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.
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.