Sorry if this the wrong place, I couldn’t find an HTPC, home theater, techsupport, or equivalent instance to ask.
The gist is I want to add a TV to my master bedroom for my wife to just browse the web, and for my kids to have something to watch in the mornings while my wife gets out of bed. I have a main pc in my theater room for gaming, and an HTPC on projector for movies and stuff. I don’t want to get a roku or any mainstream smart device, but I’m OK with getting something like a raspberry pi (never done this) to have an air mouse hooked up to the TV so my wife can browse the web, open YouTube, Netflix, steam books, Spotify, as well as access my pc library of content for viewing. Not for gaming. Everything I’m finding online is people connecting their pc to their TV and it’s always for gaming. I don’t need large processing, just enough to watch things, while connecting to my home computers.
Thank you.
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The Pi is a bit overpriced/underpowered for a streaming platform. I’d look into something more like a mini pc, i.e. n100
What about the odrioid N2? Looked pretty promising in other forums.
Heard good things but i never tried it. I have an old rpi 3b+ with 1 gb ram but it struggles with Kodi, not sure how much the extra ram/speed of the newer ones have improved them but I don’t think I’d want to use it as a daily use device myself
Wow that looks like an amazing software. I think I saw this year’s ago when I was messing around with plex before plex became as big as it is. I guess the question is what hardware would I use? Would a raspberry pi have the necessary processing power to stream through wifi my pc content, or play it’s own content online?
I’m very ignorant when it comes to small devices like this, and I’ve never dabbled in anything besides windows, As much as I’d love to have the enthusiasm and knowledge of the Linux community here on lemmy.
My pi 3 has struggled with some particular codecs or large (greater than 5 hours) videos. I’m not proficient enough to say that it wasn’t my fault in some way, some config option, but it was a near thing, regardless. A pi 4 or 5 should do it flawlessly, and my pi 3 works more reliably than my roku, even with that flaw.
WiFi, as long as your router isn’t ancient, will be more than enough. Latency isn’t a factor, and you can get HD streaming at well under 100 Mbps, the upper limit of most routers. My router, in another room with walls from an old house that destroy my signal, still gives me about 20, which is enough for 1080p.
I will say a pi 3 feels fairly laggy just using it to browse online. It does much better as a streaming box. The pi 5 I just got yesterday is much snappier, feels great to use. The 4gb model is 60$ right now, although I got the 8gb model.
All this was on default raspberry pi OS with kodi installed as an app. Very little to set up besides getting the media itself shared in your preferred way.
That I don’t know. I haven’t been looking into one-board computers for a while. The one I bought ~10 years ago was running out of juice when I was trying to run Kodi on it last year. Wifi shouldn’t be a problem IMO, I’ve been using mine as torrent downloader and hosted a few university projects (dynamic web apps) on it. The graphics might. I would guess that as long as you find one with decent specs (so probably not the 10$ one) it should work. I’m sure there’s someone who is doing exactly that and either could answer what to buy/look for or wrote a blog about it
Thanks for the information and pointing me in a direction I can work with.
I found the pi setup to be too low powered, a lot of people opt for nvidia shield instead, but it has its own problems.
Im looking at making a micro computer using MicroITX form factor in a super slim case with a GPU (nothing insane, but something I wont need to replace for a long time).
After that, Ill mount the case behind the tv and hookup a wireless keyboard+mouse controller.
That might be a solution. A little over powered compared to a Vero or odrioid. Are you planning to game on it?
Sounds like you don’t want to do this, but I am loving my Nvidia Shield TV Pro.
I’ve installed Projectivity Launcher on it and all the apps I want. It’s such a smooth, clean experience.
Whether it’s Netflix, Tivimate, Kodi or Plex, it all runs super smoothly, no stutters, no ads. Highly recommend.
The backlit, voice capable remote is really nice too.
I’ve never liked voice activation but my wife might like that. Idk why Nvidia shield keeps coming up, it’s like the only mainstream streaming device that keeps popping up for people who like to stay away from streaming platforms.
For me, I think adding Projectivity Launcher over the top of it took it from a good device to a great one.
It’s let me customise the thing just how I want it.
As for voice, I find it handy rather than typing text with the remote when searching in YouTube etc.
Honestly, you’re better off getting an Nvidia Shield TV, or another premium Google certified Android TV box.
But if you’re deadset against that, then get a used Chromebox off eBay for like $20-40. Just make sure whatever model you get is firmware flashable and supports user installed Linux. Search “Chromebox Linux HTPC”, there’s plenty of resources available.
I got a long hdmi cable and ran it over to te bed in my guest room. I don’t think anyone ever used their laptop in that bed and connected to the TV, but you could
I love it. now I don’t need to bring a controller in ADDITION to my steamdeck when I come visit!
I wonder if a tablet or laptop might be more appropriate for your wife? When I think “web” I want a keyboard or touch screen and a TV typically has neither. But in any case, I think you’re making a mistake trying to have one device that can fit every use case. Your TV will have multiple inputs (and it will also probably be a smart TV).
Plug some sort of Mini PC into the TV for your wife, and let your kids use the TV’s built in smart features to watch TV or buy a set top box such as an Apple TV/Nvidia Shield/etc.
PS: I would 100% use a projector, not a TV. Just project onto the wall (assuming you don’t have wallpaper/etc).
If you want an incredibly easy setup, the old Chromecast and the program Airparrot have been working flawlessly for me.
I know you say you don’t want mainstream, which I take to mean you don’t want ads, smart home listening devices, etc. The black chromecast (without the remote) is exacly what you want. You can mirror anything from a PC or phone over your wifi. The slight delay makes it unsuitable for gaming, but you don’t need that anyway.
Also super cheap. $20 for the chromecast and $18 for Airparrot (which you may not even need, the chrome browser has desktop mirroring, but I had some issues with it).
I picked up an Onn 4k streaming Box from Walmart for $20 that uses Android TV. It supports Bluetooth for mouse and keyboard and with a usb hub can handle additional usb ports.
Also supports more advanced tinkering if you’d like to sideload apps such as SmartTubeNext for ad and sponsor blocking on YouTube.
I think you might also be able to load a third party launcher to de-google it more, but I haven’t tried that yet.
I just set up a bedroom “TV” which is just an old monitor and Raspberry Pi. I installed Kodi and some addons for TV sources. Works OK, just wish there was an easy way to turn the monitor off from the Pi on command so I don’t have to walk over to it and shut it off manually.
Look into HDMI-CEC, it does exactly what you are looking for. Unless you are using a very old screen, it should work (the screen has to support it).
I’m just using a Dell PC monitor (21" 1080p) from like 2010. It supports HDMI but I don’t know about CEC. Either way it could just put the monitor to sleep and that would be fine, doesn’t require CEC. I just am not sure of a way to trigger this manually when I’m done using it.
No offense, but I can’t help but picture Michael Scott’s wall mounted TV when reading about your 21" monitor as a bedroom TV.
Sounds like an easy solution if you have a TV and TV remote that can turn it on and off.
This seems like what I was thinking. A pi with software, and kodi seems the best so far.
Sounds like you already have a solid plan.
If you have any old laptops or desktops you could convert those instead of using a Pi, but the Pi will work wonders as long as it’s not going to be a 4K TV. Your only real concern here is making sure whatever device you use is able to output video at the TV’s resolution and display hertz.
You’ll probably have more difficulty finding a TV that isn’t a smart TV, than finding a home theater device that is capable of streaming nowadays.
I’m thinking of the odrioid N2 after doing a little bit of research. It’s the finding the TV that might be an issue as you’ve said. I don’t want those smart tv’s and their countless user agreements and BS ads. I don’t want ads so bad, I’ll burn my TV down if I see any.
I have Odroid-N2 with CoreELEC. Works as my media center in living room, but I use it only to stream video from my jellyfin server.
The only problem I have is that I have to control it from a phone app, not a remote. There are ways to do that, but I couldn’t be bothered
I can recommend a Vero from osmc.tv, it runs Kodi underneath.
Get an n100 mini PC, I bought one with 12 GB of ram and a 512 GB SSD for about $170.
Any specific reason you don’t want something mainstream? I would recommend a Nvidia Shield (tube). I have one for my living room tv and another for my bedroom and they are great. I also have a shield pro for my theatre room. I used to have a htpc in there but it would occasionally break on updates and wasn’t nearly as user friendly as the shield
I’m doing something similar with an android tv, a raspberry 3a and my home wifi network. Antenna hooked to the raspberry using an usb dongle, tvheadend on the raspberry and kody on the android tv placed wherever you need it. Also added clipious on the tv to have no ad playback. I don’t need surfing so my setup is simpler and everything is controlled using the tv remote. Once you have the pi up and running, the bonus is that you can find a client to connect to tvheadend for any platform, so you can watch tv on a smartphone (android or apple), a tablet, a computer, another tv in the basement…
