The problem is that most of the cheap Chinese (minus all the adware) don't have Widevine support, so you won't be able to use Netflix in HD.
Also, if you are sideloading apps, you'll need to do a lot of fiddling to get stuff working.
The Nvidia Shield is probably your best bet on the least amount of crap on there that still gets regular updates. You can change the luancher to hide the ads and lock down as much of the phone home with Adguard.
Also when you look at majority of Android TV devices, none of them get any update. The only ones that seem to do are the Chromecast TV and Nvidia Shields. If you're in Murica, you can pickup the new Onn box for $20 but being that cheap it will probably be phoning home more.
End of the day you just want your TV to just work. If you start having to sideload Netflix/Prime/Hulu, you're gonna encounter sooner or later spending hours just to fix it.
They also asked for Jellyfin, which is one way to overcome to DRM requirements. No need to bother with DRM if you just rip the media you watch.
My phone and computer don't get high res Amazon prime content either and I'm not going to bother with workarounds if downloading torrents is just as easy.
Have you managed to replace the launcher? When I do, after a few weeks it seems to get replaced back to the default Amazon launcher so the can show me ads.
My Sony Android TV got an OS update 2-3 weeks ago, which (afaik) included some security fixes. Granted this is a fairly recent model.
It's also trivial to sideload on it any app you want, just by changing permissions and allowing installations not from the Google store. It's also fairly simple to hide suggestions from bundled apps like Netflix etc from the homescreen - we don't use any streaming services.
Once you do that, there are zero ads on it. As opposed to other models, even flagship TVs from LG.
I actually bought this Sony model specifically due to the reviews that said this was the case. Kudos to Sony for making this. It is a tad more expensive than LG models, but it's worth it.
My TVs are Sony for the same reason. The Android/Google TV install is very minimal, won't nag you about not being connected to the internet, and can be updated via a thumb drive. It's perfectly happy to be used as a dumb TV.
I've never bought one personally, but have read that Sony Xperia phones also come with a pretty vanilla version of Android. If I were in the market for an Android flagship, they'd be in the running. They're pricier but I don't mind that if it gets me an OS with as little manufacturer meddling as possible.
Just to give some context, I got the email letting me know my data was part of the breach.
I bought an iMac on interest free finance direct from Apple in 2014 via Gem (which is now lattitude). So I imagine everyone who has bought a Apple product on finance is going to be caught up in this. Also looked at the Aussie Apple site and they still use Lattitude for finance payments.
I would expect the internal bandwidth of a daughter card to need to be upward of 2x the PCIe lanes that it supports to the motherboard.
For instance a RAID card has to accept data from the motherboard and write it to the disks as fast as the disks allow.
We could do a PCIe card, but what I'm hoping for is to be able to dig ourselves out of the binary blob problem with have where Linux barely controls the actual hardware these days, and security concerns aren't something you can volunteer to fix. Our peripherals are pretending not to be computers but really they are and have been for some time.
If vendors aren't going to give us Open hardware, which it seems is never going to happen, then 'general purpose' expansion cards might be a forcing function.
I agree - they would probably go straight to ASML.
But not having a fab means they're flexible to jump ship in the future if someone was ever to outpace TSMC.
Also, consider Intel's fabs, which were stuck on 14nm for years. This probably factored into one of the reasons Apple made the jump over to Apple Silicon.
Exactly. A53 cores are efficiency cores designed for non-intensive background tasks in phones to save battery.
The only decent cpu atm that will eventually show up in TV boxes is the Rockchip Rk3588, but they aren't as cheap as some old s905x chips, and software support is very early days, so it will be a while before we see them in any android tv boxes.
The key does seem to be you need at least a quad-core of high-efficiency cores. The Nvidia Tegra X1 found in the Nvidia Shield and Switch runs fine even though it has even older A57 cores(predecessor to the A72).
Compare this to rockchip's last-gen Rk3399, which only has 2x A72 cores (and 4x A53 cores) and is pretty slow compared to a Rpi 4 (but that could also be because of crap software support on the Rockchip side)
There's a lot of different m.2 sockets. This m.2 has a PCIe not a SATA connection. You'd need not a breakout board, but an actual SATA adapter with a PCIe <-> SATA chip on it. Still cheap, not a big barrier, but the terminology of "breakout board" is quite incorrect.
To add, if you want to try O2, there's GiffGaff/TescoMobile and if you want to try EE there's 1pm Mobile and EE offers PAYG sims as well.
I have 5g internet at home, tested every network and EE was miles faster than anyone else even though I live close to all the towers. I did find that going on a contract was alot cheaper than PAYG, and it's the only way to get unlimited data on EE. Still it's £30/month which is cheaper than what Voxi is offering.
With the wifi on the tube, the EE one works alot better than Three who goes through the Virgin wifi network. EE installs a profile so it auto connects quite reliably when you stop at stations.
I think technically EE probably is the better network, it's just unfortunate that their customer service is hell on earth.
If you get a sim that actually works from the start, i guess you are lucky. Just pray you are not unfortunate enough to ever have to deal with their customer support for any real technical fuckup at their end... they burned so much of my time I can never go back.
I bought a 24 month unlimited contract (which I don't like doing but I know the network is technically better so bit the bullet). The sim didn't activate, 1 months of phone calls and endless promise after broken promise, they still couldn't activate the thing. Finally they sent me a new sim but on the wrong 1GB/month plan, which apparently they intended to switch once activated, which of course they never could manage to actually do. So after another month they agreed to end the contract since they couldn't seem to actually fulfil it.
Oh but there's more.... 6 months later I find out they are still charging me for this stupid 1gb contract for which no sim card even exists. I reluctantly call them again thinking at this point it might be faster to open a law suit, this is ridiculously complicated and takes much convincing since the contract is now supposed to be ended so all the account numbers etc are wrong. They agree to send me a refund me by cheque for £50 rather than set up another DD to avoid more fuck ups........
1 Month later: I receive a cheque for 50p - fucking joke.
They still owe me £50, but it's not worth the time it would cost me to attempt getting it back.
This is partly why I don't like contracts, you can't easily walk away from shit like this.
Tbh, Three was even worse when I rang, I just got a call centre in India, and they can never help you.
Does suck about EE for you. I've had a few issues, but they are okay with giving me credit. They messed up my discount on my latest contract, so they gave me a recurring discount of £5 on my contract and added like 3 months of credit on.
I also had an issue with BT (which I assume is the same call centre as EE). They never gave us the signup bonus (free soundbar). I waited six months, got the ombudsman involved, and someone high up gave me a call. They instantly realised it was pretty messed up. So, in the end, I ended up getting a Soundbar, and like £300 back in credit, so I had free internet for most of the contract, then cancelled as soon as I moved house.
But if it happens to you, always hint you don't want to get the ombudsman involved, and they will suddenly get their crap together.
Unrelated to 3, but we had an issue where our brand new site was blocked by Vodafone UK. Turned out they had some automatic firewall service that marked our site as suspicious and blocked it. They seemed a bit better than 3 as there was a process for applying for it to be reviewed and removed.
I'm assuming something similar happened to 3 where it was probably automatically picked up and blocked.
3 Home broadband is a good deal if you're close to a 5g mast as their 5g gear is quite new. If you're not close to a mast or its 4g only, you'll have the complete opposite experience.
From what I've read, alot of 3 Towers only have a single 1gbit virgin fibre link so you're at mercy to who else is using the same tower. If it's in a area with alot of traffic, you'll probably have pretty crap speeds.
I was on 3 until my contract ran out a few months ago, but it was still that bad. Oxford Circus you have full bars of 4g but no signal at all. I was going in quite alot last year before most people had returned to the office it made no difference to pre covid.
I think part of the reason is that 3 only use a handful of bands where EE has a bunch more to spread the load.
Was the same when I needed to tether my phone, always had no signal but couldn't load anything. Had to hotspot off colleagues phones. This was all over central London (Shoreditch, London Bridge, Holborn)
The Nvidia Shield is probably your best bet on the least amount of crap on there that still gets regular updates. You can change the luancher to hide the ads and lock down as much of the phone home with Adguard.
Also when you look at majority of Android TV devices, none of them get any update. The only ones that seem to do are the Chromecast TV and Nvidia Shields. If you're in Murica, you can pickup the new Onn box for $20 but being that cheap it will probably be phoning home more.
End of the day you just want your TV to just work. If you start having to sideload Netflix/Prime/Hulu, you're gonna encounter sooner or later spending hours just to fix it.