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?
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I was looking into something similar recently, and asked around on Lemmy. The general consensus I heard was that a Mini PC weren’t ideal, mostly I think due to the fact that they aren’t designed purely for streaming.
One think someone said piqued my interest, and I might try this. They recommended buying a cheap, Android TV compatible streaming box (like an Onn brand one), and side-loading an open source (and ad-free) launcher onto it.
I found this thread over on the Huffman Shitshow that had some good instructions.
This is basically what I do, except the quicker way without using ADB to remove anything. Might try removing the junk though to see if it makes a difference. Launcher Manager and Flauncher makes an Onn 4K very snappy. Hard to beat for $20 and a little setup effort. I used to use Firesticks for years, but they get so slow and constantly revert my launcher changes. Finally got rid of them all.
Have you found a way to stream Netflix at 4K?
Sorry, no idea. Dumped Netflix years ago.
If you want to put in more work for more freedom, a lot of SBC’s can do something similar too.
I do not think what I would want as a replacement exists (yet). My main requirements are:
- Only FOSS software and firmware
- Similar level of “casting” compatibility/ubiquity as the discontinued Chromecast
- Easy navigation and/or great UI/UX
- Can be controlled with a stand alone remote control, phone/tablet/laptop, and remote services like Home Assistant
- As portable and low powered as the discontinued Chromecast (or no less portable than a small mini-pc)
- Ability to turn on/off the TV, switch inputs, and control the volume
- Ability to install apps/plugins to directly on the device (maybe even things like Lutris, Moonlight, or something similar for gaming)
- Ideally, the apps would be as well maintained and provide similar levels of quality as something like an Android TV or Apple TV
- (bonus) Ability to store media locally for offline playback
I think the closest I have seen is LibreELEC + Kodi on a RaspberryPi or mini-pc. It’s still not quite there for my tastes though. Hopefully the recent Chromecast announcement will lead to more/better alternatives in the coming months!
Your wishlist sounds almost identical to mine. As frustrating as the limitations of streamers are, they are easy to use. HDMI CEC makes single remote setups possible, easy volume changes, input switching, etc. Apps are vetted so they “just work”.
As for casting, most platforms support running Miracast or AirPlay receivers. Google is the stickler here that won’t let you run a Google Cast receiver (or at least I haven’t found one) and also doesn’t implement Miracast on Pixel devices. It’s such a shame because I vastly prefer casting the URL to the TV and letting it source the content than mirroring my phone all the time.
Agreed! I am concerned though that even if a viable casting alternative started gaining momentum that Google would essentially prevent it from being widely adopted or incorporated into apps/websites the way that Chromecast is. I think it would have to be created by a large tech or media company and/or be compatible with Chromecast.
Apps are still really frustrating though. If an app exists (big if), I found the apps to either miss key features compared to the corresponding apps on other platforms or the UI/UX was terrible for a TV app.
I could get by if just one of casting or the apps were comparable to more popular alternatives. Having neither makes it very difficult to moved away from those alternatives.
If you’re up for using Jellyfin, you can check out something I’m working on to achieve this: https://github.com/MattMckenzy/Homehook
The main branch used to be compatible with chromecast devices, but I’ve stopped maintaining it in favor of the v2 branch, where HomeHook communicates directly with satellite devices through HomeCast. Working with Chromecasts were a huge pain.
Let me know if you have any questions about it, always glad to help!
#3 is the route I’m going.
Bigscreen is still pretty rough though, I’m trying to see if I can resolve some open issues to submit back to resolve, but in the meantime I’m going to start playing with flex launcher - https://complexlogic.github.io/flex-launcher/
Its likely to be the way I go as of now.
Lutris to be a gaming interface (retro games and Roms), jellyfin for movies/shows/music, gcompris for some kids educational stuff, etc.
I want to figure out a remote that I like and get some CEC testing done, may look towards using my homeassistant to act as a control system if its a pain (and most CEC is implemented poorly IMO).
But I’m done with stuff like Chromecast, rokus, etc.
I tried Flex Launcher on RebornOS but couldn’t really get it to even launch stuff, besides the Plex app. Maybe I need to read the documentation better. I think it’s promising but has a steep learning curve. I don’t need it to hold my hand the entire setup but would like a little more help with configuration than it currently offers post install. My issues could also be due to Linux. I haven’t tried the Windows version.
I use an Apple TV 4K. For self hosted streaming, I am running Plex on a Raspberry Pi, connected to a Synology NAS, which has my media library
The mini pc is the most flexible. Batocera works really well and includes:
- Kodi to stream local media and can act as an Airplay receiver
- the ability to run Flatpaks
- a nice 10 ft UI
- emulation backends and moonlight game streaming
- the ability to pair Xbox and PlayStation controllers
Get a usb IR receiver like FLIRC or something similar with HDMI CEC to control everything via standard remote.
The learning curve for Kodi is pretty steep. Most folks aren’t going to bother.
This is the first time I’ve heard anyone say Kodi has a learning curve. I’m curious what you found difficult?
I have Kodi running in a docker container with gui (even HDR support) on my otherwise “headless” server. Kodi just has the most flexibility because of it’s plugins.
I’ve got a raspberry pi 4 (8GB) running Kodi (via osmc) hooked up to our tv. The tv itself is a Roku tv that isn’t allowed to connect to the internet.
I’ve also got a pc that used to be my streaming/video editing rig back when I used to make videos, but I repurposed it as my server, and it runs Jellyfin, along with a host of other apps/services for me and my family.
The pc is older, but as a server it works great. Biggest drawback is power consumption, it’s not nearly as efficient as a mini pc with a n100 or something similar, but for my purposes it works great.
I attach a computer to a TV and open streaming Web sites in a browser. There aren’t much benefits of the streaming devices compared to that unless you’re using surround sound. The Netflix desktop program has surround sound, but that’s the only service I know of.
I do have surround sound, but I wasn’t aware of that being an issue with a PC solution. Have you encountered issues getting that to work?
I haven’t used this in a bit so I thought I’d check it. They somewhat recently updated the desktop program and nothing works at all now. It appears to be just Edge pretending to be another program. It’s literally just a browser, so surround sound doesn’t work now.
It’s a weird thing for them to do. Why would anyone download a copy of edge that can only watch Netflix? You’d just use a browser.
This is what you want to get surround sound to work in windows again.
This driver will work with both hdmi and toslink (optical) and possibly other connections.
Evidently Microsoft used to include a Dolby digital driver back in the day but has removed it due to licensing.
Oh and this will also enable surround sound in games too.
I just used a mini PC with kde and this remote keyboard.
With kde you can set things up pretty good. There’s a lot of possibilities. I never had casting set up though.
A mix between Kodi, and stremio.
It worked good for steam link too.
I tried with a raspberry pi but it was slow. I wouldn’t recommend it. Idk how others are able to use them. Omsc or whatever might be okay.
I use a combo of Roku and Firesticks through the house. Since I have a raspberry pi with pihole on it all the ads and telemetry is blocked, or at least majority of it is.
I have been considering just installing Debian on a small PC then the jellyfin media player application set to auto start. I can think of a few different ways to get this done maybe with a couple user accounts.
I like the idea of being able to change the application that automatically starts. Maybe I want to try Kodi again. I would just change the startup app.
OSMC’s Vero V looks interesting. Pi 4 with OSMC or Librelec could work. I’m probably going to do something like this pretty soon. I just set up an *arr stack last week, and just using my smart TV with the jellyfin app installed ATM.
My PC running the Jellyfin server can’t transcode some videos though; probably going to put an Arc a310 in it.
Jellyfin plus radarr sonarr. No need to set up a million sticks or whatever anymore. You just set up Jellyfin once.
FYI, Plasma Bigscreen is not ported to Plasma 6.
