Yea there’s very little public information on hacking anything other than android boxes and most of the more extreme stuff will break apps like Netflix or Disney+ so the best thing to do it leave it effectively stock, load on a hacked youtube client, with a dummy google account if you really want it private and your personal streaming client of choice (Plex, Jellyfin, Kodi etc) and then do some filtering/ad blocking in your network to lock it down.
The only caveat with an SBC is codec support varies greatly between distros you use on them, and you have to work out your own control/remote situation. I moved away from them for media a few years ago because I was sick of having to tinker and reinstall things because some codec was broken or the screen was tearing, or an update broke something requiring terminal access to fix. If you want a proper home theatre setup with full HDR and lossless surround support it’s not worth the trouble.
I’ve only seen that on brands like NEC, Benq and some dedicated education or business models. Sony and Samsung just have modified versions of their standard OSs on much of their range.
commercial displays are often smart these days too, sometimes just with a more limited default app setup aimed at signage and such and usually a more commercially focussed warranty.
The cheaper dumb commercial displays as others have said can have severe limitations in image quality.
well anything based on android TV can be easily modified with sideloaded APKs for excellent compatibility and upgradeability, there are also some package sideloading techniques for LG and Samsung but they are less open and there is less to do when you do jailbreak them. the issue with this, even on the top of the line TVs is that the hardware eventually gets out of date, and format/codec support is locked to that hardware so an external device is always a better option.
Buy the TV with the image quality you need and want in your price bracket (don’t look past TCL and Hisense these days), then plug in any of the top external streaming device and just leave the TV offline other than to check for firmware updates occasionally.
The Nvidia Shield pro 2019 is getting old but it is still the king for home media servers using plex or jellyfin, only weakness is no youtube HDR but thats not a big loss. great support for dedicated theatre setups with Dolby Vision, Atmos, DTSX etc…
Chromecast google tv is actually pretty good for most people for “normal” use with the standard streaming services and is pretty good at plex or jellyfin if you get an ethernet adaptor for it. DV and Atmos support is there but isnt perfect.
Current gen AppleTV is pretty good for all general playback, but is less hackable, so app support is limited to whatever is in the store, jailbreaks might be possible in the future as usual with apple devices, but I havent researched them.
the cheaper android boxes like the xiaomis and the microbrands on amazon all vary in quality and some are downright dangerous, but if you know android you can probably clean them up by stripping out crap with ADB commands.
Mathematics like calculus can be mechanised with analogue (continuous output) mechanisms, but programmability is limited. being a continuous analogue output you can say that they are able to instantaneously (ignoring gear backlash and other mechanical tolerances) solve complex equations. The inputs can be changed freely and continuously and multiple machines could be interconnected to form complex analogue logic, but it is difficult to imagine a reasonable way that it could perform general programmable computing tasks rather than being purpose built for a specific equation or family of equations. See the analogue clockwork logic used in early autopilots and space flight computers, bombing calculators, early maritime navigation computers etc…
A general purpose mechanical computer is of course possible, but doesn’t scale well to what we would consider a modern computer equivalent, as another commenter mentioned babbages analytical engine roughly scaled and parallelised to a modern computer would weigh as much as a decently sized asteroid. even if the consecutive generations of smaller scale machines allowed for micro engineering of mechanical logic gates via micro scale CNC it would still be limited to a certain physical minimum size much larger than our current transistors and could only function at a limited speed and with a limited lifetime.
Other methods that could be used are chemical logic, which can be scaled pretty small, but requires constant fuelling and would be prone to “noise” from contamination. Optical logic is another option, but requires advanced optics, filters and polarisers which would require advanced manufacturing in the first place.
The most likely, if still far fetched option for pre-industrial NON-MECHANICAL computing to me is biological, through selective breeding and intense training of humans or animals to perform computing tasks, even subconsciously. We know this is possible as we see the occasional human computer arise naturally, sometimes with extreme and unbelievable capabilities, but we don’t know how to control it to “manufacture” a biological computer in this way.
I recently replaced a pi4 with an intel n95 based mini-pc and it’s been an absolute joy. I moved a few of my services and VMs over from the main server. It runs my Homeassistant via HAOS in a VM significantly faster than the pi4, another VM with access to the IGPU runs a 4k dashboard feed into my video distribution matrix, a few containers for simple things like MQTT and Adguard Home (like pihole) and it has room to do more.
The whole computer with 16gb of ram and 256gb SSD cost about the same as a pi4 8gb did when the shortage was at its worst.
The other option of course, is a cheap older optiplex, for under $200 you can get quad core sky lake or kaby lake generation processors, 16gb of ram and room for a couple of SSDs, a bulk storage HDD and a couple of low profile PCIE cards.
Surely Plex can come up with a way to accurately identify those that are actually running dodgy paid servers against the TOS and leave the smaller guys alone.
I know the whole idea of the shared library is already pushing laws to the limit but those that are running large scale paid servers will eventaully ruin it for everyone.
My theory here is this episode is 4 mini episodes written by ai.
Usually when they do an anthology or clip show they have some kind of in-universe framing device, but this almost feels like the whole screenplay was ai and they just said fuck it.