Hey gang,
I’m looking for a cheap SBC for 4k HDR local content streaming on my TV. I’m moving away from streaming “services” and towards the Caribbean seas.
What I already have
- a LG 55B9 OLED tv. It has a serviceable media player, but due to ongoing enshittification (every update is slower than the previous one, ads everywhere, basically becoming useless) it’s been airgapped for the past couple of years, forcing me to transfer content on a USB drive
- an Apple TV 4K. It’s amazing for streaming but absolutely useless for local HDR content. VLC is years away from HDR playback and the leading media players are stupidly expensive, I hate the subscription model and I’m not buying a 150€+ lifetime licence.
What I’m looking for
- a cheap/affordable SBC
- running Linux (obviously)
- guaranteed to play 4k HDR content from my local network.
- bonus points if it can do all this while running a general enough purpose distro for light emulation.
What are your ideas? Thanks!
I know you said it must be Linux, but you could replace your Apple TV with an Nvidia Shield
Yeah nah I’m not replacing a device that will stop being supported in a few years by another device that will stop being supported in a few years. Besides, fuck nvidia.
So you’re going the full HTPC route? I did that a while back, but tbh it’s become much more difficult since the streamers started locking up their APIs and using hardware DRM. The reason I suggest the Shield is that you get native support for streamers and also Jellyfin/Kodi/whatever in the same box. You can’t do that on Linux, sadly