Hacker News Reader

Comment by gustavus | Hacker News Reader

I plug this on every article about FireTV or AppleWatchbox or GoogleXstream.

Buy a desktop, can even be an old one I picked mine up for $200 from a used electronic store. Buy a wireless keyboard and mouse, buy and HDMI cord.

Setup a shortcut on your desktop to each of the major streaming services you want.

Boom everything you could want or need, if you don't like the idea of a mouse Vimium extension allows you to everything from the keyboard. Also you can install uBlock origin to deal with pesky ads.

You know who doesn't deal with a completely hijacked interface and can customize things to how he wants while also being able to play steam games on my TV? This guy.

If your skeptical just give it a try and prepare to be surprised.

View on HN

I used to do that. Until I got a Chromecast + Remote. It's a tiny, clean remote that controls my tv, my soundbar and the chromecast, my main media streaming app (emby) is one click away after turning my tv on, performance "just works" and it handles 4k content no problem.

A HTPC is great in terms of flexibility amd configurability, but it does not come close to the simplicity and elegance of a tv box - be it apple tv or google tv. My father has a generic android tv box (mecool something something) and it's equally as perfect for their needs.

I'm not aware of any ads baked in to the google/android tv ui.

I did this more than 10 years ago. I had a G-Force 9600 GT with a FreeBSD desktop. And I used piano bar, the CLI program for Spotify, as my audio program. And then I just navigated the file system to play videos from my personal library.

In some ways it's simpler, but having a remote control and having the app user interface versus a desktop is nicer most of the time.

Hmm no. That uses too much power for me and I really want something with a simple remote.

So same as above with OpenElec or Kodi plus remote ?

You can get mini PCs or laptops that idle at 10 watts or less. If you suspend it when not in use it will be truly negligible. And there's no reason you can't use a remote with one, although I'd argue a wireless mouse is basically a remote.

That uses way more power than a streaming box, though. From what I found, an Apple TV uses about 6 watts when streaming 4k. I bet an old PC will use at least 100 to 200 watts when streaming, and at least 50 watts idle.

I've read that a pi 4 uses approximately 6.4 Watts. That's one alternative giving you a full desktop.

I don’t think a pi can do 4k 60hz? I haven’t used one since forever though, maybe they’re faster. In any case, the OP was talking about an old computer, not a pi.

I'm considering this with my pi 4 or a mini pc. The former may not be the best for streaming but if I avoid running anything else (like HomeAssistant, a server) I figure it will be fine for now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com