What does your TV/Movie streaming setup look like?

Specifically I'm wondering about the TV frontend UI. Presumably most people are going to be using an android tv box like fire tv or chromecast? Something else?

I recently picked up a new chromecast 4k that has the "Google TV" OS on it and... I'm having a hell of a time coming up with a UI that looks similar to the stock one (with movie recommendations, up next, my watchlist, etc) but that hooks into piracy streaming services.

For launchers I found projectivy, but I noticed that the "channels" feature which pulls in that sort of thing is remarkably limited. Streaming-wise I've got stremio and cloudstream, and only stremio lets me pull in my library into projectivy. Which is okay but I can't get that synced with trakt or getting recommendations; it all has to be managed from stremio.

whereas cloudstream doesn't really have any connectivity at all. There's a few streaming services that somewhat pull things in but it's not great. Netflix doesn't seem to hook into it, nor plex. It ends up being better to just use the stock home and manually launching into stremio/cloudstream when I want them.

Surely there has to be a better way to do this? The stock home screen is nice with free live tv, movie recommendations that link into various paid streaming services, etc. I'd just like to hook in something like stremio, plex, etc. instead, but that seems impossible?

What exactly do y'all do for your setups? Trying to manage my google play watchlist/likes independently of trackt, and then also managing my stremio library separately from both just feels like hell. I end up having to take mental note of the stuff I see on the home screen and manually searching it up.

The live tv channels that the stock homescreen has is seemingly not replicated anywhere else which is a bit disappointing. I saw the old android tv menu get really close to what I'm after, but I can't manage to get it working on my newer chromecast. The menu installs, but the channel feature doesn't work, making it pointless.

Is there a better way?

KingThrillgore,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Synology NAS —> Plex Media Server VM —> TV, Chromecast, Roku TV (which supports a lot of formats w/o encoding), Other devices

Yes I know Plex is getting a lot of crap but it still works and the encoding support is better than Jellyfin. I have Jellyfin ready to go if this ever changes but I am a happy Plex Pass customer.

Diplomjodler,

Jellyfin on a very low end mini pc running Linux Mint and a Chromecast. Simple and effective. I’ll swap out the Chromecast for something open source some day when I’ll get round to it, though. Just because.

thegreekgeek,
@thegreekgeek@midwest.social avatar

Have you heard about Matter casting? That’s what I’m waiting for.

FIST_FILLET,

very simple, i just host files on an external hdd on my macbook (which i use all day anyway) over plex, then watch through apple tv. i tried Infuse in the past, but their library and metadata handling is just atrocious (and there is like a 5+ year old active forum thread of people repeatedly begging the devs to allow “custom shows” through manually created .nfo files, but i guess the devs care more about superficial UI changes and abandoning their previous one-time purchase option in favor of subscriptions)

chahk,

Server side is UnRaid hosting various arr Docker containers, with a dedicated Intel QuickSync box for Plex and Jellyfin Servers. On the client side 2 Roku Ultras and a couple of Chromecasts.

Perhapsjustsniffit,

Someone is gonna bust my balls but whatever. We have an Alienware R8 hooked up to a 20 year old Sony flatscreen tv and an LG sound bar. No fucking about at all.

dfc09,

I went on a deployment, got a nice gaming laptop for that. When I got home back to my desktop, I basically had no need for it so I hooked it up to my living room TV. At first I just played some controller friendly games on it, but now I use it as the entire media center with Stremio and qbittorrent and the likes. I use unified remote to have my phone as the remote.

retrieval4558,

*arrs / Jellyfin on a custom NAS running unRAID

For my daily driver tv, it’s an android TV with the projektivity launcher (maybe spelled that wrong, but I’m pretty sure there’s a k in there). It is a huge improvement over the stock launcher.

I’m also working on a media TV for my wife that’s actually a NUC running mint. Suboptimal distro choice but I want her to be able to use it as a desktop if she needs. On top of that is flex launcher to launch Jellyfin, YouTube, steam link, etc.

I had tried to make KDE bigscreen work but just could not get installed for the life of me.

spacemanspiffy,

Jellyfin running in Firefox on ArchLinux ARM on a Radxa Rock5b SBC.

Caligvla,
@Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I like how nobody bothered to read the post and actually answer OP’s question…

Otome-chan,
Otome-chan avatar

They did, albeit indirectly. It seems the answer is "no one has done this" which means it's likely not possible with the software that's currently made lol.

Seems most people just go through plex/jellyfin/emby with their usenet *arr setup. Which is no doubt cozy, but it doesn't quite grant the experience I'm after lol. I think most people are just used to launching into a streaming app to see what's on there since that's how most paid streaming stuff works too for the most part. The google tv/amazon fire tv homescreen setup is fairly new and apparently unused by basically everyone lol.

I might have to look into just coding my own launcher to get the features I want lmao. seems like a huge endeavor though. Right now I just have my remote set to be able to instantly jump into my preferred streaming apps, and single/double press home to switch between stock launcher and projectivy. It's not great lol.

Oderus,

Dedicated i5 desktop running unRAID, Plex and the Arr’s and I stream using my Chromecast with the Netflix button reprogrammed to launch Plex. No TV, No Streaming services and it’s pure joy.

rambos,

Jellyfin + arrs

bort,

raspi with vlc, mulvad and qbittorrent installed.

fhein,

I’ve been using Intel NUCs, even though they have a lot of issues and start failing after about 3 years of heavy use. Previously used Kodi on Arch, but with the latest NUC I decided to go with Xubuntu and for some reason video playback doesn’t work in Kodi now. So instead I just use VLC media player for TV/movies and a web browser for everything else. Got a Logitech K400 Plus wireless keyboard which makes it easy to control the computer from the couch.

Mr_Blott,

I’m old school. Qbittorrent on the computer, hdmi lead running to the TV

Python for the search function on Qbittorrent

Though, reading this thread, I do pay for realdebrid and I clearly don’t have a clue how to use it

pineapplelover,

Jellyfin on my Synology NAS with all the extensions to get me subs and metadata

Using on Findroid changing media playback to MPV in settings and using respective Jellyfin native desktop clients on Ubuntu and Arch

Uriel_Copy,

Ty for the heads up on Findroid!

pineapplelover,

Yeah with the mpv player integration, you can play a lot more media codecs and subtitles work better if they haven’t been working in the normal jellyfin app.

Uriel_Copy,

Looks like it’s coming to Android TV soon too!

pineapplelover,

That sounds amazing!

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