I am still thinking about moving to it. Im tired of firestick and roku. Theres not really much else either from what i looked at. Just some 3rd party hardware builds with android tv on it. A few look really good as well. Sure it costs a bit more, but im tired of giving those companies all my data and they aren’t perfect either.
At the weekend I installed KDE Neon unstable in a VM to play with the revamped Plasma Bigscreen mode. I’m empted to install it on a 2011 Mac mini I have to see how it fares, though I’ve not yet found any apps that work properly with it. Which is fair, it’s very new.
But the basis of it seems like a pretty solid alternative as a media centre.
Weirdly enough i never even considered that one. It is pricier than what i want to spend. The others i found are about $80-$100 while this is $200 from what i see. Ill definitely consider it if it is that good.
I have a regular and a pro. The regular is $150, and I like more. The pro is a little more temperamental, I’m guessing due to its ability to serve content. The extra $50 for the shield over a random other device is really worth it.
Just get a small PC or an RPi or something and bypass the “smart” TV environment entirely! A wireless mouse, and sometimes a wireless keyboard was all I needed to make mine work
I did the same but with waydroid’s android tv build. It is a bit buggy and setting it up was not easy (using adb sendkey to increase volume on first setup…) but works fine. I switched to it cuz the android tv stick we had was slow as molasses but I wanted something to replicate the ease of use of it. It even works with the remote of the stick after remapping!
I installed it when it was new & had android 11, now it is 16 and I assume much better now.
I have a pi and i also have had a pc to a tv setup. They have there purposes, but having a dedicated device thats semi cheap for a tv so the kids can easily navigate using a remote to play videos is more ideal and practicul. My main tv for me is a tv connected one and i mainly use kodi through it. Never used a pi for this type of setup, but i have a few for other things that are stand alone with no screens.
For the Pi-curious, I recommend LibreELEC. It’s “just enough Linux OS to run Kodi” and uses a Kodi plugin to manage said OS. It can be locked into kiosk mode with just the kids’ shows and unlocked for full access.
Also going this route setup a DB somewhere and point all your Pi’s to it instead of it’s default DB. The local one is fine but when they share a single DB all your watched shows sync and you can pause in one room, then resume in another.
I am still thinking about moving to it. Im tired of firestick and roku. Theres not really much else either from what i looked at. Just some 3rd party hardware builds with android tv on it. A few look really good as well. Sure it costs a bit more, but im tired of giving those companies all my data and they aren’t perfect either.
At the weekend I installed KDE Neon unstable in a VM to play with the revamped Plasma Bigscreen mode. I’m empted to install it on a 2011 Mac mini I have to see how it fares, though I’ve not yet found any apps that work properly with it. Which is fair, it’s very new.
But the basis of it seems like a pretty solid alternative as a media centre.
The nvidia shield is amazing. My 7(?) year old shield runs amazing. It’s a beast, runs everything, and just works.
Weirdly enough i never even considered that one. It is pricier than what i want to spend. The others i found are about $80-$100 while this is $200 from what i see. Ill definitely consider it if it is that good.
I have a regular and a pro. The regular is $150, and I like more. The pro is a little more temperamental, I’m guessing due to its ability to serve content. The extra $50 for the shield over a random other device is really worth it.
Just get a small PC or an RPi or something and bypass the “smart” TV environment entirely! A wireless mouse, and sometimes a wireless keyboard was all I needed to make mine work
I did the same but with waydroid’s android tv build. It is a bit buggy and setting it up was not easy (using adb sendkey to increase volume on first setup…) but works fine. I switched to it cuz the android tv stick we had was slow as molasses but I wanted something to replicate the ease of use of it. It even works with the remote of the stick after remapping! I installed it when it was new & had android 11, now it is 16 and I assume much better now.
https://github.com/WayDroid-ATV/waydroid-androidtv-builds/
I have a pi and i also have had a pc to a tv setup. They have there purposes, but having a dedicated device thats semi cheap for a tv so the kids can easily navigate using a remote to play videos is more ideal and practicul. My main tv for me is a tv connected one and i mainly use kodi through it. Never used a pi for this type of setup, but i have a few for other things that are stand alone with no screens.
For the Pi-curious, I recommend LibreELEC. It’s “just enough Linux OS to run Kodi” and uses a Kodi plugin to manage said OS. It can be locked into kiosk mode with just the kids’ shows and unlocked for full access.
Also going this route setup a DB somewhere and point all your Pi’s to it instead of it’s default DB. The local one is fine but when they share a single DB all your watched shows sync and you can pause in one room, then resume in another.