I bought a android tv device (NVIDIA shield) and just assumed it was open source like android, turns out it’s not and they force ads on the home screen, if you jump though a ton of hoops to roll back some updates, you can turn them off, but it will re-enable them after a while. does not feel like a device I own. Even NVIDIA cannot turn off the google ads on the NVIDIA shield. you can add other launchers but they don’t make it easy and they regularly get removed as the default launcher.
At this point I’m just considering just making a mini PC with linux https://plasma-bigscreen.org/ that will stay connected to my TV. OSMC is another option; however, it does not work well with DRMed content, so I gave up on that as well; even though it’s an awesome project. Some android TV boxes are compatible with Lineage OS so that might be another option.
Intel GPUs look like a great value. And AV1 hardware acceleration is a game changer