this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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My YouTube subscription costs 0. ublock Origin.
Unlock origin and ReVanced is great, but it doesn't allow casting to the TV without ads..
Smarttube Next works great on my TV with FireTV. No ads.
Its the only way we can watch TV in our house.
Im just afraid that they might remove thr ability to install custom apks altogether.
Get rid of fireTV and get a true android TV like the nvidia shield. I'm sure there are others that are cheaper too.
Thats basically the plan eventually. Or just download the playlists that our toddler watches, since tv comes under his purview.
Also you can use a browser (I usually recommend Brave but I think the tide of opinion on them recently has turned?) that has adblocking built into it, navigate to youtube, and use that to cast to TV.
That's my secret, Cap. I don't own a TV.
I’ve got one! …but it’s only connected to a computer. All of our screens have computers connected. Computers that can install adblocking software and play videos are insanely cheap. I’m astounded anyone uses smart TVs’ rubbish software or a stick of any sort.
All of these options are unreasonable when you are talking a whole household and catering to a family that is not tech savvy. I have a pihole and it does not block ads from the YouTube TV app.
I have a plex going with content enough for the adults, but the kids consume so much media there is no reasonable way to get enough and fast enough and to meet their current interests. Youtube is the only streaming subscription we have left in the house because nothing even comes close for kids. Even Disney+ completely fumbles when it comes to appealing to what used to be its target market.
You can also use Apple TV which is hands down best streaming box, use ATV remote on your couch without faffing with computers and pay for good service that YouTube and content creators on YouTube provide.
It's easy to avoid paying but the experience is just worse.
And if you're really short on cash, subscribe from Argentina or India and pay ~$2.
I am a big fan of isponsorblocktv which sits on a network device like a nas and skips YouTube sponsor segments on Apple TV.
Whoa, this looks awesome and I do have always on server for Usenet/Plex and Homebridge.
Thanks!
[edit] Installed and working great but I had to change os.exit() to sys.exit() in one of the files, looks like it's not compatible with recent Python versions out of the box. Converted into system.d daemon, now working 24/7.
But, only way I have found I can get casting + sponsorblock without messing with any third party apps on TVs or casting devices has been just using Safari + sponsorblock and using air play.
Paying for YouTube doesn't solve the issue of me wanting to avoid being exposed to segments of people begging me to like and subscribe etc. Those I actually find way more annoying than ads.
That part is annoying but I generally don't subscribe to channels that overdo it. My remote has a button to skip 10s forward so I keep pressing it until I see sponsored segment is over.
I'd love to be able to use sponsorblock on ATV but I don't see how it could be reasoned that it makes morally ok to not pay Google and content creators for the service they provide (with cash, ad views or otherwise). Video hosting ain't cheap.
But, I don't have to press any remote at all. I don't even need sponsor block installed on any ATV or Android device. It's been as simple as just air playing a video from safari. Such a polished experience.
AppleTV doesn't let you cast from obscure streaming websites.
Chromecast does though. That's why it will always be better.
Huh? You can Airplay those. Not sure what do you want to stream there that would be a better experience than downloading it outright from Usenet or torrents.
Chromecast is fine for what it is and a very good value but it does not compete with Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.
You can airplay any video playing on your phone with the AppleTV
If u have an old Laptop colleting dust you can always install a light weight Linux on it and use it for YouTube or even pirated Films or series on your TV
Best solution is PiHole. If you can find RaspberryPi, but any replacement will work. Essentially local DNS which ignores requests to ad servers. There are also some other DNS servers which filter ads. But I've had less success with them.
In my experience PiHole doesn't stop YouTube ads on the mobile app. I imagine that it won't fix on a TV either.
The only solution I've found on mobile without installing security certificates and stuff is to use You tube's website on Firefox with ublock installed there too.
Yeah. Just found that out. Although uBlock kills those for me. Perhaps setting up a proxy and blocking those URLs could work.
Pihole won't keep you from watching ads,for what I know its because google uses the same servers to serve the content and the ads.Pihole is great to browse the web though.. I have it at home. For me what gets the job done is newpipe for my android phone and Smartube on my Android TV.
This is when apple comes in clutch with airplay. Safari + sponsorblock equals casting supremacy. I don't even have the YouTube app installed on Apple.
I run Newpipe on a fire stick. No ads.
They started blocking users with advanced adblockers completely in some places. It's expected they'll roll out that policy in most countries. Prepare to either ditch Youtube completely, watch dozens of ads as well as sponsored segments every couple of minutes (because why would Google pay content creators who make them a huge pile of money by providing content for free adequately, right?) or pay hundreds of dollars a year. Even then they might start showing you some ads because why the hell not? Big tech stole the internet from us and now they're banking in on it big time. Needlesly to say this is not a sustainable business model, but since when did that ever bother mega corporations?
It's a cat and mouse game, and history has proven that in this case adblockers will win. Or we'll get ad blocker blocker blockers.
Firefox is pretty much the only browser Google doesn't own directly. I'm afraid all of the other browsers will soon malfunction on that front so we'll have to see.
Firefox is going to see a lot of new users soon then.
Your terms are acceptable...
Unless they put YouTube content behind a paywall there will always be ways to block ads.
Probably that would be their future take, free 3 minutes of the video, if you want more... pay.
And then will the era of pirating and downloading YouTube videos begin.
Oh no my dns provider broke and it cant resolve the ad servers. Pihole for the win
Just that the ads and videos come from the same domain
I never got pihole to reliably block yt ads...
Personally, I like it when the content creators I spend time watching get paid for their work.
So pay them directly or through other platform. Why would you pay them through Youtube rather than Patreon when using Youtube Premium is going to make them get a lower share of what you paid?
My resources are limited. I'd love to support them all in more direct ways. And a few of them, I do support outside of YouTube from time to time, as well. But I only have so much money to give, and there's so many creators whose works I've benefited from. It's the most conscientious use of my limited expendable income.
Because the platform does actually deserver a share, too?
We'd be living in a very different world if we hadn't grown entitled to free shit because ads, and were actually paying for services that, you know, cost money to provide. The "ad supported" business model is utterly broken, dead, and gone, and was only ever able to support low-cost services like email and social media... But video streaming? By all accounts, it makes no sense.
And on top of that, YouTube's revenue share is by far the most generous in the industry. There's a reason creators ditch twitch, tiktok, etc. for it, even without the sign-on bonuses that other platforms have to resort to.
Can you cast it to your TV with no ads?
I have SmartTube Next on my shield which requires no casting. No ads and sponsor blocks.
I cast videos to Kodi on my nvidia shield. No ads.
This right here. Crazy to me that people would pay for what ublock origin does for free. Especially people defending the need to shell out for the service to "support" a trillion dollar company like Google.