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.
I’ve tried libreelec on a raspberry pi 4, but it just doesn’t pass the wife test.
We have a thomson streaming stick 140G (EU branding for ONN). We just use jellyfin, smarttube and our national public service streaming apps. It’s in apps-only mode, but Google still injects one ad on the home screen. I didn’t bother with a custom launcher just yet.