I currently use an Apple TV 4K, which is - as far as I’m aware - more or less the best streaming box you can buy. However, it’s the version without ethernet, and Steam Link has become a dog over wifi for some reason. So I figured I’d look around to see if there’s an alternative solution.
Hardware-wise, I have a Dell Optiplex 3020 or a 2014 Mac mini (running Debian), to choose from, but have no real idea where to go from there, beyond the vague notion that KDE have put big screen mode back into beta. I did have a play with that a few months ago in a VM, but was struck that there were (obviously) no applications that made any real use of it.
Does anyone out there run anything they’ve built themselves? If so, what?
I don’t understand why people like AppleTV so much, we have one too.
It had the worst interface by far of any streaming or video player we use. Its like Apple went out of their way to make it unintuitive.
I feel you… AppleTV is probably the worst Apple product and OS ever made… Don’t even try to tinker arround with that stuff.
Apple products in general are horse shit… Probably even worst than Windaube ! I’m always pulling my hair out when going near that stuff and help my parents out.
Plasma Bigscreen. If you haven’t tried it, TRY IT.
It’s any Linux distro with KDE, plus one installed package and you get a tv interface on a computer. You can use Jellyfin with any “Air mouse” you want, and Plex htpc, plus waydroid for android apps. And worse case, is something doesn’t work, you’ve always got a normal web browser.
This is the way !
Listen to Dust0, I’ve done this with an old Mac book and works very well
I tried all kinds of things like android TV and libre elec before I finally settled on a solution that works for me. In the end, I put MX Linux on an old laptop, created desktop entries for services like jellyfin, freetube, a few paid streaming services, RomM, as well as others like kolourpaint for the kids; made the icons very large; all desktop entries launch services in chromium fullscreen; then, I got a USB remote/mouse thing and mapped the inputs a little bit using input remapper; I keep a USB keyboard in the cabinet in case we need it. A little janky but in the end it works flawlessly and all services stream in HD. If I had a nicer machine I might go with CachyOS or Mint and I bet it’d be a little smoother with those distros.
There really isn’t one.
Trust me. I’ve worked for WBD for 4+ years specifically on the video playback component for Android devices - so my day job was literally testing streaming boxes and smart TVs.
That job made me switch from EVERY single other TV smart box, to Apple. Why, you might ask? Well, it’s because ALL streaming oriented boxes suck ass. Apple is the only one who puts appropriate hardware into their products.
Lets start with Android, my field. The ONLY usable box is the Nvidia Shield, which, to date, costs upwards of £200. For hardware that was already kinda dated in 2019, when it released 7 years ago. Even Google’s options lack RAM, and focus too much on the codec of the SoC instead power. This means nice playback, but awful user experience in menus and any other non-video functionality.
Your best bet, if you want to hand-roll a solution, is to buy a more expensive, high end SBC and hope for good support. You’ll lose DRM, though, which means no official streaming apps (or, for the ones that do work, low resolution/fidelity playback only).
If it’s Steam Link you want, get dedicated hardware for that. Even a Pi4/5 will do. Use it for Steam Link only, and keep the Apple TV for media.
https://jellyfin.org/ seems recommended. I would also look at OSMC which sells a box to use with their software (and it’s open source): https://osmc.tv/vero/
Interesting, never heard of the Vero! I’ve been a Plex and JF use for a long time thinking HW options were limited to big box. Or buy a couple year old device and load LineageOS.
The trouble you’ll quickly run into is that with a non-iOS/Android/Windows platform your streaming sites won’t go above 720p, and your attempts to run sandboxed Android apps will pretty much all fail. Now if all you mainly do is serve local content from e.g. Jellyfin that’s not much of a problem, but as you already own an AppleTV that’s probably not your only use case.
I probably should have laid out my uses in the OP, shouldn’t I?
We primarily watch TV from a friend’s Plex server, or my own Jellyfin. We don’t have Apple TV+/Netflix/Amazon, or anything. Not these days. The only legit streaming service we do occasionally use is BBC iPlayer.
Other than that, it’s a Steam Link / Moonlight machine, plus sometimes playing tunes from Apple Music.
A nicety would be to be able to AirPlay to it, so my wife can show me videos that she’s saved to show me, but I’m not sure how feasible that is outside of Apple devices.
Older Linux laptop, T480s are cheap, plus you have a Linux laptop in a pinch, or whatever Thinkpad is currently being dumped on the market from corpo fleets. All of that just works, host a Jellyfin on it and upload videos to that, laptop, so low wall power. Moonlight is great on my T580 to a wide 1440 for example. Bazzite’s pretty painless.
platform your streaming sites won’t go above 720p
I don’t think that’s true anymore. In Firefox you can check “play drm” and it will let you stream Netflix and others in 1080p.
Chrome and Edge on Windows do it standard.
It may be circumstantial but I just checked and Netflix and Disney+ are both only rendering at 720p in Linux (Kubuntu 26.04) in Firefox and Chromium for me. Maybe official chrome is better, I don’t have it installed at the moment.
I’ve been using Kodi/librelec on a Pi 5 for ages, just started playing around with Android TV LineageOS builds for it + Wholphin to browse my Jellyfin library. No Google Play Bullshit, slightly slower boot than librelec, CEC works nicely, only annoyance is that I have to manually hit the power button to turn it on. Unfortunately streaming services (allegedly) only do 480p because it lacks DRM Widevine stuff, but I stopped using anything but Jellyfin years ago. Might play around with some adfree alternate YouTube clients today on it, seems like there are plenty to choose from.
Libreelec was fine but the library syncing + UX wasn’t ideal. Android TV is a lot easier for other people in my life to navigate (but still not great).
Have you used any debrid services with Kodi? I tried Umbrella but the UX is so bad, compared to Stremio, I just don’t use it
I would love a real solution for this issue. Running RPIOS on pi5.
I searched for this as well, but my conclusion was the same: Apple TV is the only viable option to me, at least if you want to use any streaming services. Based on what I’ve seen Android tv (or whatever it’s called) feels like a non starter, and while the FLOSS options that have already been mentioned in this thread range from promising to legitimately great all of them become iffy when DRM enters the mix.
My main hope is SteamOS and its Android compatibility, honestly. Made for the big screen, mature controller support, backed by a big company that might have the pull to resolve the DRM issues. Though if I step back I might just be overly optimistic, since Valve hasn’t really shown any steps towards non-game media support.
I have a couple ShieldTVs (AndroidTV) that have worked for me for years. They have worked with streaming services as I needed, but the main use case for me is Jellyfin for movies/tv and a good YouTube client that filters ads out. The shield has done a good job of passing the correct audio stream to the receiver and it looks good. There have been a few issues here or there with some codecs, but if I fall back on Kodi it usually works.
I haven’t tried an AppleTV despite being a mostly Mac/iOS household. It is difficult to find out how well the Jellyfin clients work on it, and last I checked there was no “official” client, just pay-for apps that may or may not do what I need.
One TV I have an Nvidia Shield to get all the various codec support, upscaling, and the flexibility Android inherently has over iOS.
Another TV, I have the Steam Machine (HDMI CEC is key) with the latest update, which has Bigscreen mode in Plasma 6.7, and also Waydroid TV with Gapps to help with some issues. I recall there being a way to bring over codecs from ChromeOS into Linux but I have not looked at it.
Last TV is just the gaming tower with Plasma 6.7 for Bigscreen. Serves as the NAS as well for other devices to Kodi/Jellyfin with 20 hard drive bays.
This is my white whale. There is a guy making LineageOS versions of Android TV that seem to work well for some people but in my experience are buggy and I couldn’t get CEC working no matter what I tried.
Libreelec (kodi) works fantastic and CEC is flawless with every device I tested, but Kodi these days is really only good for local media (not Plex, Jellyfin, Youtube or streaming services) and real-debrid.
KDE Bigscreen is my last hope, but it’s probably going to be a while before it’s ready, not even including the inevitable wait for TV-interface versions of streaming apps that can run on ARM (if you’re using a raspi).
Same boat. It’s odd to me that this topic is so underdeveloped. What are people doing with their pis?
I ran Konstakang LineageOS on a RPi4 a few years ago, but the hardware decoding didn’t work well. It might work better now. I will probably use Bigscreen once it’s available in an immutable or LTS distro, but for now, I’m using Pegasus frontend on a Linux mini PC. It’s clunky, but kind of gets the job done. Jellyfin desktop and VacuumTube work ok, but I mainly use it for games anyway. I really want Linux HTPCs to be worthy of a daily driver, and Bigscreen is the best hope as you said.
