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?
There are some really wicked PC “sticks” (for lack of better word) available these days. I used one from MeLE flashed with Debian as a mobile entertainment center in my travel trailer.
Yeah, those were on my radar as well. I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what the Linux compatibility is like, but that sounds promising that you were able to do it.
The big downside I see is that while the power consumption is low, they’re running a really old SoC, usually based on Intel N4000 (launched late 2017). Looking around it seems to have h.265 decode which is the most important one to look out for. It doesn’t support AV1, but that’s mostly streaming services and not that common (I think?). There may be other disadvantages I’m not thinking of at the moment.
What was the performance like for you?
I can confirm that the one I used 3 years ago could stream Netflix and HBO from browser, no problem. It also handled local files in VLC like a champ.
I even installed Steam and played a handful of non-resource-intensive games on it.
I’d buy another in a heartbeat for use as media rig. This time I’d install barebones Debian on it, instead of med-weight MX like I did prior. It’d probably perform even better.
The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.
The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.
Fair points.
The biggest motivating factor for my use case was that it was more than happy to run off a USB C cable tapped into my solar bank’s 12v line. So for boondocking, it was a great solution.
Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.
The USB-C power is huge. I don’t know why it is so hard to find. I do not want another massive power brick and barrel connector.