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Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Media Streaming Device?
The network card died on Thelasko's smart TV -- and rather than spend $65 on a new one, they're considering buying a nice, simple streaming box.
I am running a Rygel server on my PC, but rarely use it... I primarily only watch Amazon Prime, Netflix, and YouTube for streaming, and am wondering what Slashdot users have found to be the best option. I'm considering Roku or Chromecast because they are well known and supported. However, I have heard a lot of news about Kodi devices being more hackable.
AppleTV? Amazon Fire TV? The Emtec GEM Box? Building your own from a Raspberry Pi? Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
What's the best media streaming device?
AppleTV? Amazon Fire TV? The Emtec GEM Box? Building your own from a Raspberry Pi? Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
What's the best media streaming device?
Mostly because it is content-neutral =)
My SHIELD is a real powerhouse. It also acts as a Chromecast endpoint, can use any Android store apps, and best of all supports audio passthrough with PLEX for DTS goodness!
Now with Kodi.
Roku followed mx1 pro+ 4k
2nd Gen FireTV: https://www.amazon.com/Certifi...
It has more horse power than the 3rd gen. Ethernet, wifi, SD card slot, and a USB port (which can support a 3rd party USB infrared + MCE remote). On top of that, it allows you to easily sideload 3rd party android apps, either by ADB or using the downloader app in their app store.
The Amazon app store has Netflix, Hulu, amazon Prime Video, and many other streaming video providers.
Unfortunately Amazon doesn't appear to manufacture them anymore, but they still sell certified refurbished ones.
(The newer FireTV 3rd gen is similar, but has 2/3 the processing power, no built-in ethernet, no SD card slot, and only supports an Amazon branded external Ethernet adapter in the USB slot, nothing else. It is a little cheaper,though.)
And you call yourself nerds buying off the shelf shit
Good selection of them. I've got an older model and it does everything fine (supports 4k, but I don't have a 4k TV). Supports all the channels you've specified plus a few others (NFL Sunday ticket etc), and it's not tied to any of the content providers.
That's basically it. The newer Fire TV stick is perfectly capable, unlike the laggy first gen. Install Kodi, use native apps for everything else, profit.
Shield supports Netflix, Amazon, and Google @4K, and you can run Kodi on it as well as ChromeCast to it...
Afterwards, if you are tired of TV, you can even stream games...
Admittedly it's a bit more expensive, than other streaming boxes, but cheaper than a PC...
AppleTV with MrMC, Infuse or Plex for your media. It has all the streaming services you use. I love it, but on the downside hackability is very low.
It's easy to setup and it just works. No hacking required and simple enough to use for any age.
It supports Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, sport networks, and many other TV sources. And if you want to play your own content, just install the Plex app and Plex on your computer for free. And when you're not using it, the screen savers are beautiful.
Rokus just support everything. You name it, it's there (well Youtube TV "eventually" but hopefully soon). Fire TV doesn't support Youtube (stupid fight over it). An Apple TV costs twice as much as a Roku Streaming Stick+, no the stupid "horespower" blah blah blah blah shit doesn't matter. It's a streaming thing, you stream, it works or it doesn't, your not mining bitcoin or curing cancer with it.
Chromecast is great if all you want to do is stream from a PC or phone but is fairly limited. It is basically a dumb device.
Roku on the other hand just works. It supports every major platform, is content provider neutral and you can even create your own channels. It is easy enough for kids or the technically challenged, and you don't need a separate device to control it.
In my opinion, you're not going to get a great solution for less than the cost of the replacement network card. The Roku Ultra will do everything you want -- only it will cost $99. It's powerful, supports 4K HDR properly, does Amazon, YouTube, and Netfilx well. Plus it plays media off of USB and MicroSD, and does both Wi-Fi and Ethernet. My only grumble is lack of support for exFAT on removable media. It also presents as a Chromecast if you want to use it that way (I also have a Chromecast Ultra so I don't). Nearly everyone deploys apps for the Roku first, so chances are you'll find a Roku "channel" for anything you want to stream. Fire TV does the best job of supporting Amazon content, and the gen 1/2 boxes were overpowered so they were super responsive on the UI. But its transformation into a Chromecast clone is unfortunate.
Bit old but still my favorite.
For a long time I ran an AppleTV and lived in the iTunes world. It was fine, a long time ago, but new/cheaper/better options exist. I personally rip all of my media to a Synology NAS and have started working with 4K media files. If I didn't have the 4k HDR h.265 media and the large digital collection I've amassed, I'd probably have gotten a FireTV - incredibly capable, plenty of streaming options, and cheap. But the 4k files that I have require a whole lot of horsepower, and I wanted to try to future-proof myself for a few years so I got an Nvidia Shield. Love the Android app options (it's fully rootable if you wanna get real custom with it), I run Plex on my Synology NAS with my own media, Kodi/Netflix/Prime all stream well, RetroArch works flawlessly with the Shield game controller so game emulation is super easy. All in all the Shield is pretty much a MPC replacement for fraction of the cost.
Get yourself a nice blu-ray player. Then you can push blu-ray and streaming down one channel --- win-win. I don't recommend one because I only have a Sony here and it's relatively new. Seems like the obvious choice though.
my Nexus Player. $50 3 years ago, well spent...
But I am kind of waiting for a working Amazon Prime/
Netflix and Kodi work well with my home NFS server with a ton of transcoded files from old time radio shows, ,movies and tv shows.
I did add an ethernet/multi-port USB hub and a 2.4 ghz wireless keyboard which made things much, much better...
I got an NVidia Shield with the 500GB HD expansion. Couldn't be happier. Expandable. I can write software if I wanted with no issues. Comes with Amazon Prime, Vudu, and a host of other options. If I remember correctly it is also 4K ready!
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
Please leave your suggestions here. Also helpful are suggestions how to read a menu and explanations about search engines (aka google)
If you already own a laptop thereâ(TM)s no need to buy another device. If you donâ(TM)t then buy whatever device is cheapest.
Another nice feature is that you can set the Nvidia Shield to handle volume control internally so that things like using projectors and bluetooth speakers that don't understand volume control commands over HDMI can still have their volume controlled directly via the Nvidia Shield.
I also got a second game controller and the tv remove as well. I put it to sleep, my projector goes to sleep automatically. I hit the center button on the remote and it all "just wakes up" and is ready to go.
Oh, and no batteries for the remote or game controllers... all usb rechargable.
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
And yes.. VLC works just fine... along with Mupen64 and all the rest of the standard Android goodies....
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
There's a mass of Chinese ARM based 8 core streaming boxes that support 4K and come with Netflix and a mass of other Android TV apps, plesk, youtube etc.
They have decent 3D performance which makes them good for Android games too.
Stick a keyboard wireless dongle and use a normal keyboard and mouse (e.g. Logitechs) and you have a full system. Since they often support bluetooth, you can use one of those bluetooth game controllers (e.g. iPega) for games.
Look for S912 (an Amlogic 8core chip used for the 4K ones which will ensure its the current generation)
Have tried literally every option available. Nvidia shield beats them all hands-down. It's the only thing with enough performance to handle its own UI.
My observations, not from direct experience (except Roku, which I own), but from stuff I've read. I follow this space fairly closely.
Roku: for simplicity and the largest amount of (legal) streaming options. Some of the UI may not be as slick as the competition, but it's fine. Only some older/smaller channels have pretty old-looking UIs.
Android TV: if you want to pay more and have less simple, legal streaming options, but more general-purpose options, like web browsers, games, and yes, apps that facilitate access to pirated content.
Fire TV: same as Android TV, but more deeply tied to Amazon services. This brings some advantages and some disadvantages, such as the Youtube app being pulled.
Apple TV: as usual Apple has a nice interface and integration with Apple services, but is expensive and tightly locked down.
Chromecast: requires another device, like a smartphone, tablet, or computer to work. This, to me, makes it not as simple a TV-watching experience as the self-contained devices above.
Roll your own (HTPC, Android stick(?), etc): more work than any of the above, and what you gain probably won't justify it.
I own and always recommend Roku above all the others. It has been the most popular streaming platform for years now according to various surveys I've read. However, be aware that recently I've noticed that a few new channels have been releasing on the Android and Apple TV platforms first, presumably because the developers do the work for the mobile apps first (Android and iOS), then the related TV platforms, and then finally on Roku and others. This may be because Roku apparently is its own isolated platform development-wise, with little connection to any other platform. Another possibility is that developers who are not releasing mobile apps are using Apple and Android TV as smaller user bases to start rolling out their services with to work out kinks with apps and back-ends.
So for example, a typical solution 8 core Android 7.1 TV box, with 2GB ram, wired and wireless ethernet, SPDIF for optical audio if needed, 4Kx2k resolution, lots of codecs, Google Play.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DDR4-3G-32G-Android-7-1-TV-Box-Amlogic-S912-Octa-Core-2-4G-5G-Dual/32821779272.html
Install the usual apps, e.g. MX Player for video playback, and your favorite media streamer (they come preinstalled with a bunch of Android clients, but I put on my Cable TVs streaming app too).
I'd stick a normal wireless PC keyboard/mouse dongle on it too, since that makes it easier.
I use a basic Intel Compute Stick with Windows 10 on it. More than capbal of playing youtube, netflix and dvd's.
A Windows pc will let you stream almost anything. With an up to date graphics card, it can support h265, 4k and HDR. And if the codec isn't supported in hardware, you can usually find a software implementation. Find a player which sets the output frame rate though. The TV has better resources for showing 30 Hz video correctly
We've got two of them - they work well, support AirPlay, every streaming service we watch, and the price on the refurbished units was good. The new ATVs cost twice as much and don't really give the average person anything substantial over the third-gen units (unless you care about 4K).
But if you're not in the Apple ecosystem, there's really no strong argument for any Apple TV over a Roku box.
#DeleteChrome
Just finished ditching Kodi, definitely would not recommend it unless you like constantly maintaining something and it doesn't work well with stuff like Netflix and amazon prime. I am using a combination of Fetch and Chromecast here now (Australia), Though if I was overseas I would go towards roku. if all you want to do is watch content then stick with the pre canned devices like Roku.
10 years later, I still can't find anything better. Maybe I need to learn to like stutters and hiccups though...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Designers can't seem to get it through their heads that the #1 priority for TV remote is for it to be usable without looking away from the TV
I have not issues with this remote at all. You can tell which way is up by feel, and since you are using the touch surface for most selections you can easily use the remote in the dark, without looking... the battery lasts ages too. The SIRI button is mainly used for searches, and works really well... also if you have an iPhone and a keyboard comes up on the Apple TV, you can just type on your phone.
So touchscreens and touchpads are out
Come on, the control is just swiping across the surface that is like an inch wide, or tapping one of the edges or the center - while you are holding it. Who on earth has such poor motor coordination they cannot manage this? Hint: My three year old niece can use it easily...
You want tactile buttons
They are all tactile. The buttons of course press, but the touchpad ALSO presses, you can feel if you are at an edge to press, you can feel when you are not near an edge to press. Also a touch surface is WAY WAY better for scrolling through lists of things than any buttons, much faster.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I find just a suitably specced computer connected to one of the HDMI ports on the TV is suitable for all my media needs.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Ubuntu running on a low-power passive cooled PC. I've had this solution running for about 5 years now. It's needed almost no maintenance and uses very little power. It can stream Netflix, Youtube, or just pick up the files from a server using NFS or SAMBA. [n.b. The jurisdiction where I live has been very poorly supported by most of the streaming services so I would not trust the product offering]
I love it, but on the downside hackability is very low.
Sort of true, but programmability is super high and has a great IDE with a simulator. Anyone can register for a free dev account and play with making apps for the AppleTV, that do whatever you like. You can share them with friends via TestFlight...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple TV is probably the easiest to use now for video but to play music on an Apple TV through iTunes is just annoying.
If you rip your music, the I prefer raspberry pi with music play daemon and a smartphone app
I own a Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. Neither can touch the Shield. Simple, you want the best buy a Shield.
Rokus just support everything.
So I can use a Roku to watch purchased TV shows or movies from iTunes?
An Apple TV costs twice as much as a Roku Streaming Stick+
How many apps does the Roku have? AppleTV is still a more flexible option, which is why it costs more.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has anyone repurposed a Steam Link for this type of thing before? The hardware should be more than capable, and I saw they were on sale for $4.99 occasionally.
A Cubox is not substantially different from a Raspberry Pi, it's just slightly more compact and comes pre-assembled. You can put Kodi on it, though it looks like that might be installed by default now.
Just bear in mind that it has the same limitations as a Raspberry Pi: it can be a fine media player, but it won't handle the DRM'd stuff. So no Netflix or Amazon Prime, but it does have a Youtube plugin (unless the situation with Netflix has changed?). It's also more expensive than a Raspberry Pi, but not if you get it used off of Ebay like I did.
My Roku 3 feels like a high quality product in my hands. The remote control, the user interface, even the cute little animation as it boots up. I love the Roku fabric label at the bottom end of the remote control, it orients it in my hand without being obtrusive and reminds me of Levi's Red Tab jeans.
Also, love the fact it gives me a hard-wired network connection, which is a serious bonus if you've got a few WiFi devices in the area; streaming video doesn't wait for the neighbours to stop gaming.
My beefs are with the internal player - needs to support more filetypes - Roku really needs to open that up (or maybe open-source it, so that the user community can help with it). And of the 1500 or whatever channels, without a formal survey, I think 1000 of them are fly-by-night churches and other whackos who believe in invisible boogeymen who watch you while you're taking a dump. In other words, these may be "channels", but the only people watching them are mentally infirm, scientifically ignorant and gullible to religious BS, or physically incapable of changing the channel. 500 channels is a more accurate description; truth in advertising.
I love my Roku 3, but in the end I just set up a real computer running openSUSE Linux. It plays everything. My remote control is KDE Connect from my Android phone, and a USB wireless keyboard and mouse so finding things on YouTube isn't a total pain in the ass.
openSUSE's "lizard in a lightbulb" flickers intentionally while it loads. It's not as cute as the Roku bootup, but it looks really nice, and has all the gloss of a professional-grade solution but with a real feeling of power. If I was back in the professional video business and a reboot ended up on public display or going out as a TV broadcast, the Roku can't compete with the polish and power of openSUSE's boot.
The Roku is great for playing *some* things, but not enough things to make the space and power savings worthwhile, at least for my needs. The (wired!) Roku beats a Chromecast stick for YouTube ONLY if the WiFi is crowded. And I don't use Netflix enough to bother with either.
I haven't tried to get the Roku to automatically play an arbitrary video off its USB port on boot, which would be crucial for kiosks and stuff.
I love my Roku. It's like a really high quality VCR. Without the features I need. It's an absolutely great solution for a family member who just wants to watch Netflix.
Any old laptop with an HDMI port and openSUSE will serve you far better and do far more, and, depending on your hardware, allow you to freak out your non-geek friends by simply dragging a VLC window from one monitor to the other - in 2018, it's amazing how many people have never seen a dual-head display.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I personally have shunned blueray like the plague from the moment I found out that each disk is designed to carry a blacklist of content producers (which the playback devices must load and adhere to).
Aka: You might have legally(!) bought yourselves a (small) libraries worth of bluerays, but just a single "he done something we don't like" blacklisting and you are left with nothing more than a (large) set of expensive coasters.
And although I'm certain there are some (awkward) work-arounds, the mere fact that blueray is designed in such a way as to, effectivily, punish the customer for a companies misbehaviour is enough to make me barf and give it a wide berth.
So, not that obvious I'm afraid.
RIO PMP300
Plex running on FreeBSD on zfs drives works great. We have a roku on each TV and it works flawlessly. Plex also streams to all of our mobile devices so kids are very happy with that. Get the lifetime subscription for Plex so you get all of the features. Since you'll have FreeBSD running, might as well throw Subsonic on there as well to handle all of your music needs.
Cheers
Everything else is riddled with crashes, UI slugishness, missing apps and buffering. Roku just does one thing - playing video, including 4K/HDR on a USB powered stick - and does it really well. I have Android TV too - for Steam streaming with Moonlight and emulators for retro games - but I always use Roku remote for actually watching TV.
Those 3 streaming services I can access with my Sony Blu-ray player. It cost £49 and plays CDs, Dvds and Blu-ray. Hopefully Sony is not using it to install DRM malware on the rest of the devices on my home LAN.
Whatever happened to local media? Oh, great, you stream everything from Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube. What happens when they ban/block you? What happens when your ISP bans/blocks you now that Net Neutrality is dead?
Local media still means something, you dolts!
It is the only one I have any experience with. I love that the 4th Gen connects to my plex server, and that I can connect to both my US and Japanese itunes accounts without logging out of either. This is useful since I have purchased hundreds of TV shows and Movies from iTunes US store and have Japanese Netflix and Hulu accounts. With the 2nd/3rd Gen I had to log in and out of accounts to go between the two and that kind of sucked.
Generally I am ok with the interface, but what I dislike is how many times I have to click play to watch a movie/show.
Example:
New movie comes out. I go into moive sna purchase it and it auto loads so I can watch it. That's cool cause the chance I want to watch it at time of purchase is high. I get the splash screen with the menu for Play, extras etc, so I choose play, Then it brings me to another screen where it wants to tell me about the plot of the movie I haven't seen, which irritates me because I do not want the plot of the movie, I want to just watch the movie. So I have to click play again to start the movie (those 2 "play clicks my be reverse order but they are both always there). Then if it's a movie I started to watch and didn't finish it'll show up a "play/resume" screen. Why can't the "resume button just be on the splash screen. Why make it so we have to drill into the movie, it's irritating. They do the same with TV shows.
When I click play just start the fricken movie...
Not a fan of the company but the unit is pretty nice and super responsive. They were $50 off around new years for the one with the controller.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Doesn't matter what the device is, if it runs Kodi then you're good.
(I secretly hate Kodi because a lot of it written in fucking python... Seriously, someone wrote a media app in python... Lol, dumbassess... I say "a lot of" because there are huge important pieces of kodi that are not written in python because it sucks and couldn't handle it)
Another nice feature is that you can set the Nvidia Shield to handle volume control internally so that things like using projectors and bluetooth speakers that don't understand volume control commands over HDMI can still have their volume controlled directly via the Nvidia Shield.
I also got a second game controller and the tv remove as well. I put it to sleep, my projector goes to sleep automatically. I hit the center button on the remote and it all "just wakes up" and is ready to go.
Oh, and no batteries for the remote or game controllers... all usb rechargable.
The AppleTV also lets you set up its Remote to control your TV or Receiver's volume control, too. Even ones like mine that no idea how to use anything but an IR remote! Took me about 5 seconds to set my AppleTV up to control my oldish, kinda obscure, Receiver's volume.
A Windows 8.1(To avoid Win10 EULA etc etc) Tablet with hdmi, usb, and separate power supply port.
Nothing better than the desktop programs and 'real' browsers for full control, few forced updates and so on..
Some models that work for my family
Winbook TW-700, TW802, TW-801's ($25-80 used mint)
Dell Venue 11 5130 7140 ($80+ used; mint)
Consumes only 2-7 watts depending on make/model. (Can pay for itself in power savings over regular computer/laptop) ;)
Battery backup built-in
It really depends where you live. I love my Roku, but here in Canada several streaming services don't support the Roku (the Canadian version of Amazon Prime, CraveTV). Here the Fire TV stick might be a better choice, even though the Canadian version doesn't support Alexa.
The AppleTV is badly over-priced, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
So I'd say you should do your research. Decide which streaming services you want to use, then find out which devices they work on in your Country.
------- Mark
Get an Nvidia Shield TV. It is absolutely great for Kodi and Plex and has native apps for all or most streaming services, like Netflix, Prime and Youtube that you mentioned. It also doubles as a Chromecast.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
My Roku XD and new Streaming stick +!
https://www.plex.tv/ A good computer with a couple TB of SSD or nice HDD's. A good modem. A good router. Good internet. A.good VPN. qbittorrent friends with invites.
I personally have shunned blueray like the plague from the moment I found out that each disk is designed to carry a blacklist of content producers (which the playback devices must load and adhere to).
Aka: You might have legally(!) bought yourselves a (small) libraries worth of bluerays, but just a single "he done something we don't like" blacklisting and you are left with nothing more than a (large) set of expensive coasters.
And although I'm certain there are some (awkward) work-arounds, the mere fact that blueray is designed in such a way as to, effectivily, punish the customer for a companies misbehaviour is enough to make me barf and give it a wide berth.
So, not that obvious I'm afraid.
Why would someone selling a product purposely include something that runs the risk of the product being unusable by their own customer? Now you have a pissed off customer who can't return an opened media product for a refund, and can only exchange a "defective" product for the same title, which would still not work in their player.
The backlash alone would be enough to destroy this entire "blacklist" justification. Mind providing a link or two to prove this stupidity is actually being used today? Blu-Rays and players can do a lot. Doesn't mean every feature is used (or abused).
As far as punishing the customer, there are probably some Kevin Spacey fans out there who would have liked to see him on House of Cards, but Netflix sure as shit isn't going to let that happen. I wouldn't be surprised if his entire movie catalog has been banned, so let's not assume this asinine scorched earth mentality would somehow be limited to technology designed to do it.
It's pretty great. I have a NAS that acts as a DLNA streaming server too for additional media that I want to play from the local source and pair it with AllCast. You can stream video from mostly any source, even from videos embedded in web pages.
I have a NAS/HTPC with Emby and Kodi that stream to multiple Raspberry Pi boxes. Best experience ever.
Emby lets the Pi boxes handle any type of video that they couldn't natively render, the HTPC does all the heavy lifting, and it's hooked up to the main TV.
My library of BDs and DVDs are ripped to it, all our pictures and home videos are on there, and TVheadend handles PVR through Kodi as well.
Roku for DRM'd content; Kodi+Plex for everything else.
If your plex server has sufficient CPU, then the kodi machines can be cheaper, silent, machines like a r-pi v3. If you don't have a plex server, then the kodi machine needs to handle **any** possible content in the stream. That isn't just content for today, but content for the lifetime of the device, say 5 yrs. That brings you into the $150 range to have sufficient CPU to deal with 4K video and h.265. Eventually, the $40 players will have HW support for h.265, but they don't today.
Roku comes with a remote, which is nice 95% of the time. For entering text, there are web and android apps for the roku.
I have a chromecast - never use it.
I have a roku, use it daily for DRM'd, remote, content streaming. Mainly Amazon Prime.
I have 2 Kodi raspberry pi systems. Use them almost constantly. Since I work from home, having a movie or music playing in the background is nice. Local content is handled by a Plex Server, which transcodes to whatever the client/playback machine needs. That is nice when there are TV recordings which cannot be played by **any** of the streaming players. The players don't like mpeg2+DTS audio. Antenna TV is broadcast here using ATSC standards. In a few years (2022-ish?), those standards will move again and all our TVs will break. New converter boxes, new HDHR tuners will be necessary to support the new audio and video codecs. h.265 seems to be the winner for ATSC v3.
Next question?
Different hardware from each provides different resolutions. If you don't have at least a 65in screen, don't bother with 4K devices. I stopped buying TVs over a decade ago. Projectors. No spying. Huge screens. More movie-like experience. Why not?
If you need h.265 support, the machines are $100+ and still have some issues - stuttering, etc. There are some h.265 encodes that use non-standard, higher-end, settings. These will not play back on anything other than a general purpose computer. That is why either a powerful kodi machine or Plex Server is needed. Plex transcoding of content on-the-fly really is necessary if you have home videos or local content.
I don't use Plex for any internet content. The plex clients ... er ... suck. There are things about the playback interface that is just wrong.
If you'll be doing mostly 1080p and higher content, then don't bother with wifi. Get wired ethernet.
Avoid Chromecast unless you are a total youtube junky. Chromecast doesn't do amazon video is is the most limited for video format support and audio channels.
I prefer JRiver's Media Center running on an Intel NUC. Raspberry Pi doesn't seem to have enough compute capability for high-quality HD video. The JRiver media Center is quite good across the board.
We started copying all the children's DVDs over to MP4 because the children were scratching/breaking too many discs.
We started using Pi3 +LibeElec/Kodi. Even with following every hack+workaround. I could not get Netflix to work (it is unsupported on the Pi3). Serving movies from my home (windows) PC; Kodi was a nightmare to setup the way I wanted it to run (way too easy for my kids to end up in config areas). Something in the way Kodi+Samba worked meant that accessing my server via WiFi was very much hit or miss. Often it would need the all the network services on the windows machine restarted (Workstation, Server, Computer Browser, etc.) for Kodi to even find the server (never a problem on other devices). Quite a few times the only way to get Kodi to see the files again was to reboot the PC. This meant it was an epic fail for the wife - when trying to get Frozen or whatever movie up for the children, that is not a good time to have to do troubleshooting. If half the time the children don't get to watch Movie-of-Choice (after being promised Movie-of-Choice) due to technical difficulties.... bad things happen.
We switched over to Roku. Using the Plex app, it can stream all the movies from the PC. And it has Netflix and all the PBS shows. Intuitive interface. It has been headache-free and rock-solid - no tweaking or fiddling required.
All the content you'd ever want and gives you the flexibility between most ecosystems.
Another vote for Apple TV, if you're in the ecosystem already. I had a 2nd gen Apple TV that sat in the rack for years, while I opted to use a long HDMI cable between my laptop in the office and the receiver (it helps to have access to a hole saw and the crawlspace). Using a remote control app on my tablet I was able to watch anything I wanted, including the Xfinity web/flash player for live TV -which is blocked from using airplay on the Apple TV screen sharing. Comcast has an app for Roku in beta so I picked up a stick to try it out, and started using it more often than my laptop mostly for connivence, and also because I find my use of the Xfinity app to be waning in light of all the available content online. But the quality of playback on Roku was just OK, at least on the cheaper model I bought. When Amazon and Apple added support for Amazon Prime on Apple TV I went back to it and noticed an obvious difference in audio quality over the (much cheaper) Roku. Video quality I'm sure is limited by my circa 2010 TV though. And that was with the older Apple TV. Yesterday I picked up a 4K Apple TV in anticipation of possibly upgrading my equipment this year and while a little pricy for a plain upgrade, as an add-on to moving to 4K it isn't that bad of a hit. Although I haven't really priced other 4K alternatives either.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Since Nvidia is a high profile player, who also happens to design the SOC and VPU inside, you get the best driver support. They constantly update the system, also the Android version.
For a comparison to other contenders (incl. Roku) chech out the list at: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/s...
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
I don't know about the remote that comes with the 500gb version, but my Nvidia Shield remote has two button cell batteries in it, and no usb connector. The controller does have a usb rechargable battery in it.
I've run XBMC since the original XBox. Then had a home built HTPC with Nvidia GPU acceleration to do 1080p smoothly back in 2010. Now have a Kodi on an Amazon fire.
The 'player' I use most is the DLNA one built into my TV. With minidlna running in a jail on my FreeNAS machine.
It's "free". Comes built in. Has been able to handle every codec my TV supports (which happens to be what all my stuff encoded in).
I used to love Roku ... owned or purchased for family and friend about 2 dozens of them starting with the original and ending with the Roku 4. The problem I have with Roku the company in general is that they don't stand behind their product. The short is that the customer support is abysmal and when there is a problem their solution is usually to check back later with them to see if they fixed it/come up with a work around or buy something else.
TL;DR I bought almost every one of the units directly from Roku. I was in their developer program At times I encountered issues with the devices Units that would simply just reboot at random times, hang when using a provided channel, hang during built-in games, and lastly with the Remotes going into sleep mode and not being able to wake up without rebooting the unit. The last one was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. After 6 calls (2-3 weeks apart) them telling me that it's a known issue and they're working on it. In the meantime, they released a brand new product, the Roku XR (I think/whatever is out now). So I asked them very nicely to either refund my money or replace it with the new model that was just released and did not have the same issue. They refused because I was out of my 30 day window and this wasn't considered rebooting daily to get your remote working big enough issue.
I switched to the amazon fire stick and have not looked back. It's been a great replacement so far, amazon customer service (being a prime member for a dozen years now) has never let me down AND best of all I can load 3rd party apps - LIKE VPN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_digital_media_players
I hate watching TV on my computer too; that's why wanda (the hostname of my media computer) runs my TV through HDMI.
Are wanda and your TV in the same room? Last time I checked, adolf and other Slashdot users were objecting like this: "I'm not putting together a living room PC rig just for one game, and I'm not lugging my desktop between rooms or stringing destructive ground-loop-ridden HDMI cables around the house so I can play a game on my PC on my [big TV] in my living room."
Slashdot user FunkSoulBrother would "be shocked if there were 150,000 Home Theater PCs properly installed and powerful enough for gaming on the continent."
As recently as two and a half years ago, Slashdot user avandesande wondered: "Who wants a computer in their living room?"
What has changed since then?
Trying to use a smart phone to control something is amazingly clumsy, especially if you've got the lights dim. Ie, turn on phone, unlock phone (slow if it's a pin), get eyes to adjust to light, push pause about 7 seconds too late.
Grab an old smartphone, set that up as your remote control with KDE Connect (works AMAZINGLY well)
Are you counting unlocking your phone and contracting your pupils as part of "works AMAZINGLY well"? A smartphone as a remote can't be operated by feel, as its input surface is a flat sheet of glass.
Incidentally, this is also why phone games tend to be dumbed down, as a "virtual gamepad" setup of looking at the action on the top of the screen while controlling your character's movement and attacks with a gamepad on the bottom doesn't work so well when you can't feel where the buttons are.
If you want something that just works, and has an intuitive interface. It streams and that's what it does. No pirate Kodi either.
programmability is super high and has a great IDE with a simulator. Anyone can register for a free dev account and play with making apps for the AppleTV
Only if your current computer happens to be both Apple brand and relatively recent. An old Mac won't work, nor will a Windows PC nor a Linux PC.
only an idiot would buy content from a place which locked playback to the devices of a single vendor.
By this, you're implying that millions of people who bought an NES, Game Boy, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, or Nintendo Switch are all idiots. Was this your intent?
Not to mention that any device running Windows (x86 or x86-64), such as the GPD Win 5.5" laptop, is also capable of playing iTunes purchases.
Why would someone selling a product purposely include something that runs the risk of the product being unusable by their own customer?
If they didn't, five major western movie distributors would refuse to make their valuable works available for use with the product: Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner. Without support from these distributors, end users are unlikely to buy into a format.
I feel that the previous two Nintendo consoles (the Wii and Wii-U) are also suitable for your list
Not once Nintendo shuts down Wii Shop Channel at the end of this year. After that point, the YouTube, Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix clients for Wii will no longer be available to download, and server-side protocol changes may cause previously downloaded clients to cease to function.
Very user friendly and supports Kodi, Netflix and Youtube properly. The only negative I have found is the lack of ethernet port, but that is solved by a USB to ethernet adapter.
Low price allows me to upgrade sooner when the next version comes along.
There is a simple reason to use a PC with Netflix or Amazon. It is the selection process. On a TV finding and going to the movie you want to watch can be tedious. On the PC the process is far faster. It is sad that firefox does not come ready to use Netflix but the simple way is the Chrome browser . It is almost like Firefox pushes people into using the Windows product.
Unlike the streaming boxes, PCs are also useful for gaming, and there are far more PC exclusives than (say) PlayStation 4 exclusives. Many older or indie PC games run fine with integrated graphics, especially since Ivy Bridge.
Only if your current computer happens to be both Apple brand and relatively recent. An old Mac won't work,
If by "relatively recent" you mean 2009 or so, then yes...
What makes you think you need a newer Mac? Anything 64 bit will do (even some models of Mac earlier than 2009 will work). More memory is better but I've see developers using a MacBook Air... If you can install Sierra on it it will work for Xcode. If someone had an interest they could find a usable machine for fairly cheap.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought it was around a month, but even so if you are just tinkering why is it a big deal to re-install it to the AppleTV? It's all done remotely, it's not like you have to hook the computer to the AppleTV. You just hit build and run in Xcode and then it's up and running again. If you develop something you really like, you can just pay the $100 fee and put it in the App Store...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, but only an idiot would buy content from a place which locked playback to the devices of a single vendor.
Technically you can watch said content on a Windows box using iTunes... :-)
The fact remains Roku is not "everything", AppleTV is. You can hem and haw about reasons why you might choose one service over another to buy TV shows but that simple fact remains true... as does the fact that the AppleTV has a. lot more apps.
P.S. Where do YOU buy TV shows from? Hulu stinks, Prime Video has a worse interface than iTunes. I would be open to buying TV show seasons from other vendors but Apple's solution is the least worst by a decent margin.
At least with the AppleTV you often have many other TV sources offering apps to watch content through... Also AppleTV has a really nice search interface where I can search for a show, and it shows me all the apps that have it (Like Hulu, Prime, iTunes) and the cost then let me decide where to get it through.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Kodi has a ton of plug-ins for it; Ubuntu+mini PC+$120 small wireless keyboard is my recommendation.
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-mini-2-gnulinux-desktop
Yeah, logic would certainly make you that, doesn't it ?
But I suggest you read "tepples" response. We are not their customers, the content industry is.
I guess googeling yourself for a bit first is to hard for ya ?
But here you go:
https://hackaday.com/2014/09/0...
(from the top)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(Chapter Encryption, paragraph 5)
http://www.aacsla.com/specific... <-- This is the spec itself.
(4.12 Updating Host Revocation List in Non-volatile Memory of Licensed Drive)
Its your choice to trust a consortium not to wield that power. I personally don't like to be at their mercy like that.
Also:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
But than again, lots of people have no problem with using all kinds of stuff with attached services where they are at the full mercy of a company.
Online games come to mind.
Payment processors like PayPal that are not banks and as such are not regulated and can freeze your account for months on end.
Web-"enabled" (read: won't work without it). Expensive IoT gadgets (room temperature controllers, hue lamps, front door locks, etc).
(i)Phones which own you instead of the other way around.
Deere tractors.
Human kind seems to be rather good good at chanting the "that won't happen to me" mantra.
$120 for a wireless keyboard? Fuck off.
RPI3 with kodi (OSMC)
It is fast, cheap and very flexible. Kodi 18 will support netflix, but it not yet released... but should be near.
Open, No lock-in, always being updated and improving
Higuita
do anything you want, no issues.
Roku isn't bad. The UI is a bit clunky, but it gives people who don't have a smart TV some of those smart TV-like features. Cheap. Miracast support doesn't work very well.
ChromeCast is the better alternative. Control everything from your smartphone, minimal configuration required, works well with Apple and Android phones/tablets.
When it comes to streaming platforms, Plex. Wouldn't touch Kodi with a ten foot pole, but then again, I know how to find the media, I don't need an untrustworthy plugin to do it for me.
Ok, the Mac mini is a little behind some of the other systems (and apparently the MacBook Pro needs a 2010 model, where a MacBook was OK in 2009...).
But still, those are not "recent" systems. No-one points to a seven year old computer and says "that's a pretty recent model". Basically it means there are a ton of used systems around that could be purchased and used to run Xcode, today.
The nice thing is that High Sierrra (10.13) minimum system specs are the same, so it's not like any system you buy that can run Sierra today cannot also move on to High Sierra as well, which will be good for a few years to come at least...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I really like the Roku platform - I use a Roku stick on my "dumb" TV downstairs and have a TCL Roku Smart TV in the bedroom (it gets pretty regular updates and it saves me an HDMI input).
Really though - for the most part anything works these days. Roku, Amazon TV, a PS3/4 or Xbox 360/One all will stream almost anything you want. I'm sure an AppleTV works fine too though I haven't really tinkered with one of those since the original Gen1 unit.
The only one I don't really like is Chromecast just because I don't care for using my smartphone as the remote. I like having that OPTION for use in a pinch when I use the real remote, but it's not my preferred way to use the device day to day.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
i use kodi on raspi3 and chromecast for netflix & other streaming bits you might want. works really well, ofcourse it uses up 2 hdmi connections.
I have heard that the best streaming box is Nvidia shield, you can run kodi & netflix in 4k (and stream gaming etc.).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Any device that supports HDMI-CEC can do things like change the channel on the TV or volume on a receiver as long as the TV and/or receiver both support HDMI-CEC. That's essentially the entire point for HDMI-CEC: remote consolidation.
Bluray spec requires it. Do just a little reading/research about this my friend. Every bluray disk has a list of all blacklisted devices which violate something the cartel doesn't like. This keeps all the hardware makers in-line, mostly.
I've never heard of a major BR vendor being blacklisted, so either they only use it on the small makers or the big guys have paid off the BR standards people to make up for lost revenue do to ripping abilities.
Regardless, I'm with the first poster and will not have BR in my home. It is broken by design.
We do have a Roku, however. And a Plex Server and 2 r-pi Kodi machines. ;)
Pi's work well, but are limited mostly to Kodi... and even there, hardware support (MP2 and other) just isn't there (yes, you can pay the extra 3 pounds for MP2, but even there, some online based videos just don't work).
I am a fan of the Android TV os, and picked up some Mi boxes for around $60. They play a number of items... have Chromecast built in, and you can even install Kodi. I used these for almost a year, until I had a dispute with Sling.TV and decided to switch to cable (until Spectrum gets under my skin... which should be in less then a year)
Many cable channels, and Spectrum itself, work only with Rokus or the Xbox 1. Since I don't want to waste roughly 80 extra watts of juice to watch a few hours of TV, I now use both Rokus (which, I might add also supports Chromecast, and Plex for network based videos) and still my Android box... but my android box gets used less and less (since I use TVHeadend as a DVR, I was dependent on Kodi until I started using Plex more... just a bit more work)
I ordered a Roku. Should arrive today!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I use a Roku for the streaming services, but most of my content is served from my own nfs server, and so far, Boxee is the only reasonable option I've found for that. I'm not sure what I'll do when it dies. I tried plex, but it requires too much horsepower on the server so it can transcode the video for no good reason. I'm considering doing my own control app for the web interface on vls.
An old computer can be an excellent streaming device. I have an old 2 core box running Vista that streams quite well. BTW, if it is just the network card out, plug a Chromecast in a HDMI and you have network capability back. 3rd option, hit eBay for a used network card to fit the TV and drop it in.
NRRPT/RCT
I just use a computer and an HDMI cable. If I can access it with a web browser, I can watch it on my TV.