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!

  • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 days ago

    I have many SBCs and have run linux on lots of platforms. I have jellyfin and a decently big server.

    I also have the appletv 4k and the best option at the moment is absolutely to pay for the lifetime version of some player like infuse ($100) that can seamlessly work with your jellyfin and play everything.

    Everything except for some set top box type device is a hacky mess and the only set top box worth a crap in my price range was the atv4k. I could build a pc and plug it up but what remote will I use? Will people understand how to use it? The pc will also need specific video cards that cost as much as an atv4k + infuse lifetime setup alone.

    I could pick some sbc or other set top box but they all have weird rpi like limitations “only h265” you’re gonna have your guests or whoever know to pick the scene releases out of sonarr that are exactly that encoding?

    Just pay for infuse and avoid all the wasted time, money and frustration.

    E: before I paid for infuse, I got curious and looked up why the dev is charging so much. It’s the licensing cost for officially supporting Dolby et al.