected via Ethernet -- with no issues).