Good day! I am trying to find a good alternative as not to use the"smart" functions or using an Xbox to consume our media. I found a few options ie like plasma big screen but it’s no longer in development. Essentially I would line love to have it running on an rpi4 and just hooked up to the TV.
The main issue for me is not finding a device to play content, but a dumb screen that is not a potatoe. A 4k HDR OLED Screen without any smart features is basically nowhere to be found
I mean… just don’t connect it.
A TV that isn’t connected to a network is a dumb screen.
not entirely,
dumb tv turns on in maybe up to 3s
while “smart” tv still needs more than 30s
so now you have crapiest dumb tv on your handsWhat kind of shitty TV takes 30s to turn on? Ive never seen one take that long. Smart functions have literally nothing to do with how fast they turn on. In fact a lot of smart TVs, especially with Roku built in, don’t even really ever power down completely, and when you press power the screen is on and ready almost instantly.
You could install android on something, and run one of the open source TV launchers
Is it any good?
I’ve done that and as long as you don’t need one of the mainstream streaming apps, it seemed to work well . Just give it a try. It’s not a lot of work.
Edit: As far as I remember it, it didn’t have (the needed?) DRM support
Edit2: Tested on RPi5
I don’t need or want DRM so I can’t comment on that.
What I can say is that the RPI5 is way overkill. I originally ran Kodi on a RPI4 but it was constantly running hot so I switched to a RPI3 and it is much better.