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?
#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.