I've come around to thinking just having a cheap computer with a normal OS with a wireless keyboard + touchpad combo hooked up to the TV is less of a pain than the "friendlier" alternatives, for DIYers, because it's so much simpler to set up and maintain, at least for video libraries. About the only thing I miss with that is last-episode tracking for series.

Main down-side is that it can be harder to get e.g. surround sound and HDR working reliably with a VLC + filesystem-browser solution.