I think entirely separate VMs in different VLANs might be a bit much for a beginner to setup correctly. The Isolation that Docker and it’s networking Provides might be enough to start, no?

Is there a good way to watch the streaming services on your TV without trusting either Google/Apple/Amazon to not spy on you with their hardware?

I have an Nvidia Shield TV. With 150$ its outside of your price range, sadly.

But: I’ve been running this thing for 7 years now and its still trucking. Compared to other smaller streaming sticks that have become unusable because of bloat firmware updates over time.

You can install custom firmware on it, but my understanding is that when you want streaming apps like Netflix or Disney to give you more than 720p output, you need the official OS.

If you want to Dodge the ads on the launcher, there are alternative launchers that can simply be sideloaded.

I don’t use Jellyfin but I have all my movies on an SMB share that I’m accessing via Kodi. The hardware is strong enough to decode any format you throw at it.

I feel like the takeaway here should be that the experience of contributing to the project was not great. That's it.

There is value in complaining, even if you don't have solutions. You can only make people aware of the consequences that their actions have caused by telling them.

I don't even take issue with him posting this publicly to his own Dev blog. I think its a perfectly fine piece of on-the-job experience OP has shared. Maybe in a few years he would like to come back to it with a different perspective.

I do however think that OP posting this here (and apparently other boards) is a choice I don't agree with. I think OP would have been better served writing a response email to the maintainer, explaining how they felt. Beyond that, what can one do?