[rerdavies]

Just don't buy an Android TV box. My ancient, very dumb, and totally wonderful Chromecast died, and I had to replace it with a Chromecast TV device. It's turned my TV into a 24-hour a day ad faucet. Transformed from a device that does remote Chromecasting very very well, to a insufficiently provisioned Android TV box that crashes and locks up frequenly when you are doing remote chromecasting. :-(

[Larrikin]

Just change the launcher. Android TV is the only platform that can block YouTube ads and supports Sponsor block

[rerdavies]

Huh. Thanks for that. I naively assumed that Google would lock down the launcher. I have emerged from darkness into light.

The difference between an Android TV launcher that's designed give people what they want, and the baroque monstrosity that results when Google tries to extract every fraction of a cent of advertising revenue that it can is startling. My TV just became an appliance that does exactly what I want, no less and no more, instead of a cacophony of distractions and diversions trying to convince me to do things I don't want to do.