My main concern is replacing the remote, because bluetooth on linux is quite awful.
Im guessing run kodi is the other solution? I want the SO to be able to use it as easily as the smart tv, which is of course riddled with ads and downloading random shit on my network that I hate (20 gigs to Disney + in a month. I dont have any subs. Wtf is it downloading? I blocked it now ofc)
For reference, trying to axe the smart tv and use my atari vcs with mint on it to fulfill those needs. It should have the power and I want to keep the sleek look and not have an actual pc in the room.
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If you don’t want to rely on Bluetooth, there are lots of keyboards, mice, and media remotes with dedicated dongles.
I use one of these, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07ZKL66GY
This is the way.
I use I think this one: http://www.riitek.com/product/254.html
It has orange buttons that you program to the TV (I have on/off, volume, and changing input source) then the white buttons and the direction pad to move around and play things in Kodi.
Ah damn, that doesn’t have a backlight, does it?
No backlight, no. Realistically we are just using the direction arrows/ok circle part most of the time anyway, you can easily feel it in the dark. But I’m sure other similar products with a backlight exist. I went with this one as it’s relatively cheap and has a keyboard on the back, but there are heaps of options.
I have one of these and it was quite good, but I don’t know why but we just gravitated to a Logitech K400
I have one of these for the PC connected to the TV, but the LibreElec install works really well with the Rii i25, it’s much easier to just scroll through and find what you want to play like on a smart TV.
this may seem weird, but steam bigpicture mode is great for a tv. you can make webapps for stuff like netflix, youtube, whatever with google chrome.
i think kde has/had a big mode for tvs, not sure if its still developed. never used it bc i dont much like kde.
kde bigscreen, its been unmaintained for a while one dev recently revived it you have to compile it in the meantime it hasnt been packaged by any distro yet
kde connect has a really good media controller/wii joystick mouse thing for your phone
The bare minimum viable is an AMD CPU of some description, and an AMD GPU that can at the very least decode h.264 and h.265; an FX-4300 or R3 4100+RX 550 combo would be a good example for the bare minimum viable Linux HTPC build, as Polaris cards like the RX 550 can decode h.264 and h.265.
Ideally, you’d have an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU or integrated graphics in the case of an APU, that in addition to decoding h.264 and h.265, can also at least decode VP9 if not also AV1; an R5 3400G would be a decent HTPC APU in that case since Vega integrated can decode VP9 in addition to h.264 and h.265.
Beyond the hardware, set up the appropriate hardware acceleration so you can decode video through VA-API, and then set up Kodi and get a cheap tablet to install Kore on and use that for a remote.
I forget the actuals specs of the vcs but its basically a mid range amd laptop inside.
This is the air mouse remote I recommend with a dedicated 2.4 GHz connection. Also, recommend Plasma Bigscreen QT6 version.
I don’t have much issues with Bluetooth in Linux, works just fine on my Kodi installs, audio, remotes the whole kit. But I can recommends the G60S Pro remote. It has both 2.4Ghz and Bluetooth so you don’t have to rely on the Bluetooth if you don’t want to. Flip it and it has a keyboard, incredibly useful!
Before that I ran CEC remotes (found is kind of meh), IR receiver (worked fine enough), and other 2.4Ghz remotes (MX3 variants, including a Bluetooth one).
I also use the companion phone app, Kore, on a Android.
Like others here I’ve been running Kodi for nearly 20 years, has amazing spousal approval rate. I just redid my setup, PXE boot a couple of Pis and an x86_64 machine (and Qemu for testing) it’s a bit of a pain to share more than the libraries (my MySQL), but that’s really more than most people want anyway (and I did manage to share almost everything with some NFS trickery, advance config path substitution, bind mounts, etc).
On the OS side, I went with an inmutable linux (opensuse microos), so it auto updates and auto reboot (when needed), auto login into my DE, and starts Kodi. In practice, everytime I turn on the tv, Kodi is ready, and the system updated.
It has failed once, the update mangled the wifi setup, but being able to boot from a previous system snapshot I reverted it and got it working again in no time.
I wonder if I could try an os like that. Im kind of heavily invested in mint already though. I have cachy os on an old turion laptop and it runs well enough (100% cpu usage like all the time, ha)
My setup is a pi4 with OSMC that is just Kodi all setup, plugged into hdmi with CEC to allow remote pass through.
That pi has an nfs mount to my jellyfin server and the movies and TV shows indexed off the NFS drive.
It’s setup is so simple even our now 6 year old can put a movie on
Do you get the “watched” feedback to Jellyfin from Kodi ? To tick the episodes you’ve already watched.
Yep, it is possible, you have to look for the proper addon. Iirc, there are 2 ways of setting it up, one fully syncs on kodi startup, and the other just the diff.
I dont, I think there might be a plugin either in kodi or jellyfin
I put Moode in a Raspberry Pi 4 and control it with my phone.
Think about it, what better remote do you want? You get album covers, lyrics, the works. You can even stream from your phone to the Pi.
My needs are more centred around gaming but I built a SFF PC based around the 7800X3D, 9070XT and FormD T1 case (sub 10L) which sits under and connects to my TV and hifi system.
I’m therefore just using the TV as a monitor, and can access my NAS through the PC to play media directly from it, as well as game through Steam ofc. I’ve not had issues on BT with EndeavourOS but am looking forward to switching to the Steam Controller with it’s reduced latency with multiple devices
I personally prefer Android TV for its app support.
I’ve got a little NUC-type computer (Beelink or something) that runs Linux Mint. I like the desktop interface for switching between browser, YouTube apps and Jellyfin. We use a full size wireless keyboard with a trackpad.
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Kore on a cheap Android tablet is more HTPC-like than a controller, though.
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