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Is there a community for rooting Smart TVs and putting some other OS (i.e. LibreElec) onto the hardware? Conversely, does anyone know if there's some way to re

Is there a community for rooting Smart TVs and putting some other OS (i.e. LibreElec) onto the hardware? Conversely, does anyone know if there's some way to re-use smart TV hardware? I had a Sony Android TV get smashed by a wayward child's actions some time ago and took all the boards out before recycling the rest, and I'd love to use it on my old dumb TV which has an aging Xbox 360 driving it, but I can't figure out how I'd get normal video output from the thing.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zamadatix 6y ago
The hardware used in Smart TVs is generally raspberry pi level (to the point the SoCs the rpi uses were actually designed for set top boxes) but a lot less friendly from both a kernel support perspective and hardware perspective because you don't have the entire Raspberry Pi foundation and hacking community behind making the software and hardware easy to hack on. Outside "I'm in it for the hardware hacking" grabbing a Pi 4 is going to be infinitely more effective, particularly if you want to throw libreelec or a de-googled Android TV on it without doing a lot of the hardware and software work yourself but even if you do it's unlikely you reach Pi quality. At the "more money but I just want a device I can run my own software on that works out of the box" the Shield TVs are great, you can throw an open source Android TV on it (not that the branded one is all that bad tbh).
- core-questions 6y ago
  Mmm. I have an RPi 4 but misclicked when ordering and ended up with a 1GB model. The Kodi performance on it is unacceptably bad; which is surprising considering that codebase used to run on an Xbox 1 with one core and 64MB.... so it became a Volumio machine instead, once I got an external USB DAC that didn't suck as much as the onboard sound does. (Talk about electrical noise, ugh). The reason I wanted to see if I could get that Sony hardware running on some other screen (besides the re-use angle) is because Android TV gets you access to the first party Netflix and other streaming services with the proper UI. Netflix-via-Kodi is not really a very good user experience presently. You mention open source Android TV - is that something I could run on other kinds of devices? Can you get the Netflix etc. apps on it?
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    Yeah 1 GB will limit you out of running Android TV on it straight out, I think it requires 2 GB minimum. If you go fully open source on any device (Android TV or not) you lose full levels of Widevine (or whatever DRM) support. Apps like Netflix work on open source builds of Android TV but you won't get high quality streams as a result. I think Disney+ was one that refused to work at all, the rest seemed to run. So if you're doing "open source" for purity reasons those are the types tradeoffs you have to make regardless of the hardware or software you choose. OTOH if you're just looking for a decent unrestricted first party external Android TV box that gets updates (old model is 6 years running on updates now) and has full play store/app support the Shield TV is $150 new and will run all of the apps at 4k 60 HDR out of the box. It can even be officially unlocked and rooted but again some apps will stop working (e.g. Disney+) if you do that. Shield TV Pro is $200 if you want additional RAM and built in app storage. Comes with a nice remote too.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    > external USB DAC that didn't suck as much as the onboard sound does Shouldn't it output digital audio over HDMI?
    - m463 6y ago
      That's an interesting thought. Is it easy to extract this in another form? Like coax spdif? Or do you need a home theater amp with hdmi in?
      - boring_twenties 6y ago
        Personally I'm using the latter, I forgot all about SPDIF. There are splitters on Amazon that take HDMI in and output HDMI video plus SPDIF audio, but they seem to all be in the $25 range, so may not be worth it.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      Sure does, but my beautiful-but-old amplifier does not have HDMI. I use SPDIF a lot, but haven't found a good cheap USB-to-SPDIF sound card yet. Plenty of pricier ones, but the point here is to find some use for something I already cheaped out on in the first place.
userbinator 6y ago
Wanting to "smarten" a dumb TV is the exact opposite of the common trend here on HN, but in any case, the motherboard is likely to have LVDS or VbyOne output to the panel; if your dumb TV's panel uses the same interface and resolution, you might be able to do it. (You can get "universal scaler" boards which can drive any panel.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zamadatix 6y ago

The hardware used in Smart TVs is generally raspberry pi level (to the point the SoCs the rpi uses were actually designed for set top boxes) but a lot less friendly from both a kernel support perspective and hardware perspective because you don't have the entire Raspberry Pi foundation and hacking community behind making the software and hardware easy to hack on. Outside "I'm in it for the hardware hacking" grabbing a Pi 4 is going to be infinitely more effective, particularly if you want to throw libreelec or a de-googled Android TV on it without doing a lot of the hardware and software work yourself but even if you do it's unlikely you reach Pi quality. At the "more money but I just want a device I can run my own software on that works out of the box" the Shield TVs are great, you can throw an open source Android TV on it (not that the branded one is all that bad tbh).

core-questions 6y ago
Mmm. I have an RPi 4 but misclicked when ordering and ended up with a 1GB model. The Kodi performance on it is unacceptably bad; which is surprising considering that codebase used to run on an Xbox 1 with one core and 64MB.... so it became a Volumio machine instead, once I got an external USB DAC that didn't suck as much as the onboard sound does. (Talk about electrical noise, ugh). The reason I wanted to see if I could get that Sony hardware running on some other screen (besides the re-use angle) is because Android TV gets you access to the first party Netflix and other streaming services with the proper UI. Netflix-via-Kodi is not really a very good user experience presently. You mention open source Android TV - is that something I could run on other kinds of devices? Can you get the Netflix etc. apps on it?
- zamadatix 6y ago
  Yeah 1 GB will limit you out of running Android TV on it straight out, I think it requires 2 GB minimum. If you go fully open source on any device (Android TV or not) you lose full levels of Widevine (or whatever DRM) support. Apps like Netflix work on open source builds of Android TV but you won't get high quality streams as a result. I think Disney+ was one that refused to work at all, the rest seemed to run. So if you're doing "open source" for purity reasons those are the types tradeoffs you have to make regardless of the hardware or software you choose. OTOH if you're just looking for a decent unrestricted first party external Android TV box that gets updates (old model is 6 years running on updates now) and has full play store/app support the Shield TV is $150 new and will run all of the apps at 4k 60 HDR out of the box. It can even be officially unlocked and rooted but again some apps will stop working (e.g. Disney+) if you do that. Shield TV Pro is $200 if you want additional RAM and built in app storage. Comes with a nice remote too.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  > external USB DAC that didn't suck as much as the onboard sound does Shouldn't it output digital audio over HDMI?
  - m463 6y ago
    That's an interesting thought. Is it easy to extract this in another form? Like coax spdif? Or do you need a home theater amp with hdmi in?
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      Personally I'm using the latter, I forgot all about SPDIF. There are splitters on Amazon that take HDMI in and output HDMI video plus SPDIF audio, but they seem to all be in the $25 range, so may not be worth it.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Sure does, but my beautiful-but-old amplifier does not have HDMI. I use SPDIF a lot, but haven't found a good cheap USB-to-SPDIF sound card yet. Plenty of pricier ones, but the point here is to find some use for something I already cheaped out on in the first place.

userbinator 6y ago

Wanting to "smarten" a dumb TV is the exact opposite of the common trend here on HN, but in any case, the motherboard is likely to have LVDS or VbyOne output to the panel; if your dumb TV's panel uses the same interface and resolution, you might be able to do it. (You can get "universal scaler" boards which can drive any panel.)