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:

  1. Rooted streamer (ie Chromecast, firestick)
  2. Android Box
  3. 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?

  • johntash@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    6·
    2 months ago

    I’m still using an Nvidia shield which I guess counts as an android box. I thought they’d release a new version by now, but I’m considering building a htpc instead.

    I used to use a raspberry pi 2 or 3 and it worked fine for 1080p content. Not sure if the newer pis support 4k, but it’s on my list to look into eventually.

    • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I love my shields, I have both the tube and the pro in different rooms. I like the Jellyfin AndroidTV app more than Kodi. I have side loaded a different launcher to avoid the ads.

      I would love to try and replace it, but it needs to be able to handle 4K UHD rips with hdr and the original sound tracks in ATMOS or whatever.

      • johntash@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I really like mine too, I also have a tube and a pro. Both of them have a weird issue with the TV I use most often though. Both shields won’t display anything unless I boot them in safe mode.

        They both work on a different tv that is 4k. This one is an older 1080p plasma. But it’s weird that it used to work just fine. It might be related to the TV, but no other devices have issues so it’s cheaper to replace one of the shields than buy a new tv lol.