Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.
The text in the image:
I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology
Here is what I do: I use a firetv with Kodi, Plex, Smart tube Next (free YouTube), and various live TV apps. That's it!
Unfortunately there is zero way to disable the home screen in order to run a custom desktop environment and there is zero way to replace the Netflix, primetv, DirecTV, etc. buttons on the remote.
Seems like every year it gets harder and harder to change settings on the TV and all the things I just mentioned not being able to do used to be things you could hack together.
It sucks!
I used a Fire TV for a while (because it was cheap and you could sideload almost any Android app), but at some point I got tired of the awful (and increasingly worse) UI and sluggishness of the device, so I splurged on a Shield TV Pro a few years ago. It's night and day in terms of performance alone - and yes, you can change the function of any remote button with the Button Remapper app. Custom launchers are also possible, although I haven't tried this in a while.
The main downside is that the device has much less reliable WiFi, for some reason. After some infuriating days of troubleshooting attempts, I solved that issue once and for all by relocating a meshnet satellite close to the device and running an Ethernet cable.