tl;dr: Fedora KDE + Plasma Bigscreen + Jellyfin MPV Shim + G20S Pro

Previous State

Hardware/OSs

I have a couple options for watching stuff on my TV, with some things working better than others for what I stream on or watch. I either use my TV’s android interface, or my XBox Series X. Both are made for management/use via a remote control, which I love. For the XBox Series X I have 8BitDo Media Remote for Xbox and while it’s a bit battery hungry, it’s great for my purposes.

I have HDMI CEC set up so using the Xbox remote lets me turn on the TV and sound bar automatically.

The XBox is plenty powerful, but MS is likely logging everything for AI purposes, plus it seems like XBox is going through a change and will start to suck, assuming it survives. Also certain apps don’t exist/won’t work with the XBox.

The Sony Android TV is a fairly weak CPU and has less codec support, but works for streaming most stuff. The app selection is better, but I started seeing more ads and stuff creep into the interface, so it’s getting enshittified. The “apps-only” mode helps it, but I’m sure it’s still phoning home to Sony often.

Nothing I have supports Dolby Vision, the bane of my existence.

Apps/Streaming Sites

I have various streaming applications I use on one/both of the systems:

• Jellyfin – I also have Plex. I only use Plex rarely if Jellyfin is having problems playing a specific video on my systems. That’s becoming much less of an issue these days, thankfully. I should do a blog post about Jellyfin and the community sometime.
• Shudder – They’ve abandoned the app on Xbox (but left a broken version in the ms store 🙄)
• MyAEW – No XBox app. Hell, no Android app. Only Android TV.
• Dropout
• Grouse House – No XBox app.
• Nebula – No XBox app.

Wants

My goals are to get something that is powerful enough to direct play most everything I throw at it, while still being able to be controlled with a remote as much as possible. The solution should make using the above services as easy as possible.

Current State

I have a setup I am pretty happy with, mostly using stuff I was fortunate enough to already have.

Hardware/OSs

Over a year ago I needed a physical machine I could use as a desktop for a few things where a VM and/or my Mac weren't sufficient. I ended up with a GMKtec AMD Ryzen 7 5825U w/ 32GB DDR4. It works pretty well, but the fans can be noisy when it really gets going. All the same, I decided to move it to the lounge room to see how it goes as a TV box. It's useful because it has 2 USB-A ports on the front. It still does some of the stuff I originally bought it for (tertiary backups to IDrive), but for actual desktop use, it's done. The fans generally aren't noticeable if something is on (like music or tv playing or something), but it could just be my old man ears.

The system was already running Fedora 44 KDE, so I just stuck with that. Thankfully KDE revived its Plasma Bigscreen project last year. I'm a huge fan of the KDE ecosystem (KDE Connect is a godsend), so trying Bigscreen seemed like the obvious choice. It's packaged in the fedora repos so there was no additional work needed there, however I did have to switch my login manager to Plasma Login so automatic session login could work. It was previously SDDM, possibly due to this box being updated through a few Fedora versions. I think Plasma Login is now default.

I created a tv user to keep the tv stuff separate. I have the system auto-login as that user and it has KDE Bigscreen as its session manager. This got set through the KDE Settings area.

Apps

jellyfin-mpv-shim

Jellyfin Desktop, the primary desktop software for Jellyfin, just went through a shift, where the primary dev for it went totally into slop mode and was just causing chaos in the project, so he left. His project continues as Jellium, one of the million sloppified third party clients that are out there.

Thankfully, another Jellyfin dev was busy in the background upgrading her project, jellyfin-mpv-shim, to have a full UI. She uses AI for it but seems to be more sensible about its use. She released jellyfin-mpv-shim v3 (with full UI) soon after the Jellyfin Desktop dev left, and it has been the go-to standard for Jellyfin on a desktop since. It's also able to work with “standard” keyboard shortcuts and is customisable because it's basically mpv. I installed it from flathub and it goes fine. There are a few notes:

• When setting up the server connection, you should qualify the full https:// in the server URL, otherwise it silently defaults to http and fails without reason (unless you watch the logs in the console).
• Once you have it set up, make sure you go to the settings for playback and enable hardware decoding. In my experience, not doing this led to the fans being extremely loud as the CPU went hard.

For all the other services I use, their websites are the go-to. I'm using Zen, but I imagine any browser would work. Plasma Bigscreen has a built-in webview that lets you open up websites directly, but I haven't messed with it much. It may work more nicely with a keyboard (remote) control.

Remote Control

This is primarily why I wrote this post. I hadn't delved into remotes for the PC for about 15 years, and thought it'd be useful to write what I've gathered.

HDMI CEC

HDMI CEC doesn't work with Linux because of shithead corporations. When I was discussing this in the #jellyfin-offtopic matrix channel with others, someone suggested a device that hooks into your HDMI cable and intercepts CEC codes and translates them to keyboard presses, but I didn't opt for that. $50 seems like a lot for that.

USB receiver

There seems to be two types of communication using remotes:

• Serial/LIRC: I hated this method back in the day. USB serial receiver. Remote sends infrared signals to the receiver. You map them to a keypress (or many keypresses).
• 2.4 Ghz: These come with a little USB-A dongle that the remote talks to. These appear as a keyboard (and possibly a mouse) to the computer, so there's no key-remapping needed. But that also means you're limited in what keyboard presses you get, and you can't set up a string of them from a single button press.

I went the 2.4Ghz route. Trying various different ones from Ali Express, I found these two worked really well with minimal/no work needing to be done in jellyfin-mpv-shim.:

• YY30: I actually had to buy this twice because one of my dogs chewed the first one (to be fair the buttons smell weirdly chemically good). The first time I had to map the back button to back in mpv using the name “GO_BACK” in jellyfin-mpv-shim’s config, but then with the second remote that change wasn't necessary (I changed it back while I was waiting for the second remote to arrive). Whatever the case, this works well with jellyfin-mpv-shim. The problem is it didn't have enough buttons for me. There was no “next video” button, you have to navigate. I also didn't like that there wasn't a dedicated “pause” button, but that's just because that's what I'm used to hitting on previous remotes.
• G20S PRO BT: This is the one I landed on. It's great. More buttons, including media navigation. It also has a built in gyroscopic mouse that you can turn on/off. Using it to browse websites works OK, but the preciseness isn't great. Still usable.

The front USB-A ports on the machine come in handy, as they give the remote a direct shot to the receiver.

KDE Connect

I love KDE Connect. It is super handy for passing clipboards and files around. Thankfully, it also has a keyboard/mouse mode that lets me control another desktop/phone/whatever. This can fill in as a more precise mouse, or give me the ability to enter a lot of text via a real keyboard.

Issues / Conclusion

Honestly, no real issues. Using the browser is cumbersome, but manageable. I don't have a good way to stop/start the server, but I want it up for backup reasons, so I haven't dug into it. I can probably shut it down via the plasma-bigscreen interface, but no idea how to turn it back on besides WoL or flipping the power outlet and setting the BIOS to always turn the machine on after power restoration.

The TV has been disconnected from the Internet and I had some fun learning how to set up something new. Fun project.