SmartTube lets you watch YouTube without the ads or sponsor segments, and without messing with other devices. You just start the app, and use the TV remote control to navigate and select and play videos.
If this SmartTube thing is anything like Invidious, then it will work great until it falls flat on its face, and then I'll have to spend an hour figuring out if my stuff is broken or if SmartTube is broken. It will inevitably be SmartTube, and I'll have to have this conversation with my wife:
"Why isn't the TV working?"
"oh you have to use the normal YouTube app for a while, the other thing broke"
"oh, can you fix it?"
"I can't, we have to wait for someone else to fix it"
"When will it be fixed?"
"No idea."
And then, 2 weeks later, it'll start working again, but it will be extremely unreliable, and we'll both find it so annoying that we'll both stop using it. I did this shit with Invidious, I did this shit with my own fork of Signal, etc etc. I have enough needy computers, I don't need my TV to become another one.
Obviously, you haven't tried it. Any moron could use SmartTube, it's no more difficult than the official client (probably easier, in fact).
The initial setup is probably a bit beyond a typical totally non-technical person unless they're dedicated enough to just read the directions (most people these days aren't), but once it's installed, it's a breeze.
>"oh you have to use the normal YouTube app for a while, the other thing broke"
This happens from time to time because YouTube makes some change which breaks things. In my two years of usage, every time this has happened, there was already an update waiting for me in the main menu. I just applied the update and all was well again.
I've only been using SmartTube about a year and YT changes have caused it to (partly) break only once in that time and all I needed to do was update to the latest version (which is one-click inside the app itself) and it was fixed. Also, I was a several months out of date on versions and the fixed version had been available for weeks already.
