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?

    • @hperrinEnglish
      1•16 days ago

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

      • NickwithaCEnglish
        0•16 days ago

        For OP’s needs they are fine though.

        • @hperrinEnglish
          2•16 days ago

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