Yeah... not much you can do beyond DNS-based blocking for most dumb SmartTV OSes and obviously sideloading iOS apps sucks if you're not jailbroken. Cases like these are really where they get you!

Regarding Chromecasts, just in case anyone's interested: they're still Android under the hood, so you can simply send the Revanced Manager APK via Send files to TV and proceed as usual. FYI: you need to enable developer mode (see step 3, specfically) to install custom APKs -- this won't impact your warranty.

I think the best solution right now for older Chromecast (ones without a dedicated remote) is running castblock on a raspberry pi or something else attached to your network. It doesn't block ads but it can automatically mute the chromecast volume when ads are playing, as well as automatically hit the skip button when it shows up (maybe like 5% of the time it misses both but still better than nothing). It also looks up sponsor segments from sponsorblock and detects when a sponsor is about to play and can skip those too. It auto detects all Chromecast on the network so all you have to do is run the program with the flags for what features you want enabled / what sponsorblock segments it should skip.

If you have a Chromecast with Google TV (with like a remote control and apps) I've heard smarttube-next is a good alternative app with ad blocking.

I'm not sure what works with TVs that have Chromecast built in, might also be smarttube-next. I only have the Chromecast ultra and the older standard Chromecast and castblock works great running on my pihole box

https://docs.pi-hole.net/

But I think they will cut access without ads soon enough, and I do agree someone needs to pay for the service.

My problem is quality of the platform went down with higer quality of production. Those with better production are doing better than those with quality content. Additionally it started looking like TV network with dozen big shows, and not enough random content. Ex. they always recommend me videos with 1M+ views, even thou a I want only ones with less than 100k.

I have been dusting of my podcast players for some time. I like to have a video, but looks like price is too high for me. Audio will be good.