I was one of those stubborn bastards who typed out a physical letter with all the necessary information and snail-mailed it to the address they listed in that bullshit forced arbitration agreement. Though I doubt that will do me much good.
That said, I agree with you about Roku being garbage now. I used to be a big fan of their products. But that company has made it increasingly clear that they don’t respect their customers in many ways.
I’m looking at moving to something else. Maybe an Nvidia Shield? I don’t know. I don’t really like Chromecast or the Amazon stick/box options. I need to find some time to look into open source options. I have a decent Raspberry Pi sitting idle.
Anyone got recommendations or pointers to open source solutions that would give me a decent streaming box with a good UI and remote control functionality?
Honestly, a Pi or small Intel NUC running Linux + Kodi is probably all most people including yourself need just to access locally hosted/stored content as well as YouTube and netflix. It covers the basics. The only benefits things like Chromecast have is the less “techy” setup process and maybe a little more drm support foe higher quality streams.
Downside to using nonstandard hardware without Big Brother Media approved drm spyware: streams will be limited to 720p from corporate sources, and some (HBO I think?) Will refuse to work entirely.
If using a Pi you can buy an IR blaster hat so you can use traditional remotes with it, or use something like a Bluetooth keyboard/TouchPad combo. Or even remote control it from your phone using something like LinuxRemote. There’s a lot of options.
I was one of those stubborn bastards who typed out a physical letter with all the necessary information and snail-mailed it to the address they listed in that bullshit forced arbitration agreement. Though I doubt that will do me much good.
That said, I agree with you about Roku being garbage now. I used to be a big fan of their products. But that company has made it increasingly clear that they don’t respect their customers in many ways.
I’m looking at moving to something else. Maybe an Nvidia Shield? I don’t know. I don’t really like Chromecast or the Amazon stick/box options. I need to find some time to look into open source options. I have a decent Raspberry Pi sitting idle.
Anyone got recommendations or pointers to open source solutions that would give me a decent streaming box with a good UI and remote control functionality?
Honestly, a Pi or small Intel NUC running Linux + Kodi is probably all most people including yourself need just to access locally hosted/stored content as well as YouTube and netflix. It covers the basics. The only benefits things like Chromecast have is the less “techy” setup process and maybe a little more drm support foe higher quality streams.
Downside to using nonstandard hardware without Big Brother Media approved drm spyware: streams will be limited to 720p from corporate sources, and some (HBO I think?) Will refuse to work entirely.
If using a Pi you can buy an IR blaster hat so you can use traditional remotes with it, or use something like a Bluetooth keyboard/TouchPad combo. Or even remote control it from your phone using something like LinuxRemote. There’s a lot of options.
Thanks, this is very helpful.