I set up a Linux pc to replace my smart TV and add some gaming capabilites. It took some time but I learned quite a lot (Thanks to Debian and Arch wikis). And I haven't missed any TV functionality.
The launcher is flex-launcher on a labwc environment/compositor on a Debian stable distro. (For testing and easy setup, I also did it on Ubuntu Gnome but I don't need a full DE in the background that I don't use. But it's adaptable to other distros and DEs.)
It's now fully usable with a gamepad including turning the TV on and off, so I have also fully replaced the TV remote.
I hope some people may find it interesting. It was also quite a lot of fun, actually.
Looks awesome! Thanks for this post, I've been looking to ditch the GoogleTV but all I could find was Plasma Bigscreen but that's not quite ready yet.
Yeah, I've been looking/waiting for quite some time. hoping that a good solution would come along. I also tried Steam (big picture mode). But that still contains ads (for games) and is not that customizable. In the end, I'm really happy with flex-launcher.