At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don’t worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don’t have to put up with that nonsense.
Invidious still wotks great for me.
There’s also Piped.
Peertube is also gaining traction and I personally enjoy that, just needs more content creators to stop worrying about chicken and egg and start protecting their content.
As someone that watches Twitch through MPV, I can confirm watching “Ad Playing” is preferable to actually watching an annoying ad.
Nothing stopping Vimeo from plumbing in ActivityPun amd joining the Fediverse. It’s open and the only reason no one does is because the data is valuable and they don’t want to share and play nice.
These walled gardens were not how the internet was imagined.
Understandable. But it’s the chicken and egg problem. Creators don’t want to create content, because there’s no consumers. Consumers don’t want to sign up, because there’s no creators.
So are you the chicken or the egg? :-D
If you’re on one you don’t like anymore you could always change instances and watch videos there. If you’re worried about losing comments, well you can comment from other Fediverse servers such as Mastodon or GoToSocial and they show up on the page for the video. :-)
I use GoToSocial with Sempahore for my microblogging (alternative to Mastodon).
Also Owncast as an alternative to Twitch.
And then I watch tilvids.com and other Peertube instances for videos.
And of course Lemmy. :-D
Oh and then there’s Funkwhale for audio.
It’s all in different states of usability, depending on the communities involved.
Failed to get working:
I’m a linux nerd and I jut run stock Fedora. It’s desktop is like a phone UI, so lots of folks are familiar with it.
I then use a wireless keyboard and trackball. T
here are tons of remotes out there,but I don’t have any experience with then. Let me know if you find a good remote though. 😁