There are some benefits to centralization. For example, if I want to watch a movie or TV show, I have to look for it on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, HBO, and my cable box. I wish I could subscribe to a single mega-service that just covered everything.
I wonder if it would be possible to create a service (or if one already exist) where you could select which streaming sites you are subscribed to, and the service could search all those sites for the movie you want to watch, then redirect you to that site. Because it's hard to remember or to know which site has which movies/TV shows.
Roku tries to do that, but it isn't super reliable and doesn't have access to everything (especially iTunes and YouTube).
There are sites that you can enter a title and it will tell you all the places it's available for streaming. I do use that once in a while, but it's still too much friction (IMHO).
Android TV has a unified search if you have multiple apps installed. It works very well - and on my SHIELD, highlights shows from multiple apps on the home screen with proper thumbnails etc.
I bought a Sony TV at the start of this year and it has Android TV. The Android TV stuff is slow and will throw out error messages that don't mean anything to me. Stuff lik "Huey module has stopped". Or it complains about a Samba issue. We ended up buying a Roku box and use that instead of the Android stuff.
The only thing we use Android TV for is the MLB app. I'd like to figure out some way to delete everything but that one app because I always have to search for it.
Yup. These days most people have fast connections. Hosting your personal website from your home should be the default. Huge amount of storage, no changing terms of service, no perverse profit incentives, no third party doctorine problems, no deplatforming problems, and it cuts the gordian knot of deciding what is allowed and what isn't. Then people can associate however they want.
You don't need a static IP. I've been doing it for 20 years without one. It's very simple to use a ddns service, or, just set it manually every couple months to a year when it changes. It's certainly no reason to not host servers from home.
