Having a smart tv doesn’t mean you must use internet to utilize it. Mine is blocked from internet connectivity but connects to my media server on the local network. If anything, I prefer this so I don’t need an extra computer sitting in the living room and can instead use the same single media server my phones and computers do.

This feels like some really niche gatekeeping.

I do? I don’t love Android TV but I only have so much time to fight to the good fight with shit.

I would like a less smart tv but I don’t want to by a 7 year old Nvidia Shield and suffered paralysis by analysis trying to decide on on an Android TV box.

So here we are, I use jellyfin on a smart TV

We have both.

Kodi use Jellyfin for its media library and Kodi is excellent for a lot of the TV we watch. catch Up TV has replaced the decoder for watching terrestrial TV.

One thing that sucks in Kodi though is Arte (a franco-german channel that is a leans towards “intellectual”). For that, the LG WebOS app is much better than the Kodi add-on. Other than that 1 app, we could happily plug Kodi into digital signage panel if they weren’t stupidly expensive.

Not every Jellyfin user is also the server administrator. If someone sets up a server and shares that server with 5 people, most of those users aren’t concerned with the privacy implications of how they connect to the server; they just want to consume content as easily as they do with Netflix, Disney, etc.

It’s handy to share media with my family! The Roku app works OK

Family connect to my server with tv. If tv is in the same house everything is blocked and select things are whitelisted.