Or even better, get one of the many LibreELEC supported devices (including, as somebody mentioned, a Raspberry Pi 5) and put LibreELEC on it (which is a pared-down Linux with Kodi).

Personally after maybe a decade running successive generations of TV Media Players to play my growing video file collection on my TV, on my latest upgrade I ended up going down the Mini-PC with Linux and Kodi on autostart route (as I used it also as a home server) and am very satisfied with it, though if I wanted to just use it as a Media Player I would've gone with LibreELEC and on of the various ARM SBCs they support (maybe the Pi, maybe something cheaper).

There really is no reason to use closed commercial solutions for this.

Edit: If all you do is consume media on it via Kodi, you can use a remote like this one so it's the same usage experience as with a commercial device, just without the enshittification.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

The number one feature in my streaming device is that it has HDMI cec and a one handed simple remote interface. No keyboard. No mouse. Low power usage as a bonus.

How can I make both happen?

I've tried so so many couch keyboards and they are all miserable even with a track pad or track ball. I also have a unified remote on my phone and I still hate having to go find my phone and unlock it. Then it occasionally doesn't connect for reasons beyond my understanding so I have to take half an hour to debug.

Duck even if I could use my xbox controller for everything, id be happy but no it only works in games reliably.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Don't really know about the HDMI cec, but I use one of these remotes which works perfectly with Kodi (it seems to just work like a wireless keyboard that just sends keypresses for shortcut characters corresponding to the function of each button, and those shortcuts are some kind of standard that Kodi supports, so this kind of remote - that also works for Android stuff - works fine with Kodi).

The only quirk it has versus the remotes that come in commercial solutions is that whilst the Power button in the remote will switch the Mini-PC OFF, it won't switch it back ON (for the obvious reason that it uses a USB dongle and the PC when switched OFF won't recognize input from the dongle).

I first got one which had even more buttons (also working fine with Kodi), but the remote's build quality was shit and it didn't took long for some of the button on that one to stop working reliably.

This one has been working fine for about a year now.

I do have a keyboard and mouse attached to that Mini-PC because it doubles up as home server and once in a while I have to do something on it which is more easilly done directly there with a UI rather than remotelly on the command line via SSH (or I simply don't want to boot my main PC to access the Mini-PC remotelly), but to just consume media via Kodi nothing else beyond that remote is needed.

[–] Kyle11leo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

If you're using Kodi on a PC and want your TV remote to control Kodi or your Kodi remote to control your TV, there's this little doodad that might help https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter

It's built in to RPi. I've got LibreELEC on it. My Kodi goes to sleep after 1 minute idle and sends the signal to turn off the TV. I also added a button to my home page to turn off the TV. When I push a button to wake up Kodi, it turns the TV on. There is a bug where when it sleeps during playback it shows a black screen instead of turning off, so i have to stop playback to make it turn the TV off. I opened a bug about it and they mentioned it might be fixed in the nightly release 22 builds but I never got around to trying it.

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