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Comment by beebeepka | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, that's what you get for not buying a cheap pc that can be hooked to any screen. It's easier, cheaper, and you don't have to deal with "apps".

I am continuously amazed HTPCs are losing ground to commercial setups that are objectively worse by any conceivable metric. No, dealing with "apps" is not simpler.

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I've looked into those when I was setting up my living room and, while PCs have their strengths, they lack things like CEC support, proper support for a remote (which you can work around by using Kodi), apps like Netflix are hardly supported and getting them to stream 4K, HDR or even just to use Dolby is an exercise in futility. Not to mention that those setups tend to be pretty unstable.

A technical user can definitely patch something together, but it will be a far less stable or streamlined experience and if you try to have your TV used by your non-technical family, good luck.

It’s tough to get anything decent that will play 4kHDR with frame rate switching etc and included remote control (or work with existing TV remote control) for less than a fire stick. It’s mainly why they are popular and relevant

Seriously! I can't reproduce the general complaint with Kodi on Linux. The end game was always going to be enshittification with these surveillance ecosystems offering throwaway devices. Yet people still keep telling themselves excuses to take the Faustian bargain - that figuring out something non-corporate is too hard, that this other brand will be different, that they can avoid the worst of it with various workarounds etc. Meanwhile once you set them up, the libre options just carry on working as society used to expect from appliances.

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