What media server / streaming TV device?

[anonymous-user]

[redacted]

[a7x88]

I’ve gone through a few media players and have a PS4. For clarity we use the streaming services exclusively and I have a Plex server that I stream off too.

For us a Roku has been by far the best device for reliability and ease of use. It supports everything. Fast. Responsive. They are pretty cheap too.

We’ve had an Nvidia Shield which often get recommended as “the best” but I found it to be no where near as intuitive and it would often have playback issues or software freezes etc.

Edit to add - a proper streaming stick/device is way nicer to use than a games console. I have a PS5 on order but no idea how the new range of consoles will be in comparison to a dedicated device yet.

[Mr Pointy]

There's a lot of information here:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916

It does get a bit in-depth though. Scroll down the first post past the Kodi devices & the Apple TV 4K seems well regarded.

[Radec]

Try and wait a week and see what the new Chromecast with Google TV is offering, apparently most of the usual streaming apps and 4k and can mirror your phone.
Also it can supposedly sideload apps onto it like Kodi etc.
Probably about £50/60.

[GlenMH]

I, too, am in this position and have started looking at a Raspberry Pi to use as a media streamer. The Roku sticks don't do a separate audio out so I can feed the sound to an amp and speakers.

[paulrockliffe]

Radec said:

Try and wait a week and see what the new Chromecast with Google TV is offering, apparently most of the usual streaming apps and 4k and can mirror your phone.
Also it can supposedly sideload apps onto it like Kodi etc.
Probably about £50/60.

That sounds interesting.

OP, I keep looking into this as I like having a remote control and a dedicated box streaming to the TV. I was planning to get an NVIDIA Shield eventually, but think it's over-priced considering I don't want it for anything other than Plex really. Currently using Plex Home Theater on a Raspberry Pi, but it struggles with streaming Blueray stuff on certain codecs and it's a pain in the arse to redo with another codec.

I tend to just default to Plex on my phone and cast it to a £20 ChromeCast as my phone is more than powerful enough to sort the issues with the RPI out. It's a pretty good compromise really.

It's annoying that my Google Home Mini won't work with Plex though, the YouTube search integration is so good my 3 year old can ask for stuff on the TV with it, I'd happily just use that if I could as I always just watch the next episode in the boxset I'm watching. Doesn't work with Amazon either, which is annoying as I have Prime for other stuff and I'm not paying for Netflix.

So yeah, I'd wait for the new ChromeCast if it's likely to give you a remote control and Android TV.

[vladcjelli]

Roku.

Got one for elderly father in law as it seemed straightforward. Since bought two for our house and recommended the roku tv from Argos for my mum as it’s always painful watching her not knowing which remote to use for what. Now she only has to use the one.

Easy to use, has everything on it and it just works - all the time in my experience, which compared to most other devices we’ve messed around with, is unusual.

[thepeoplespal]

vladcjelli said:

Roku.

Got one for elderly father in law as it seemed straightforward. Since bought two for our house and recommended the roku tv from Argos for my mum as it’s always painful watching her not knowing which remote to use for what. Now she only has to use the one.

Easy to use, has everything on it and it just works - all the time in my experience, which compared to most other devices we’ve messed around with, is unusual.

A Roku TV with integrated Freeview recording (1TB) that a Manhatten tv box can do (catchup integration is magic on this), only with 3 tuners rather than 2 be would be my ideal, as we are forever losing one of the 3 remote controls. Surely this is holy grail of terrestrial TV.

[eein]

I've messed around with various devices to get things on to a TV for nearly 20 years! I've tried most options, but everything always has some limitation, so in the end I always just end up with a regular windows PC and a (nowadays) wireless keyboard with a mousepad in it. There are various PC form factor options, although I usually end up with something half decent approximately NUC-sized with a blu ray drive.

I'm currently awaiting the NUC11 coming out. Will probably cost ~£500 for a decent spec and I'd expect it to last 8-10 years.

I do also often use a chromecast (on an older TV) and built in Android on a recent Sony TV. For a while built in android didnt work with casting NowTV, but this appeared to get fixed earlier this year. Built in android also seems to pick up DLNA ok from my NAS although it is quite slow. I also have or have tried PS4/3, various STB devices, and a QNAP NAS with direct 4K HDMI output (this does work quite well as you can run VMs on it so Linux desktop that can do almost everything Windows can... but it's slow and Linux is or course unfriendly).

[98elise]

vladcjelli said:

Roku.

Got one for elderly father in law as it seemed straightforward. Since bought two for our house and recommended the roku tv from Argos for my mum as it’s always painful watching her not knowing which remote to use for what. Now she only has to use the one.

Easy to use, has everything on it and it just works - all the time in my experience, which compared to most other devices we’ve messed around with, is unusual.

I got my elderly mum a Roku and she loves it.

[GlenMH]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

All good and valid points - I can get an audio extractor for 18 quid that should do what I want.
However, I also want to retire an Ubuntu VM on my NAS which I use to play media through the TV. It is a bit of a resource hog and my NAS is a bit elderly so moving the media playing function off it seems to make sense.

[Radec]

paulrockliffe said:

Radec said:

Try and wait a week and see what the new Chromecast with Google TV is offering, apparently most of the usual streaming apps and 4k and can mirror your phone.
Also it can supposedly sideload apps onto it like Kodi etc.
Probably about £50/60.

That sounds interesting.

OP, I keep looking into this as I like having a remote control and a dedicated box streaming to the TV. I was planning to get an NVIDIA Shield eventually, but think it's over-priced considering I don't want it for anything other than Plex really. Currently using Plex Home Theater on a Raspberry Pi, but it struggles with streaming Blueray stuff on certain codecs and it's a pain in the arse to redo with another codec.

I tend to just default to Plex on my phone and cast it to a £20 ChromeCast as my phone is more than powerful enough to sort the issues with the RPI out. It's a pretty good compromise really.

It's annoying that my Google Home Mini won't work with Plex though, the YouTube search integration is so good my 3 year old can ask for stuff on the TV with it, I'd happily just use that if I could as I always just watch the next episode in the boxset I'm watching. Doesn't work with Amazon either, which is annoying as I have Prime for other stuff and I'm not paying for Netflix.

So yeah, I'd wait for the new ChromeCast if it's likely to give you a remote control and Android TV.

There's an article on the Verge with more details and someone that has bought one in the US early.
It's got a link to his Reddit page with a video of the UI.
It does look really fast and slick and also comes with a remote.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/plat...

[paulrockliffe]

Yeah, I immediately went on Google to see what was what and ended up on that page.

I'm reserving judgement though as I don't really believe that Walmart accidentally sold one, sounds like total bks to me.

[sjg]

Been very happy with Apple TV, keeping tabs on the shows you're watching across all the services is quite nice, as is having our icloud photos as a screensaver.

However we had a Roku Express before that and it covered the basics of doing all the usual streaming services just fine.

Keep the PS3 for disc playing, or get a £60 standalone DVD/Bluray player.

[paulrockliffe]

New Google one announced today, looks good, has both Plex and Prime so will cover all my requirements. £60 so I've ordered one for delivery in a couple of weeks.

[jurbie]

I'm in the market for a streaming device so I was waiting to see what Google came up with but the pricing has put me off, I don't get why it's more expensive here than in the US plus the extra two week wait I figured I might aswell go with the Fire Stick.

I don't have a 4k TV anyway so it will suffice until I upgrade the TV at which point I'll have another look at Google

[ZesPak]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

What products have been bricked? Genuine question.

We bought a Shield TV last year and I'm very impressed with android tv so far.

[Corso Marche]

We've 2 MiBox 3's (2016), a 2015 Shield TV, and a 2019 Fire Stick. The MiBox's and the Shield are far superior to the Fire Stick.
Obviously the Shield is not comparable to a Fire Stick though. The Shield runs a Plex server and is also used for light gaming via both android games and PC games via GE Force Now.
The Fire Stick was bought as an experiment to see what it had to offer, which is pretty much nada when compared to similarly priced licensed android TV devices such as the Mibox. Both MiBox 3's in the house have just received the most recent version of android TV too, so are bang-up-to-date and running the same software as newer devices.
The Fire Stick is still plugged into the TV, but never used due to the other devices at hand.

Edited by Corso Marche on Thursday 1st October 05:41

[paulrockliffe]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

It does really need the context. Most of that stuff is st applications that were never finished, out of beta or used by anyone.

The stand-out hardware device on there is ChromeCast Audio, which they just stopped making and didn't replace. I have 8 of them, they all still work exactly as they did when I bought them and are still integrated into Google Home. They stopped making them because they integrated the features into the standard Chromecast, so you can use that as an audio-only thing and also bring your TV and connected sound devices into Audio Groups. So that's not really a legitimate complaint i don't think.

What is probably a better list is all the features they've talked up at developer conferences etc and either never delivered or delivered, broken and not fixed. We were supposed to be able to ask Google to book a hair appointment years ago, never happened. The worst one for me was about 7 years ago they added a feature to Maps where it would check you calendar for appointments with locations and then check the traffic and notify you when you need to set off about 10 minutes beforehand. It was ace, I used it all the time when I had work meetings. It broke, they fixed it, it broke again and then that was it. It's still listed as a feature too.

[paulrockliffe]

Corso Marche said:

We've 2 MiBox 3's (2016), a 2015 Shield TV, and a 2019 Fire Stick. The MiBox's and the Shield are far superior to the Fire Stick.
Obviously the Shield is not comparable to a Fire Stick though. The Shield runs a Plex server and is also used for light gaming via both android games and PC games via GE Force Now.
The Fire Stick was bought as an experiment to see what it had to offer, which is pretty much nada when compared to similarly priced licensed android TV devices such as the Mibox. Both MiBox 3's in the house have just received the most recent version of android TV too, so are bang-up-to-date and running the same software as newer devices.
The Fire Stick is still plugged into the TV, but never used due to the other devices at hand.

Edited by Corso Marche on Thursday 1st October 05:41

Firesticks are ste aren't they. Takes too long to do anything because it spends all it's time furiously downloading images of things Amazon want you to watch.

Ironically now they've reenabled Cast on the Prime App it's far easier to to select programs in the App and cast them to Chromecast than the play on Firestick option.