My Smart TV is obnoxious when connected to the internet. Ads get placed in menus, services I don’t pay for notify me, and the ones I do have don’t even work that good. The TV annoyed me every time I used it, so I found a dusty Raspberry Pi in my closet and got to work.
I tried several different ways to turn the dinky computer into a home entertainment system. By far the best solution I found was to install the OSMC operating system on it. OSMC allows me to access all the files I want using my TV remote. All my files are stored on the thing, so there’s no need to worry about internet connection or ads. I got it to boot automatically, so all I need to do is switch the TV input to access it.
There’s ways to configure OSMC to connect to online services, but my Raspberry Pi is very slow on Wi-Fi and I have no option for ethernet. This is kind of a feature though, I love how it just has my music and videos. Makes the whole experience way less distracting and I never end up scrolling for 20 minutes trying to find something. If needed, I can easily transfer files from my laptop using some command line tools.