we live in hell
I don’t even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they’re saying…hey do you want a worse experience?
we live in hell
I don’t even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they’re saying…hey do you want a worse experience?
Just get a dumbTV, or a large PC display and speakers.
If you also need YouTube, Netflix, casting, etc, get a raspberry pi, and install kodi on it.
That’s getting increasingly difficult to do.
The enshittification continues.
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tiny, but it does work
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Get any TV. Build HTPC. Never let the TV access the network itself.
I’ve been doing this for 15 years. It gets easier and less expensive each year as hardware improves.
Judging from the trend, soon smart tvs may include a cellular modem (always on, paid by the manufacturer) or support mesh networking (passing your data through your neighbour’s tv) so it can always send out telemetry data and retrieving ads. Amazon already did it via Amazon Sidewalk, which is said to cover over 90% of people in the US.
Yikes. Soon you’ll need to buy a Faraday cage that fits your TV and sofa.
Do you know of any good guides on this? I started messing with Linux plasma bigscreen and got twisted
Buy a Raspi 4 or 5 if you can get it. Canakit has slightly overpriced but compreshsive kits. Digikey tends to get raspi 5s faster then other stores if you want the latest and greatest, but it’s a b2b company that is kinda annoying to buy from as a retail customer. A 4gb model is all you need from either gen. Keep to a 32gb or larger sd card.
Install libreelec as the operating system. They have a usb program that will flash a usb drive to do this for you. It will automatically boot into kodi, which in is a linux based media center. You can then point kodi to any file server you have, or plug in a usb drive into the raspi with your movies/shows. Kodi aslo has great addons, so you can add things like youtube/nebula/etc.
For advanced use, setup jellyfin on a home server, then use the jellyfin kodi addon to sync all your media. This is really nice when you have kodi setup on multiple tvs, as it will sync when you pause shows/movies, can auto skip intros, stream live tv and make sure all your systems are up to date about with what media you have available.
For a great universal remote, buy a flirc ir recivever that plugs into usb and a flirc skip remote. Flirc is a great company in this space.
That remote reminds me of Logitech harmony but it’s waaaay cheaper
The OS bit is what I’m missing. I’ve got Kodi on a old i3 right now running Debian and Otaku. I’ve also got old pi4s I’ve never done anything with (unfinished projects).
I’ve also heard of jellyfin before. That’ll be later once i have local media. For now I want a front end for streaming media from online sources. Seems like I have to look at Kodi addons.
And Netflix downscales resolution on Linux btw. It’s almost like you have to host your own media and pirate it all to get the best experience
https://youtu.be/o4GZUCwVRLs?si=tynu6xkxEWNoyzXT
or plex
How well does Plex run on a RasPi (or other SBC), and have you found a good remote control solution for it? I’m still using Plex on Google Chromcest TVs - the li’l remote just makes it so much easier.
For my dad’s roku TV I’ve got an app on my phone. It just automatically works if my phone’s on the same network.
No idea if plex could receive something similar but if it’s got some kind of API then one could be built.
Yeah, hoping to avoid apps. My wife and kids don’t all have the same aptitude or capability for that.
For the pi there’s always the option of getting a Bluetooth remote and writing your own script to send the commands when they’re triggered - it’s easier than you think because chatgpt can do all the awkward stuff for you
Not a bad idea, and scripting doesn’t worry me. But, I’ve just remembered I have an old Astone media player remote and USB dongle somewhere. Might have to have a play.
Flirc skip one + flirc ir usb. Great remote combo for kodi.
Hmmm - looks promising. Looks like I can get one shipped to me in Australia via Amazon at a reasonable price too. Thanks for the tip!
You need their usb irc adapter too, but with both it should do the trick.
They have really nice raspi4 metal cases too, but they will block wifi if you use it. They work great when wired in though.
Yeah, very cool. The USB adapter is available on Amazon too.