Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevlar1818 | Hacker News Reader

I've been wanting to replace my Android box with a Linux box for a while, and I think this signals my Android TV exit. The main reason I have an Android TV box is because of its easy to use UI. I haven't found a suitable desktop environment or web browser configuration that supports a TV-scale UI on Linux. Does anyone have a Linux HTPC setup they're happy with? I really don't want to need a mouse and keyboard to watch Netflix, etc.

View on HN

KDE has a tv environment. I’m not sure how good it is though, I use an Apple TV.

https://plasma-bigscreen.org/

https://dot.kde.org/2020/03/26/plasma-tv-presenting-plasma-b...

I don't like the voice control, but I suppose some people do like, OK, but ensure it will work without Mycroft and without a microphone, too.

Better might be assign a numeric code to each file, and then you can key in those numbers on the remote control to select them. The remote controls they show there isn't very good. Put numbers, play, pause, rewind, fast-forward, stop, previous-track, next-track, high-volume, low-volume, mute, main-menu, and perhaps a few more, rather than what they have there it isn't very good I think.

Is there such a better remote control that you can use instead? Instead of up/down/left/right/enter, you can have the numbers and the playback controls.

I find voice control helpful when entering text. Instead of trying to arrow in "The Simpsons season 6 episode 3" on a remote, you can just get it transcribed.

Yes, that is one reason why you might like it (especially if you do not know how to spell the name of the show you want to watch, although voice recognition can also get it wrong sometimes). However, I would ike numeric input. Key in some ID number of the show (after you can first figure out what that ID number is), and optionally the season number and episode number. If you omit the season number, it will list them; if you omit the episode number, it will list the episodes with descriptions; you might also search by the original broadcast date. Of course, that doesn't help if you do not know the ID number of the show, so text search (and voice, if you have a microphone and voice recognition software) is still useful too, and then you can learn what is the ID number. For text entry, I would like Hollerith chording (or a full keyboard if you happen to be using one, which some people do), but that won't work if the remote control doesn't support chording, so other methods may also be used. Category numbers (in various classification schemes) may also be helpful, if you do not even know the name of the show, or what show you want, perhaps.

I've been happy with my Nvidia Shield, which so far has not received this update. The HTPC that it replaced ran on Ubuntu and automatically booted into Kodi. This worked okay, but having the hardware setup to support the latest audio/video features (eg. HDR, Dolby Vision, Atmos) can be a frustrating experience. The Shield has been great because it "just works", and also makes it easy to switch between streaming services and local media. So depending on your viewing habits, and must-have features, it can be very difficult or impossible to replicate the experience.

Kodi + Kore on the smartphone might be a replacement? Though I mostly just stream files that I already have on my NAS, it should be more than capable of streaming straight from YouTube and others.

[0] https://kodi.tv/

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore

[2] https://kodi.tv/addons

I've run this for a while, but Kodi seems to be focused on the "old" way of having your UI run on your TV, whereas I would like to be able to browse through my content on my phone. Yes, Kore can do this, but it feels much more like an afterthought.

Prior to this I was running Windows (Vista I think) MCE with a dual channel analog cable capture card. That was truely the pinacle of home theater. Easy TV recording + easy local content.

Raspberry Pi + Kodi (+ NAS) feels underpowered, and a bit dated.

I haven't properly tested something like Plex.

NVidia Shield seems like it would do, but now ads might be coming...

Are modern smart tv's somewhat capable of local content browsing? Or is it like very basic file browsing?

VLC on Android can stream from an NAS to a Chromecast.

> I've run this for a while, but Kodi seems to be focused on the "old" way of having your UI run on your TV, whereas I would like to be able to browse through my content on my phone.

It's been years since I used it, so I don't know if it's still any good, but the (paid) Yatse app was pretty good for this.

Try https://osmc.tv/

Not sure if it will fulfill all your requirements though.

not what your asking, but I've found the Roku interface on my TV to be really easy to use by all my household members. Solid enough and low impact.

Of course, it does have ADS on the start page for content on services, which might defeat the whole point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com