this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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What's a good solution for a remote control and "TV like" interface for browsing accessing things? I really just want a good YouTube and jellyfin interface with a normal remote.
A PC. You can buy an n100 mini PC. There's different interfaces and os's for htpc's. You can buy a remote that works with PC's and those handheld keyboard/trackpad combo's work pretty well.
The 2.4ghz connector for those trackpad/keyboard combos never worked more than like 10 feet away so the couch wasn't an option (until I got one that used BT)
I actually bought one of those corsair lapdog things when they were new (the keyboard+mousepad with built in USB hub) and it's honestly fairly comfortable. Wired connection.
I have an old laptop hooked up my tv already, but using the Bluetooth keyboard and TouchPad to navigate traditional desktop focused applications is such a cumbersome activity that both my husband and I never bother to use it, we just grab the remote and use the default tv interface.
I was specifically asking about the remote control and more tv- like interface software. I've never managed to get kodi to be anything good, not sure what I'm missing with that but it's always super clunky and bad to use.
Someone else suggested plasma big screen, I'm going to install and try and get that configured up today, see how it goes.
There's a couple of different OSs that are based around Linux and Kodi. You can use steam big picture mode and an Xbox controller. You can add non steam apps and browser links. You can install Android TV in Windows.
Android TV is what I'm trying to escape 😀
Thanks for the suggestions, I guess I'll look around for a pre-configured Kodi setup, people say that can be good.
I did give plasma bigscreen a try, but overall it seems to be not working well on straight x86 hardware, it's intended for ARM devices mostly it seems.
Plasma Big screen:
https://plasma-bigscreen.org/
I tried for hours to get this working and could not. Steam big picture can actually be used as a launcher if you use boilr to import flatpaks. Might be worth it to try steamOS as an HTPC.
I think you can just launch Steam big picture directly.
Maybe I should start selling little orange pis with with plasma big screen set up ready to go, also with Netflix etc ready
I assume you are using an orange pi successfully? Which version exactly?
Orange Pi 3b with dietpi.
I've had Big screen work before in Raspberry Pi 4 (even made a meme about back when I was tinkering around with different OS's on it to see potential uses for my rpi), but Orange Pis are cheaper and the hardware is more open source, so I'm curious if I would get better responsiveness out of it. Plus the Orange Pi I have has 8gb too.
I like your Steam Big picture idea too.
Don't know, have been thinking of making something easy to use for awhile for some of my family members anyway. But has to be really easy since they're not the most tech literate (well may my mom and definitely dad. If he can use whatever I make, anyone can).
I'm trying big picture out on my 8th gen Intel mini PC with endeavouros and plasma and getting pretty bad performance. Probably missed something in configuration, but I'm just gonna try steamOS and see how that does.
Edit: Realizing now that the steamOS download link redirects to steam deck recovery image, still waiting on non steam deck image. I'm gonna try chimeraOS instead.