From the SmartTube GitHub:

install Downloader by AFTVnews on your Android TV, open it and enter kutt.it/stn_beta or kutt.it/stn_stable, then read, understand and confirm the security prompts. (You can also enter 79015 (for beta) or 28544 (for stable), but this requires an extra step to install the AFTVnews Downloader browser addon if you haven’t already.)

The AFTVnews Downloader is available on both Google Play and Amazon Fire TVs. After installing SmartTube, it can self-update on its own without needing another app.

It supports casting via the YouTube phone app (or YouTube ReVanced app).

Kodi—It can connect to a media source via FTP, so I was able to effortlessly connected it to my online storage to download shows and movies from it to watch on the fly, and on my TV no less. Without that, it’d be a huge pain just to get the file onto my TV.

SmartTube—It’s an ad-free YouTube video app for Android TVs, and it has Sponsorblock included. You could say it’s YouTube Vanced for Android TVs.

Discord bots—I’ve setup my own personal Discord server (no other humans allowed in it) and set it up with various bots that do things ranging from posting tweets/ posts from Twitter/ Bluesky to letting me know when specific channels have uploaded a new video on YouTube or gone live on Twitch. I’ve also got another bot monitoring some RSS feeds.

I won’t be happy if they integrate federation. Ever heard the phrase “embrace, extend, extinguish”? It’s a tactic used by large companies to squash growing competition.

Google used it, for example, to squash a growing open-source chat messenger protocol called XMPP. (Think of XMPP like ActivityPub.) Google allowed its Google Talk application to integrate with people using XMPP. (They embraced XMPP.)

Then, they added their own proprietary features that wouldn’t work with normal XMPP users. (They extended, or built on top of, XMPP.)

Then, they cut support for XMPP integration, leaving it effectively dead in the water. XMPP users suddenly had a list of Google Talk users in their friend list who would never appear online again, whereas Google Talk users maybe had one or two people in their friend list who looked like they’d moved on from Google Talk. (They extinguished XMPP.)

Now imagine that happening with Threads. You, a Mastodon user, follow a bunch of people who just happen to be on Threads. There are some things Threads users can do that you can’t, but you don’t really mind. It works well enough. Then, one day, Threads stops working with Mastodon. Suddenly, over half of the people you followed are no longer available to you. The only way you can follow them again… is to join Threads.