Specifically I'm wondering about the TV frontend UI. Presumably most people are going to be using an android tv box like fire tv or chromecast? Something else?
I recently picked up a new chromecast 4k that has the "Google TV" OS on it and... I'm having a hell of a time coming up with a UI that looks similar to the stock one (with movie recommendations, up next, my watchlist, etc) but that hooks into piracy streaming services.
For launchers I found projectivy, but I noticed that the "channels" feature which pulls in that sort of thing is remarkably limited. Streaming-wise I've got stremio and cloudstream, and only stremio lets me pull in my library into projectivy. Which is okay but I can't get that synced with trakt or getting recommendations; it all has to be managed from stremio.
whereas cloudstream doesn't really have any connectivity at all. There's a few streaming services that somewhat pull things in but it's not great. Netflix doesn't seem to hook into it, nor plex. It ends up being better to just use the stock home and manually launching into stremio/cloudstream when I want them.
Surely there has to be a better way to do this? The stock home screen is nice with free live tv, movie recommendations that link into various paid streaming services, etc. I'd just like to hook in something like stremio, plex, etc. instead, but that seems impossible?
What exactly do y'all do for your setups? Trying to manage my google play watchlist/likes independently of trackt, and then also managing my stremio library separately from both just feels like hell. I end up having to take mental note of the stuff I see on the home screen and manually searching it up.
The live tv channels that the stock homescreen has is seemingly not replicated anywhere else which is a bit disappointing. I saw the old android tv menu get really close to what I'm after, but I can't manage to get it working on my newer chromecast. The menu installs, but the channel feature doesn't work, making it pointless.
Is there a better way?
I like how nobody bothered to read the post and actually answer OP's question...
They did, albeit indirectly. It seems the answer is "no one has done this" which means it's likely not possible with the software that's currently made lol.
Seems most people just go through plex/jellyfin/emby with their usenet *arr setup. Which is no doubt cozy, but it doesn't quite grant the experience I'm after lol. I think most people are just used to launching into a streaming app to see what's on there since that's how most paid streaming stuff works too for the most part. The google tv/amazon fire tv homescreen setup is fairly new and apparently unused by basically everyone lol.
I might have to look into just coding my own launcher to get the features I want lmao. seems like a huge endeavor though. Right now I just have my remote set to be able to instantly jump into my preferred streaming apps, and single/double press home to switch between stock launcher and projectivy. It's not great lol.