Hopefully this is the right kind of question for this community, my apologies if not.
I’m looking for some sort of device that will let me load my own media from a USB / SD card, and play it to my TV. Does such a device exist? Some sort of remote controlled box that can just load mp4 / mkv files from locally hosted storage? I have been using my PC over HDMI but it can get annoying having an awkward room layout because my computer always has to be next to the TV to do this.
Like kylian said: Kodi. You can install it even on an android device (like a firestick) or you can go for some distro giving an out of the box good experience like LibreELEC.
I suggest to avoid the temptation to get one of the many cheap Android boxen meant for media playback from Ali Express or the like, as they have a strong tendency to be heavily loaded with malware. Definitely not all of them, but it’s really hard to tell which specific one you’ll get.
I am sure most of them are.
Well that depends on how you define malware ;)
I haven’t seem one without malware
And load it on a Raspberry Pi