(If this question is inappropriate or better suited elsewhere, please let me know, and I can remove it.)
I have a mostly personally digitized media library on external USB storage that I am looking for a convenient and effective way to watch in 4K on my home non-smart television. I’m not interested in solutions for accessing streaming pirated content, unlocking subscription-based services, or anything of that nature; I’m just looking for a way to connect a USB-C external drive with loose media content (largely H.265-based 4K video and FLAC audio files) at the best quality on my home television.
I understand that Android TV boxes are available cheaply on Amazon and might be a viable solution, but this video from Linus suggests these can be malware nightmares, so I’m wary of trying any of those. Linus went on to make a follow-up video, but either his suggestions for my use cases were unclear, or I am not savvy enough to have understood them. For example, he mentions in the follow-up video that the Google Chromecast might be specifically bad for this due to the bottlenecking of the USB 2.0-based transfer speed, but I don’t think he ever brings up the topic directly again or suggests which of the other options presented is particularly good for external storage media file playback.
If this option can also replace my current Amazon Fire Stick as my go-to media center option with access to the typical streamers (YouTube, Netflix, Crunchyroll, etc.), that would be especially incredible.
If this option comes with some kind of software/media library solution that would allow me to track watched progress in my personal media library in a way similar to how streaming services do, that would be double especially incredible.
And hey, if there’s some way I could connect a controller to play some retro emulated games on it too, that would be amazing, but that’s absolutely not a necessary component.
I don’t have a high budget, so ideally, I’d like to keep costs in or around $50 if possible, but if that’s unrealistic, I’d appreciate being told so I can adjust my expectations.
I’d say I’m a “high-level ignorant” or “low-level savvy” consumer; I feel like I’m not technologically illiterate but definitely would not call myself truly savvy or skilled. I’ve put PCs together from purchased components but would have no idea how to build or repair an individual component itself. I’m up for learning if the task is approachable, so if the best solution is something like a custom-built Raspberry Pi, I’m not opposed to the idea, but I have no real knowledge going into this and am more interested in a solution to the problem at hand than the edification that might come with such a project. So basically, if we’re talking about a simple “build a media center in a box” sort of Pi kit, I might be able to manage, but if we’re talking about a months-long project of tinkering and trials, then that’s probably not the solution I’m looking for.
Anyway, I appreciate in advance any insights or feedback anyone is able to offer.
edit: @Hendrik correctly pointed out a discrepancy in my post regarding lack of “dumb” 4k TVs. I was trying to simplify things, but in reality my situation is one 1080p “dumb” TV and one modern 4k which I think is a Vizio brand smart TV. I am looking for a solution I’ll be able to move between both.
If you say you are amenable to a raspberry pi, I would suggest using Jellyfin. What ethics you preassign to such software might be based in ignorance. Plex, Kofi, Jellyfin and the like are used for legit professional purposes. I also use one to share all my families digitized home videos from the 80s and 90s and it rocks.
Jellyfin requires no subscription fwiw.
One other thing you might want to be concerned about is longevity of your media storage. USB sticks don’t have as many read writes and are more prone to data corruption. Future proofing a bit with an SSD purchase would be sound.
I assure you I assign zero ethics to any of those services, and have absolutely no problem using them, I was just trying to clarify that my primary goal is not a device to access pirate streams, as I know that often is a primary goal of others seeking similar solutions (or at least so my web searches on the topic would lead me to strongly believe).
That said, I have no programmer background and my attempts at understanding linux have been slow at best. Do you have a recommendation of a tutorial, guide, or kit I could follow specifically geared towards my use case that you think is accessible and approachable? Consider me like an 8yr old child; anything beyond their capability might be pushing the limits of my ability some.
You don’t need Linux for Plex or Jellyfin, both have prebuilt server installers for windows. If you want a general guide, Jeff Geerling has a video from a couple years ago about setting up Jellyfin on I think his NAS. But honestly I would just go read the docs for the project you choose and follow their install guide. You’ll need to ensure your media is organized on your drive, but you should do that anyways. Other than that you’ll need a PC that’s essentially always on (or at least is on when you want to watch videos), and a client at your TV like an Apple TV, Android stick, or FireTV. I have run both, and Plex is probably the easier, just works, solution, but it is closed source and needs a subscription for some features (though you can use it just fine without one). There are some hiccups I ran into primarily around streaming to an Apple TV, but honestly it was super stable for me. I switched to Jellyfin recently and the setup was a tad harder and the UI is IMO significantly worse than plex, but it’s open source and fully free. I may switch back to Plex here soon just because their AppleTV Live TV (from my antenna) is just much better supported than Jellyfin.
The services often associated with these media servers that are designed for searching and grabbing content are the *arr stack (radarr, sonarr, etc). You will often see them talked about in the save places but you don’t need them to run Jellyfin or plex.
Regarding storage: I’m not talking about USB Sticks, I’m talking about a 4TB external SSD (to the best of my understanding; maybe there’s some nuanced further distinction of which I’m unaware).
I sort of looked into this a while ago and didn’t actually build something, but I think a Raspberry Pi with Recalbox might be close to what your after. It includes a few games as part of the base software too. I’m sure there was a media player too
A laptop? Maybe even an android phone that presents itself as a drive? You can also connect an Android phone with a USB-C to HDMI cable to the TV to present the videos on your TV.
No laptop or PC available to me for this purpose, unfortunately. The phone is an interesting idea though… I might be able to find an old Galaxy from back when android still had dessert-based releases. To use it in this case, would you recommend effectively just loading the files onto the old phone and then screen mirroring when connected via HDMI? Would this theoretically be able to output 4k quality without buffering or sputtering, or would I be limited by transfer bottleneck like in the case discussed in the post with the Chromecast? I guess I wouldn’t, because the processing is happening on the phone itself and it’s just outputting the display data via HDMI… Hmmm. I’d really like a remote for access, but otherwise this might work if we still have the old Galaxy around somewhere…
