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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?
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.)
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.
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.
Yes, and it performs nicely. And they keep getting newer models. Inexpensive, small, and trouble free.
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.
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.
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
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
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
I call myself a nerd, but my wife does not and when she wants to watch something she doesn't want to be debugging why Netflix won't run or why she can't playback her recorded show properly, this inevitably takes me away from doing other nerdy stuff (games, programming, fiddling with my raspberry Pi). This is why I no longer use kodi, I don't want to spend my time maintaining shit that has been implemented far better on cheap devices like Roku, my time and sanity are worth too much for that.
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 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
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.
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.
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...
Will AppleTV show you if a movie you want to buy are cheaper on other services you have access to? Roku will because they don't play favorites. And also, Roku will even show you if you a movie you want to buy are available on streaming subscription service you already use.
While it does tend to "suggest" iTunes first, AppleTV lets you choose among all the found sources for a particular program/movie without having to jump through hoops of any sort. Sources and Costs, if any, are clearly noted on the listing's result page. Once you get used to the search-results UI, you don't even have to dive into a listing to figure out if there are multiple sources for the content.
All in all, even my extremely tech-averse housemate is able to navigate the AppleTV interface without trouble, to the point where cable-cutting is actually a reality. From what I have read about all the other options, I KNOW that wouldn't be possible with any other Streaming box.
Now, if DirecTVNow would just roll-out their DVR service, the cord would cut TOMORROW... That's the only somewhat-missing link. And even that isn't really true, if you're willing to paw around in OnDemand-world...
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.
Screw SHIELD. Heil Hydra! (now new and improved without Ward)
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Those are things that I don't really care about at all.
However, I can't seem to find another streaming solution that:
* Supports 4k HEVC @ 24/50/60 fps (Roku Ultimate won't do 24)
* Supports DTS-HD, TrueHD, DTS:X, Atmos (Most won't)
* Supports HDR10 and rec2020
* Supports HDMI-CEC (Some won't)
* Has a supported and well maintained plex client (Some)
* Alexa support
* Voice search
* Main search will search across netflix, amazon prime, and plex