To what extent? If I screen mirror my phone and watch a pirated show the “screen mirroring” contributed to piracy. If I open a browser and go to a streaming site the site “contributed to piracy.” them saying they are blocking any app contributing to piracy is a very vague statement that would mean they would have to block basically every app that isn’t some major corporate paid platform. In which case. That’s fine I guess. We don’t need firesticks. Plenty of other android streaming devices, or hell even a good ol computer with an HDMI port.
Get a Mini-PC and put some Linux distro and Kodi on it.
Or even better, get one of the many LibreELEC supported devices (including, as somebody mentioned, a Raspberry Pi 5) and put LibreELEC on it (which is a pared-down Linux with Kodi).
Personally after maybe a decade running successive generations of TV Media Players to play my growing video file collection on my TV, on my latest upgrade I ended up going down the Mini-PC with Linux and Kodi on autostart route (as I used it also as a home server) and am very satisfied with it, though if I wanted to just use it as a Media Player I would’ve gone with LibreELEC and on of the various ARM SBCs they support (maybe the Pi, maybe something cheaper).
There really is no reason to use closed commercial solutions for this.
Edit: If all you do is consume media on it via Kodi, you can use a remote like this one so it’s the same usage experience as with a commercial device, just without the enshittification.
even just a spare laptop and an HDMI cable will do
Well, the Mini-PC actually looks like it belongs in my living room TV table.
But, yeah, functionally it would work just as well on a spare laptop as long as the microprocessor in it has the video decoders in hardware (something which is only a concern for really old laptops).
Beyond that, I wouldn’t recommend an old desktop because of its higher power consumption and noise, but a laptop should be fine on both regards.
I just set up LibreELEC on my Proxmox machine, on a VM with monitor passthrough and Bluetooth passthrough so I can use my Chromecast remote and stream audio, then installed the Emby Next Gen addon to access my library on it. Super happy rn.
Especially as I’ve been until now using the 2022 Chromecast with Google TV and, now they’ve brought out another device, it’s been breaking slowly. The wireless chip has been spazzing out to the point that every day it loses connection and the only solution left that works is to forget the WiFi and use my phone to quick-add it back via QR code. Even then it’s started constantly saying ‘connection lost’ and ‘connection restored’ during playback. Well, a few days ago it started breaking connection to its (Bluetooth) remote as well, meaning I kept having to use my backup remote on Home Assistant that uses wireless ADB. When both wireless breaks, my only option is to use the Chromecast’s button to trigger re-adding the remote. And when that fails, well…
The number one feature in my streaming device is that it has HDMI cec and a one handed simple remote interface. No keyboard. No mouse. Low power usage as a bonus.
How can I make both happen?
I’ve tried so so many couch keyboards and they are all miserable even with a track pad or track ball. I also have a unified remote on my phone and I still hate having to go find my phone and unlock it. Then it occasionally doesn’t connect for reasons beyond my understanding so I have to take half an hour to debug.
Duck even if I could use my xbox controller for everything, id be happy but no it only works in games reliably.
If you’re using Kodi on a PC and want your TV remote to control Kodi or your Kodi remote to control your TV, there’s this little doodad that might help https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter
It’s built in to RPi. I’ve got LibreELEC on it. My Kodi goes to sleep after 1 minute idle and sends the signal to turn off the TV. I also added a button to my home page to turn off the TV. When I push a button to wake up Kodi, it turns the TV on. There is a bug where when it sleeps during playback it shows a black screen instead of turning off, so i have to stop playback to make it turn the TV off. I opened a bug about it and they mentioned it might be fixed in the nightly release 22 builds but I never got around to trying it.
Don’t really know about the HDMI cec, but I use one of these remotes which works perfectly with Kodi (it seems to just work like a wireless keyboard that just sends keypresses for shortcut characters corresponding to the function of each button, and those shortcuts are some kind of standard that Kodi supports, so this kind of remote - that also works for Android stuff - works fine with Kodi).
The only quirk it has versus the remotes that come in commercial solutions is that whilst the Power button in the remote will switch the Mini-PC OFF, it won’t switch it back ON (for the obvious reason that it uses a USB dongle and the PC when switched OFF won’t recognize input from the dongle).
I first got one which had even more buttons (also working fine with Kodi), but the remote’s build quality was shit and it didn’t took long for some of the button on that one to stop working reliably.
This one has been working fine for about a year now.
I do have a keyboard and mouse attached to that Mini-PC because it doubles up as home server and once in a while I have to do something on it which is more easilly done directly there with a UI rather than remotelly on the command line via SSH (or I simply don’t want to boot my main PC to access the Mini-PC remotelly), but to just consume media via Kodi nothing else beyond that remote is needed.
I need to get rid of my Amazon prime account…
Fuck em. Read a book.
a real one though, not kindle
fire tv is awful but are they banning plex? jellyfin?
I doubt they could get away with banning plex due to its integrated ad-supported streaming service which there are likely a few users of. But for jellyfin that same argument wouldn’t work. At least initially I suspect no self-hosted content would be blocked, as there are plenty of apps/viruses out there openly created solely for the purpose of piracy. Jellyfin isn’t the same as these as it doesn’t include links to any servers nor methods to download pirated content, even on the server side. Also it’s nowhere near as widely used as other services so it may just slip under the radar.
Just get a GabeCube or a raspberry pi 5 if you really just need streaming
Well fire tv always sucked anyhow
Personally I think stremio paired with real debrid and easynews is the way to go.
Back to Kodi
Tivotization? Doesn’t that shit runs Linux?
AH FUCK I FORGOT. Yeah Linus Torvalds decided he didnt want GPLv3 on Linux…
Fun indeed.
Fire tv sucks, get anything else
Just buy android TV box like tanix u will be fine
Just use a mini PC and pirate everything. The amazon fire interface sucks anyways. Every streaming service is in a different app and you have to remember which app to use for each show.
Or buy a second hand pc for not much more than 50 euros/dollars. Install linux and it’ll be more than fast enough for torrenting, playing media and a bit of surfing. Companies are off loading anything that can’t run windows 11 right now.
Also means you’re not torrenting stuff on your main system while gaming.
Yah we have one TV in our house and it has a RPI5 on it with a SSD and a keyboard with a trackpad in it… it’s the perfect machine to watch everything ever with an awesome interface.
If you want a new console + a PC at your TV, I think the new Steam Machine could be nice for that.
Running SteamOS (Linux) this should be good, or am I missing something?
NVIDIA shield is still king.
Nvidia contracts with palantir
Not related to this.
+1 Coming up on my ten year anniversary with mine.
I suggest Bazzite if you want a better expirience, it’s more mantained than the public steamOS release and has a little more features
Oh so you already own a Steam Machine and installed it? What’s the performance like? Did you install Kodi?
HDMI-CEC out of the box? Does it not lose focus when you turn off/on the TV so keyboard/remote navigation becomes impossible?
After a long time trying to wrap my head around, I finally have jellyfin, are Services, with transmission running behind a vpn, all running seamlessly with a single docker compose file. It’s beautiful. I’m only sad I didn’t do it sooner. Fuck these companies.
Got any suggested tutorials?
So they’re blocking Youtube? A few copyrighted things knocking around on there last I checked.
The Star Wars Holiday Special will remain there because no one wants to admit they own it
This one?
https://youtu.be/UL-hL6_XR30Bea Arthur’s finest role 😆
More like almost nobody wants to admit that they took part in it or lucas himself greenlighting it.
I remember buying a bootleg copy of that and the Corman Fantastic Four movie on VHS at some record show years back. Owning those was a matter of pride.
You don’t own your TV.
