I watch YouTube on my TV. Using Firefox, with uBlock Origin. We have a laptop plugged into the TV, with a bluetooth keyboard. It is a vastly superior experience to any smart TV I have ever seen.
And also more than most people want to have setup in the living room. My wife would rather have ads on YouTube occasionally than an ugly computer plugged in all the time. It’s also more difficult to deal with than a remote you can work one handed.
Small PCs and drawers exist and i would rather have a whole damn server rack than 30 seconds to 3 minute ads every 5-10 minutes / video. It's worse than TV...and no im not gonna give google money for a continually worse experience despite paying.
You can get a pi and tuck it behind the TV. Then get a mouse that's styled like a remote. There's also plenty of OSs designed to look like a proper smart TV OS
I'm with you entirely, and that is how I interact with youtube.
My wife likes to cast youtube videos from her phone to the TV, so the experience is nearly the same to her on her phone as it is watching on TV. Maybe if she only used the PC interface she wouldn't mind, but she likes to search / scan / scroll youtube on her phone, and cast the bits she's going to actually watch.
She was very frustrated by having to find the video she wanted to watch on her phone on the PC using the some what finicky mouse touch pad to get the cursor to open the web browser, navigate to youtube, enter the title in the search box (possibly) scroll to find the video, and then a couple more steps getting it playing full screen.
I'm happy we have options to block ads that aren't uBlock Origin in firefox, even though that works great, and better than other options.
Using my ShieldTV, I've very much enjoyed SmartTube for ad-free YouTube viewing. It performs very well and is constantly updated when YT pushes new blocking techniques.
No, the objections are stupid. Not only is the Firefox experience vastly superior to any smart TV app, but you can have easy and effective ad blocking on top.
My best guess at why people don't want to do this is that we're conditioned not to do anything that isn't advertised to us, and nobody is running adverts telling you to hook a laptop up to your TV for a superior smart TV experience.
But I also get why people just want to sit on the couch, find a nice video on the phone and with the press of a button want to see it on the TV. No computer boot time, no updates, no writing on the keyboard while laying down.
I get that you can buy a fanless pc, install linux with unattended-upgrades and you have something more powerful. But most people don't know how or don't want to go through that hassle.
Leave the computer running all the time. Never install software updates. Browsing for videos with keyboard is equivalent or better than browsing with phone. If you really want to browse with phone I guess you need a Firefox extension that can send the tab to the laptop. Personally I've never looked into that because I can't imagine wanting to do it.
> Browsing for videos with keyboard is equivalent or better than browsing with phone.
Again, for you yes. But some lay down on the couch and a keyboard in that posture is just annoying.
And copying a youtube video from the app, into firefox app to just send it to the computer is bonkers complicated when you could just press the cast icon.
A lot of people interact with their phone all the time, but rarely use the computer. I'm telling you, it's more easy to use the build in Youtube app for a lot of people.
