Re-purposing a circa 4yo Fetch Mighty media box (Hybroad: Model No. M616T)

Pull the drive, put it an external case and run it from a cheap SBC with DietPI (or similar). The box's MCU is obviously powerful but may not be user programmable and may not even be able to supply a useful data bandwidth over USB if that makes sense.

I don't know much about the brand, but if it's not running anything based on Android or FireTV, then it would probably be very hard to modify.

Maybe you can try to flash the operating system with a LineageOS Build, here is an interesting ressource: https://konstakang.com/devices/rpi5/LineageOS22-ATV/

This is with an Raspberry Pi though.

As Marc said - I would pull the drive (if its not a soldered flash chip) and use it for something else

Lineage for Android TV Sam? [Note to self: something to check.]

I detest Google and Meta (I'm OKish with Apple) because I hate being tracked and now using my expertise to train it's AI without paying anything. (Some of my dead circuits might poison it though, which is hilarious). I saw recently that you can't get AI to generate a clock or watch face at a specific time because millions of timepieces are set to one time (I can't remember what it is).

As clever as AI is (it's not that clever, just very fast with a gigantic database) we trust it at our peril.

Sorry to drift O/T but I'm of the view that AI is becoming 21st century Lysenkoism and will, in time, fall apart at the seams, for no better reason that AI is doing the job of influencers now but that's training other AI and it's ever decreasing circles.

I tried Lineage years ago on an old Google phone but some b'stard nicked it. It was pretty cool except for the UI design with all that nasty cyan. Brought back memories of CGA graphics (before your time probably). Yeuch.

But a modern build ... now that's something I can get behind!

@marcdraco Yes apparently it works. I haven't tried it myself though, but the guy from the link I have posted had success in doing it. I believe one would have issues with getting certain DRM-intensive apps to run - Netflix for example.

Yes, I am running Lineage currently and it really breathd some new life in my old samsung phone. It's a shame that most manufacturers grant only 2-3 years of updates until they stop.

@marcdraco Yep, I have worked out how to open the case. It is a normal Western 1TB internal HDD. I just have to unscrew it, put it in an 3.5" external HDD enslosure with SATA and power source and then format it. Thanks for your help.

@samh I have trawled everywhere, heaps of people have tried to re-purpose them, maening the media box, but they are locked down. The best that can be done is re-purposing the drive.

@hummingbird108 yeah i thought as much - too bad, almost seems like manufactured e-waste. Thinking that I have an old crt lying around, that does its thing for over 30 years and this POS is useless after around 4.... gets ya thinkn.