A very brief guide to watch movies/shows/anime on your TV for free

Disclaimer: This guide and links provided are purely for educational purposes. I do not take any responsibility on how you utilise this info.

This article is simply a primer. Google each of the things mentioned here. Each of these would require an entire article by itself to explain.

OS :

• Android TV/Google TV

• (Or Use KDE Plasma Bigscreen)

  • You can install both of these on a raspberry Pi

  • Can buy Android TV on pre-installed hardware like Mi TV box or Fire stick

Apps:The Pirate's Home Theatre

• SmartTubeNext - Ad free YouTube

• Stremio - Stream media from multiple platforms where you have accounts, like Netflix, Prime, Disney + etc. You can also stream from other sources (eg: torrents) using free extensions available in streamio's addon store.

  • Stream any torrent from popular Torrent trackers like PirateBay, nyaa, 1337, rarbg, yts ...

    • Stremio Extensions :

      • Torrentio - (install from site, if it's not available in addon store)

      • ThePirateBay+

    • (Torrenting may or may not be illegal depending on which country you live in. Do your research and proceed with caution, to not incur fines. Or you could use a safe VPN or better subscribe to a good debrid service).

    • Change your DNS server (on your router or Android or PC) to 1.1.1.1 to reduce buffering times, as some peers are blocked on the default DNS server provided by your ISP. ( Read about how torrenting works)

      • OR install the 1.1.1.1 app by cloudflare

    • All movies/shows won't be available, just the ones with enough seeders (which is A LOT of movies).

• Firefox (or any other browser)

  • Wouldn't it be cool if you could visit a website and watch that one old obscure movie that you can't get anywhere else. If only you could use a browser on your tv. sigh........Wait!! the tv runs android & you can install any app you want so....

    • Install Firefox (or other browser) manually using an apk file. Use apkmirror or Aurora store. Be sure to install ublock origin or any other ad-blocker in your browser.

    • Navigating a browser on tv with remote is awful! Use GuiScrcpy to control the entire tv UI using your PC. Or use scrcpy android app on your phone to mirror the tv to your phone & control it in the comfort of your couch.

      • OR you can use an air mouse or a mini wireless keyboard like this one, for easier navigation. You can get one from Amazon.

      • OR install this app, to use your phone as a bluetooth keyboard/mouse.

    • Enjoy all the movies that you can access via the internet. ( You can also add a PWA website onto the home screen of your tv, by clicking the "Add to home screen" button in the 3 dot menu of firefox)

• (optional) Projectivy launcher - a better launcher that also lists installed android apps that weren't made for Android TV. You can also set it as the default launcher, instead of your TV's default launcher, by following this guide.

Installing Apps

• Guide to sideload apps

• Option 1: Install from PlayStore

• Option 2: Install app by downloading apk by browsing the web through a web browser. (eg: Puffin browser)

• Option 4 (personal favourite): Wirelessly install apps to your TV box using adb from your PC (Download apk on your pc)

  • wireless adb setup

  • Use adb install <apk name> to install apk

Some more cool projects to setup

• Jellyfin - self host your media with a beautiful Netflix-like UI

• Kodi - Kodi does too many things for me to just explain in a single sentence. Kodi is a rabbit hole you'll be glad to be in.

• Termux - Barebones Linux shell on your TV

  • I see huge potential here but can't currently think of anything to do. Tell me in the comments cool things you guys can think of.

• F-droid - App store exclusively for Free & Open Source Apps

• Sonarr

• Radarr

• Lidarr

Share any more cool projects/tips I may have missed in the comment section!