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?

    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      The one that came with my tv.

      I just click up down left right enter return and it works.

        • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          It’s a Sony TV, a Bravia model from many years ago. It runs on a raspberry pi 2, connected with HDMI. There is a setting called CEC (if I remember correctly) that was automatically enabled, and lets the TV remote’s commands pass thru to the RPI over the HDMI cable. Should work for most TVs, but if you use an HDMI to DisplayPort/usbC adapter, some of those might not work right.

          I hope you can try it out because it’s very convenient as a user. And as the administrator you can still connect a mouse/keyboard or use a smartphone to configure the more powerful things Kodi can do.

          • kalpol@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            OK I had no idea this existed so thanks! I’m one of today’s lucky 10000 I guess. I have an old Panasonic with Viera and had no idea it did this. Not working perfectly yet but not far off.