Projectivity is another great option, especially if you want a few more options without anything you don’t want.
I also use Projectivity on my NVIDIA shield. No ads, no recommendations, just the apps I want. Everyday I’m glad I installed it.
So you launch shield then launch projectivity? Or did you reinstall the shield os
++Projectivy, it’s top tier software. It’s so clean by default, has lots of customization options, and no ads whatsoever. It’s so good that I worry Google will try to take away the option to use a third party homescreen on Android TV.
Can’t we just have small Linux boxes with Plasma Bigscreen or something with cec support setup so the tv remote still works already :sob:
Raspberry Pis have CEC support. I’ve used it with OSMC (formerly either LibreElec or RaspBMC, one of those? It’s Debian Kodi). It was much better without. So, if you turned the TV off with the TV’s power button, the Pi would turn the TV back on.
The Pi has a 3.5mm audio jack. I have a set of desktop PC speakers that are hell and gone better than anything built into a television in the last 20 years. Not only is it not straightforward to get it to control the Pi’s audio output level with the TV’s remote via CEC, OSMC absolutely did not want to do this. Not only would that setting get revered to HDMI audio out, it would disable the analog out option, and you’d have to SSH in and change a config file to re-enable that option in the first place. That would happen either during updates or even just power cycles. I swear the phraseology of the line you’d have to put in that config file would change; the same line I’d put in there would still be in there and not working.
The thing with open source software is, it’s always going to have the UX of a sinus infection, especially since the manufacturers of hardware gimp their devices to not work well outside of the walled garden.
I just bought a Dell Optiplex 990 for 50 bucks on eBay. I lucked out in that the listing came with 8 GB of RAM. Just threw in a previous SSD, loaded Fedora Kinoite, and am currently playing with Podman/Docker Compose for an Arr stack. By next week, I should be able to move it from the corner where the router is, and then finally deliver on the promise that I made my girlfriend back in February, when I bought the HDMI projector and a speaker set.*
That said, I’m all for your idea, especially if it comes with an IR receiver, too.
If I get another Optiplex (that one for homelabbing), I’ll look into COSA and Butane/Ignition files more seriously. That’s a very solvable issue, after all.
* We had to move since then and I cannot find the front right speaker, for some reason. The company, whose name looks like the antagonist of FF8, doesn’t seem to sell replacement speakers, either.
MSI cubi fanless with KDE Neon autologin to Plasma Bigscreen with Vacuumtube, steam big screen mode, jellyfin… Remote controller is a Rii F8 mini which has a few programmable IR buttons for the old dumb TV.
The future is now…
I recently tried this with LibreElec on a NUC I already had running pihole. It would randomly freeze, I think due to some integrated Intel video shenanigans.
Next I tried KDE Neon with Plasma BigScreen. For some reason, PlexHTPC ran like absolute garbage on my 4k TV but fine on my 1440p monitor.
I got PlexHTPC running fine on MXLinux but then I couldn’t get pihole working with DoH for some reason.
Finally just put Mint on it, got them both running and figured I’d tinker more later. I just needed something that would let me stop using the TCL Roku interface.
CEC does not work, but I got a cheap remote air mouse/keyboard thing that worked out of the box.
You can!
You’ll just be limited in your app selection and then there’s DRM.
Browser shortcut/PWA, and also DRM isnt a problem because google offers linux its DRM services for free.
I did also not rule out expandable local storage for offline media. Or connecting to a jellyfin instance.
OK gang my point is not that this is impossible to DIY. In fact we really enjoy you all sharing your setups and appreciate everyone taking the time :3
We just like for something like this as a cheap (enough) commercial product to finally catch on. At the end of the day folk just want to have a TV, plug something into it, and have it work.
We were already tired of the overpriced TV boxes that shady broadband companies forced into everyones livingroom. Nowadays that horrible experience comes physically fused to every TV further out in the markey than a sane person could reasonably be expected to look.
It just super sucks to see so many pay for devices that actively fight you in general. Most electronics already inherently feel like an accesability issue simulator to most people anyways. It being deliberately opaque, confusing and facilitating dark patterns on top of that is such a PITA. Not to mention if you already have inherent accesability difficulties from any number of conditions.
I’d love a stick that has Hoopla support, but of course that’s going to be hard to come by because Big Entertainment doesn’t make billions of dollars off of it.
Roku, Android TV (ONN), Apple TV, etc. all have Hoopla support. The app doesn’t even have a way to browse titles, but if you know what you want to watch their app works.
If any apps, preferably open source, could do a search of services to see if one has “American Beauty” (or whatever) streaming for free AND launches the app directly I’d have no need for my stock launcher.
Somebody once tried to sell a box that would cancel all your streaming services and only fire the account back up for a month at a time when you wanted to stream something. It was a phenomenal idea with a genuine problem worth solving, completely torpedoed by the fact of the box costing $400 up front and I think requiring its own subscription.
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Streaming sticks shouldn’t have apps. The Chromecast Ultra is the last good streaming stick. Just cast, and it plays. End of story.
Its nice to be able to use it with a remote instead of fumbling around with your phone.
Also performance, decoding support, not burning your phone’s battery, etc
Chromecast doesnt use your phone for decoding. It just tells the stick to play the video, and it plays it directly. It shouldn’t drain your phone at all.
The remote is a personal preference, but I was happy for the phone to be the remote. Having a second remote didnt gain me anything.
To be fair, I haven’t used Chromecast in a long time. Maybe even 10 years ago now.
I remember having connectivity issues, where I’d go to pause the content and realize it disconnected again. So maybe the battery drain was because of poor connections, or poorly designed apps
There were definitely some shitty Chromecast apps. ABC in Aus had a terrible one. There are also some pretty shitty TV apps as well :/
Ultra was good for connectivity, as it has an Ethernet port. Relying on wifi on a streaming stick behind a TV was tough. My TV behaves as a signal blocking wall, anything WiFi behind it is a dead zone.
I also haven’t tried the new Chromecast with google TV in a few years, but it was so terrible I returned it immediately and started scouring eBay for another Ultra. I am very sad Google killed the plain Chromecast line.
I loved the “idea” of the Chromecast and used them exclusively for over 5 years. However the implementation was always the issue. Phones would always disconnect leading to the inability to control it, and after recent updates, kill the stream mod session.
A hybrid approach is the best IMO. A remote for ease of access and quick things, plus casting for when you alreay have your phone out and want to use the better interface.
I’ve not experienced the stream ending, but there disconnect is definitely an issue. Might be app specific?
When I tested Chromecast with google TV (5 years ago to be fair, it might be fixed now), if I casted from my phone, I then had to use the remote to choose my Netflix account and choose the show again from scratch. So it was two steps on two devices, for no good reason. It also didn’t connect to WiFi properly and didnt have Ethernet, so that killed its functionality as well.
