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

Selfhosted

40695 readers
821 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 2 years 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
[–] Nothingwise 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The mini pc is the most flexible. Batocera works really well and includes:

  • Kodi to stream local media and can act as an Airplay receiver
  • the ability to run Flatpaks
  • a nice 10 ft UI
  • emulation backends and moonlight game streaming
  • the ability to pair Xbox and PlayStation controllers

Get a usb IR receiver like FLIRC or something similar with HDMI CEC to control everything via standard remote.

[–] kalpol 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The learning curve for Kodi is pretty steep. Most folks aren't going to bother.

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

This is the first time I’ve heard anyone say Kodi has a learning curve. I’m curious what you found difficult?

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

Not OP but I found Kodi incredibly intuitive up until the point that something didn't behave as expected. Then it was very complicated and support was difficult to find and understand.

[–] kalpol 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Pretty much this. Imagine some untutored user given the jellyfin client. They can figure it out pretty quickly as it is much like Netflix. Compare that to a Kofi on a Pi, first you have a keyboard/mouse. OK, then arrow keys and spacebar get you a ways in - now how do I stop the video? Panic till you find out it's the X key.

It is the simplicity vs functionality debate. Kodi is amazingly configurable but it is not accessible for your normal household user without a ton of work. Jellyfin(as an example) just runs on the Roku they are already using.

Eventually I'm getting off my old Roku 3 permanently for Kodi, so I'm just saying I wish Kodi had a dummy mode.

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

You're describing a completely foreign experience to me. I've always controlled Kodi with the TV remote. It's kind of annoying to type in stuff, but I mostly use Kodi to record and watch jeopardy.

[–] kalpol 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The one that came with my tv.

I just click up down left right enter return and it works.

[–] kalpol 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What TV do you have? What are you running Kodi on?

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

It's a Sony TV, a Bravia model from many years ago. It runs on a raspberry pi 2, connected with HDMI. There is a setting called CEC (if I remember correctly) that was automatically enabled, and lets the TV remote's commands pass thru to the RPI over the HDMI cable. Should work for most TVs, but if you use an HDMI to DisplayPort/usbC adapter, some of those might not work right.

I hope you can try it out because it's very convenient as a user. And as the administrator you can still connect a mouse/keyboard or use a smartphone to configure the more powerful things Kodi can do.

[–] kalpol 1 points 3 months ago

OK I'll take a look at it, interesting.

[–] kalpol 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

OK I had no idea this existed so thanks! I'm one of today's lucky 10000 I guess. I have an old Panasonic with Viera and had no idea it did this. Not working perfectly yet but not far off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Sweet! Let me know if it works for you!