this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
95 points (99.0% liked)

Selfhosted

40313 readers
197 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

With Chromecasts being discontinued, increase in ads, telemetry, etc I'm wondering if anyone else is going back to old school HTPCs or if they have some other solution to do this in house.

I think the options here are likely:

  1. Rooted streamer (ie Chromecast, firestick)
  2. Android Box
  3. Mini PC

I'm actually most interested in experimenting with #3, a mini PC running KDE Plasma Bigscreen. Most of my self hosted apps can be run in browser windows, and a full desktop (while harder to navigate) is better than the browsers you can get on Android.

What is everyone esle, especially the privacy / de-googled self hosters doing for their media front end?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (5 children)

N100 mini PC imo. $150 does everything.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

All my current self-hosting is running off an N100 mini-PC. OPNsense, NginX, Home Assistant, Unifi Controller, Docker host, etc. They are fantastic, it just seems a bit overkill for sitting behind the TV and playing Plex/Jellyfin and the occasional web stream in a browser. There's really not much competition though as all the products below it offer a lot older processors that don't have very up to date HW decode.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Same. Seems like overkill when you can see what it can do. But also at that price you can velcro it to the back of your tv and it can literally do anything so have at. I don't see a lot of better options. I use full computers personally.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

What optimized application do you run for the big screen and easy navigation? What about remote control?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I haven't done it other than for testing, but you can pair a fire Stick remote to a PC using Bluetooth and it works with Kodi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Stremio/Plex with a Microsoft keyboard that has a touchpad built in. It's big but you can get small ones off Amazon for $20

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’d recommend the Pepper Jobs windows 10 gyro remote. I’ve got two of them because they’re so great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

No. They emulate a keyboard, and use the keyboard shortcuts to do things in Windows. So they won’t work out of the box in Linux, but you can add each of the keys as a keyboard shortcut, then they’ll work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Htpc for YouTube and gaming and native tv app plex streaming content from my plex/nas media server (pi4). Works great. Power is crazy high in California right now at over 49c /kwh so I need to boot up the htpc as little as possible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. N100 mini PCs are like the Swiss Army Knife of computers. Almost as compact as a Raspberry Pi, and compatible with a lot more things.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

2.4 times. But, who’s counting?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I didn’t say Raspberry Pi Zero. Those are niche machines. They’re not fast enough to do general purpose computing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For OP's needs they are fine though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

They can’t do 4K video. The best they can do is 1080p30.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Anyway to do this without a keyboard. I used to have a PC connected to my TV for this but eventually just bought an apple tv for simplicity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have one of these: http://www.riitek.com/product/254.html

The back has a keyboard, the front has programmible buttons for the TV (mostly just used for on/off), and the rest is a bunch of buttons connected to the PC.

I use it with Kodi but it's a pretty user friendly way to control it once it's set up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Remote control over your phone or using a Xbox controller like if it were a console. Back in the day I had an htpc remote but ability to control apps is inconsistent.

For me nothing is more simple then a PC interface. I hate having to scroll using a TV remote it takes so long to do anything and it's quite limiting in other ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Phone wouldn't work for me, I've got a strict no phone around the TV rule for myself because I'm way too tempted to just use it instead of enjoying the thing I'm watching. Also wouldn't really want to put an Xbox controller onto my wife or step mother.

I wish there was some kind of application you could run that would abstract all the mouse and keyboard interactions into a remote control friendly interface.