What I liked so much about the Roku is that they were really cheap, mostly worked w/o too much bother and you could opt out of any “subscription” bullshit. I mostly just want the hardware, maybe if it offers firmware updates, fine, but other than that, I don’t really want to hear from the makers of the hardware.
I might opt for buying something really small like mini or sbc or the like when I need to replace the Rokus I have. Some of them are many, many, many years old and have kept on chugging, though.
Might hold off on buying new hardware since anything computer has gone up in price and/or is backordered…
First thing I noticed when I installed PiHole though was that “scribe.roku.com” and a bunch of other roku related telemetry was getting blocked like CRAZY.
LibreELEC takes the win for me almost every time. Extremely efficient. Kodi has the bare minimum but there’s an add-on for your niche needs & Article Fuse 3 is insanely polished now & hands down THE best Kodi skin ever.
I run the official Jellyfin add-on for TV + series but still have Elementum for p2p streaming & I could also use Jellyfin’s music library but Kodi can just access the shared Navidrome root folder. I prefer multiple ways of accessing the same folders than leaving it all to Kodi or Jellyfin.
But I digress. LibreELEC can be the powerhouse you want or the barebones you need.
Depends on the specs of the minicomputer you get and what you want to do with it. It really doesn’t take much processing power to run just streams. As long as the distro runs smoothly on the machine it will work just fine.
I came here to suggest exactly this, down to the Rii mini keyboard touchpad remote.
The mini PC brand that I use is Beelink. I have two of them (living room and bedroom), and they are great for this purpose. I even used one as my main PC for a while.
I ended up getting a mini computer with Linux and getting a Rii keyboard remote. Then I can browse to any streaming service with a browser or kodi.
What I liked so much about the Roku is that they were really cheap, mostly worked w/o too much bother and you could opt out of any “subscription” bullshit. I mostly just want the hardware, maybe if it offers firmware updates, fine, but other than that, I don’t really want to hear from the makers of the hardware.
I might opt for buying something really small like mini or sbc or the like when I need to replace the Rokus I have. Some of them are many, many, many years old and have kept on chugging, though.
Might hold off on buying new hardware since anything computer has gone up in price and/or is backordered…
First thing I noticed when I installed PiHole though was that “scribe.roku.com” and a bunch of other roku related telemetry was getting blocked like CRAZY.
…And the TV somehow got a bit faster.
Its all 720p though. No 4k or even 1080p Netflix,Disney+,paramount+,HBO,peacock, Amazon prime etc
You’re doing it wrong. Only service I pay for is a VPN.
To quote Gabe, its a service issue
Use Kodi with a Debrid service to pirate everything for a fraction of the price and high res and audio
I’m thinking of doing this. Which distro is most suitable for this?
LibreELEC takes the win for me almost every time. Extremely efficient. Kodi has the bare minimum but there’s an add-on for your niche needs & Article Fuse 3 is insanely polished now & hands down THE best Kodi skin ever.
I run the official Jellyfin add-on for TV + series but still have Elementum for p2p streaming & I could also use Jellyfin’s music library but Kodi can just access the shared Navidrome root folder. I prefer multiple ways of accessing the same folders than leaving it all to Kodi or Jellyfin.
But I digress. LibreELEC can be the powerhouse you want or the barebones you need.
Depends on the specs of the minicomputer you get and what you want to do with it. It really doesn’t take much processing power to run just streams. As long as the distro runs smoothly on the machine it will work just fine.
I came here to suggest exactly this, down to the Rii mini keyboard touchpad remote.
The mini PC brand that I use is Beelink. I have two of them (living room and bedroom), and they are great for this purpose. I even used one as my main PC for a while.