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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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You can get an Android TV "TV box" or "media box" or "media player" for that which will cost you about 35 bucks from Aliexpress for a decent one (get something with 4GB).
Or you can get a Mini PC for 150 bucks and install Lubunto on it with Kodi. Get an air mouse remote for it (the kind with more buttons, rather than the Google version) and it pretty much works the same as a media player - you generally don't have to use the air mouse functionality, as the buttons just map to the appropriate Kodi functionality.
The mini PC has the upside that you can put a lot more stuff in it as it has way more power and storage that you need simple for streaming and media playing - for example you can hang your home media collection from it and have it be your home NAS.
Please be aware those media boxes from Ali are filled with malware and spyware.
There we reports of that for some, so it's worth it to check the model before you buy.
There are however, A TON of models, most which haven't been flaged as having malware and spyware.
That said, you can always pay more (about 2x to 3x) to get an alternative from a Western brand that's not one of the big corps (whose products are also "filled" with at least spyware).
The other option is to instal LibreElec on a Single Board Computer (essentially "make your own Media Box") were you have full control since LibreElec is basically a Linux Distro from media boxes with Kodi, compiled for the main ARM architectures used in those things (A6 and A7 if I remember it correctly), but that requires a bit more expert knowledge and you need to get yourself (or print, if you have a 3D printer) a box for it if you want it to look nice on your living room.
The option I'm currently using and which so far I think is the best is the Mini-PC with Linux, Kodi and the air mouse remote, but then again I've been using Linux on and off for 3 decades and for part of my career was designing and implementing server-side software so am very comfortable setting up and using Linux (not that installing Lubuntu and then Kodi on a N100 Mini-PC was at all complicated, as it just works and most modern Linux distros seem way ahead of the stuff I've worked with before when it comes to hardware compatibility and ease of use).
I actually had for maybe a decade what's now a really old ASUS media player (which they don't even make anymore), which couldn't play media with newer codecs so I upgraded it to one of the cheapest Android TVs (€18) but that turned out to be sluggish, so I upgraded to a better one (€35, which seemed to work fine), but then I just went "screw this" and replace it with a Mini-PC with an Intel N100 (€150) with Lubuntu and Kodi and also moved other services into it (it's now also my home NAS), then added always on VPN and a Torrent server.
That Mini-PC is the best setup I've had for this stuff and there's still plenty of room in there to add more services (both storage-wise and in terms of computing power) and I highly recommend it if you're comfortable enough with the software side of Tech (a SBC with LibreElec is a little more demanding of familiarity with hardware).
I was also thinking a mini htpc with a remote. With Kodi running at startup you could probably use almost any universal remote with a generic IR receiver. Kodi is very remote friendly.
The air mouse remote I use is actually wireless with a little USB receiver, which is generally better than IR, IMHO, though you can't actually turn the Mini-PC ON with it, wh8ch is fine since purposefully chose a Mini-PC with an N100 processor exactly because its TDP is pretty low and I can just leave it always ON (which is also necessary because it's running other services).
The thing does have an IR LED and 5 programmable IR buttons (it was designed for use with Android TV boxes, so this is how one could turn it ON with the remote even though most of its functionality is via wireless with an USB receiver), which I use for controlling my TV.
And, absolutely, that stuff works perfectly with Kodi and once Kodi is up (which in my case I don't yet do automatically but only because I've been too lazy to get around to figuring out how to do) I can do everything in it with just the remote buttons, no need for mouse or keyboard.