I have a couple of TVs that I use HTPC appliances with. One’s a shield TV and the other’s a roku. I’m not super happy with either of them. The shield lags like crazy and apps crash constantly. The Roku is stable, but can’t decode h265 or av1. Both at riddled with ads. Does anyone have a solution they’re happy with? I mostly watch content from major streaming services and stream media from my NAS. I have a raspberry pi 4 that’s not in use right now, I tried to get it working as a set top box, but couldn’t get DRM content to work so I went back to the shield.
Intel NUC running Linux. Not the cheapest solution but can play anything and I have full control over it. At first I tried to find some kind of programmable remote but now we have a wireless keyboard with built-in touchpad.
Biggest downside is that the hardware quality is kind of questionable and the first two broke after 3 years + a few months, so we’re on our third now.
I was tempted by these n100 mini PCs, but worried about the no-name components. I saw many people on reddit/lemmy recommending Dell, Lenovo, HP micro form factor PCs. You can pick them up used from eBay as companies clear out “old” computers. The advantage of the known brands is ongoing firmware support.