With Chromecasts being discontinued, increase in ads, telemetry, etc I’m wondering if anyone else is going back to old school HTPCs or if they have some other solution to do this in house.
I think the options here are likely:
- Rooted streamer (ie Chromecast, firestick)
- Android Box
- Mini PC
I’m actually most interested in experimenting with #3, a mini PC running KDE Plasma Bigscreen. Most of my self hosted apps can be run in browser windows, and a full desktop (while harder to navigate) is better than the browsers you can get on Android.
What is everyone esle, especially the privacy / de-googled self hosters doing for their media front end?
What optimized application do you run for the big screen and easy navigation? What about remote control?
I haven’t done it other than for testing, but you can pair a fire Stick remote to a PC using Bluetooth and it works with Kodi.
Stremio/Plex with a Microsoft keyboard that has a touchpad built in. It’s big but you can get small ones off Amazon for $20
I’d recommend the Pepper Jobs windows 10 gyro remote. I’ve got two of them because they’re so great.
Are those Windows only?
No. They emulate a keyboard, and use the keyboard shortcuts to do things in Windows. So they won’t work out of the box in Linux, but you can add each of the keys as a keyboard shortcut, then they’ll work.