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Substitutes for a TV? (lemm.ee)

submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/techsupport

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Not sure a good discussion place to post this. I just want some brainstorming.

Looking for ideas on how to set up a faux-TV in the living room using a computer. I want to put an entertainment center across from the couch and have a place to watch media. But I have no interest in paying for cable/satellite/public broadcasts. (Why pay to be advertised to?)

I have a good collection of shows and movies on external hard drives. I figure I could buy a big monitor and plop it up there with a laptop attached. I could do a makeshift mouse using a game pad and Steam.

I just wanted to check if anyone had alternatives in mind. The mouse situation is suboptimal. Having to get another laptop is also suboptimal. The "TV" would also be about 200cm (6.5ish ft) away from the seating area, so I wonder how expensive an appropriately sized monitor would be. But I can't think of any other way! Any ideas or have I pretty much figured it out?

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[–] PP_BOY_ 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (3 children)

I'd look into the HTPC (home theater PC) community. Many of your problems have already been addressed. "htpc keyboard" on Amazon pulls of plenty of options for you to consider

E: If you've got the money to spend, there's no reason to do something as unsightly as external HDDs>laptop>>HDMI>monitor when Plex exists and is plug-and-play. Throw your laptop and drives in a closet or a backroom and put a Roku (or Shield) on the "TV." Much neater and you can navigate with the remote too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

cool! never heard of it. anything like that around lemmy or must I drege back to the spez heap?

[–] PP_BOY_ 1 points 12 hours ago

No idea on Lemmy tbh because my interaction with tech community is "something broke and I don't know how to fix it"/// I don't lurk because I have nothing to useful contribute lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Damn and they just say "We will not support Laptop Screens or PC Monitors as Home Theater display devices" end of story. Where's the wiki page on "Here's how to connect a CPU to a TV" because I don't even know whether that's possible or not. I swear sometimes ppl who know a lot about tech really don't understand how to talk to people who dont know a lot about tech

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Hmm about Plex, never heard of it before, but it seems like it's just another streaming service? Seems like Roku is the same kind of thing.

To clarify, I'm not looking to stream from any paid services. No amount of cables or devices are as unslightly as advertisements!

Also I looked up the HTPC reddit community and yikes their "basic" support is just a bunch of links to standalone CPUs -- that's way over my head!

[–] PP_BOY_ 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Plex kind of has to advertise itself as that because it's real product is sort of in the grey area, legally speaking.

Essentially, a Plex server allows you to stream locally stored files from your computer to any clients running the Plex app. A lot of people use this as a way to watch pirated media.

For example, I run my server (desktop) in my home office and have several drives attached to it and in one of those drives is "Pride.and.Prejudice.2005.mp4" and because I have my Plex server attached to that file, I can go to my TV and watch Pride and Prejudice (2005) on my sofa. The movie file "moves" through my hard drive into my desktop, then goes through my router and gets streamed into my TV. (A bit of a simplification but it gets the point across.)

So, no payment necessary to stream media you own through Plex. There is a paid tier but the features it enables are nothing someone wanting to watch movies on their sofa should worry about, all the essential stuff is in the free option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

Wow that's so interesting! That might be worth some more investigation, especially if the setup is straightforward. Thanks.