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Do you actually want to get content from your phone, or do you just want to watch things on the TV? If it's the latter, an ASRock R1000M is a NUC-sized compute
by dsr_ 5y ago
Do you actually want to get content from your phone, or do you just want to watch things on the TV?
If it's the latter, an ASRock R1000M is a NUC-sized computer that can drive a 4K monitor for video. It's far more flexible and powerful than any of the tiny proprietary devices. It costs about $250 plus RAM and storage. You can run Plex, MythTV, a full browser, music servers and anything else you might want in a living room.
But if you want cheap and easy, a Roku plus a DNS adblocker works well.
- acqbu 5y agoThank you. I'd like to be able to do both. That sounds great but I'm afraid it's well outside my budget - I paid less than half that amount for the 50 inch TV. Roku does appear to be the best option indeed, thanks.
- mindslight 5y agoMy main TV (1080p) is run by an older Asrock N3700 board. There are options up and down the price spectrum, including old/repurposed hardware. It really depends on the resolution you want, and the codecs built into the GPU. But a general purpose computer is definitely the most flexible solution.
- jacknews 5y agoDo these things have to be NUC sized? If you're driving a TV, there's usually plenty of space in the TV 'stand' aka shelf/cupboard, or even behind. What's the best/cheapest cpu/gpu or igpu for tv/movies currently? I had been using a thinkpad T430 (broken screen and keyboard) as a 'tv-box', but had to switch to a raspberry-pi 4 recently. Sorry to say, the rasp-pi just doesn't cut it. Sure it can output to 2 4k displays, but it can't decode netflix, youtube, or lan (or even sd-card-local) movies smoothly, even at 1080p.
- tehbeard 5y agoNuc sized both increases the spouse approval factor as well as generally putting out less heat and noise.
- rozenmd 5y agoIf you're just playing 4k video, a $60 USD ODROID C4 device will do the trick.