KDE's official Roku/Android TV alternative is back from the dead

https://www.neowin.net/news/kdes-android-tv-alternative-plasma-bigscreen-rises-from-the-dead-with-a-better-ui/

129•bundie•9h ago

Comments

giancarlostoro•9h ago

The biggest thing they need to do is find a vendor that will sell devices with this on it, then figure out which Distro to set it up with.

I would love an Arch or Debian based distro powering my TV streaming apparatus. In the meantime, I'll continue to use Apple TV since I'm in that ecosystem already, bit I'm always open for a true Linux TV experience if someone makes a small form factor Linux for TV device that lets me SSH into it if I really want to, but contains all the eye candy of a TV OS.

MisterTea•8h ago

I have an AMD APU Linux PC hooked to my TV with a Logitech K400. Its a bit more fiddly than a throw away android based TV stick thing but you have complete freedom and control.

m_t•6h ago

Would you care to share the specs?

Any issue for streaming DRM content like netflix, or decoding high nitrate h265?

Thank you !

NewJazz•6h ago

An asrock deskmini would probably do. Anything zen2 or newer I'd be fine with personally.

MisterTea•5h ago

Ryzen 5 4600G on an ITX board with 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe and hard-wired gigabit. It's hooked to a ~40 inch Sony 1080p dumb TV via HDMI.

I don't use fancy GUI media centers or anything, just a standard Debian XFCE desktop scaled up. Netflix and Hulu work just fine in Chrome and Firefox. No idea about 2k+ performance due to 1080p limit. TV for me is mostly background noise so media quality is of no concern to me.

My only gripe is once in a rare while the audio goes to shit and continually crackles but reboot and its fixed.

bobson381•5h ago

yep, k400 and a dell optiplex mini running debian with plasma. can stream, pull up youtube, cast to spotify, whatever. it rocks.

const_cast•1h ago

I watch everything on my web browser with a fancy OLED monitor. The problem is that many services won't give you even HD, let alone UHD. I'm stuck at 480p for renting movies on YouTube.

Android TV sticks scare me, but the Apple TV seems... okay.

KetoManx64•1h ago

Try KDE-Connect, you can send mouse in-out, change volume, open links, etc.

heavyset_go•35m ago

Streaming platforms won't serve Linux desktops high resolution content, unfortunately. Been the case for like a decade

mschuster91•8h ago

The problem is, any streaming device that's not fully locked down and blessed by the holy gods themselves (i.e. iPhone, un-rooted Android, Fire TV, Chromecast 4K, Apple TV) will not be able to get more than 720p/1080p quality. The streaming providers are really really nasty about that, no matter that enough ways exist to dump any and all shows in full quality anyway.

newsclues•6h ago

Just need to support media servers like Plex and Jellyfin at 4K.

In fact needing to access a streaming service, instead of a local server, sounds like a feature people don't need, even if it would be nice.

rasmus-kirk•6h ago

At this point, I think pirating is more moral than actually paying for your digital media. The digital media scene for shows/movies is so incredibly hostile to consumers that not giving them money feels like the moral position. I don't feel it's necessarily the case for music (Qobuz) and especially games (GOG, hell even Steam). Not sure on books since I mostly read blogs, scientific articles (that definitely _should_ be pirated) and freely available math/crypto texts.

newsclues•5h ago

Owning and running a local media server at home doesn’t automatically make one a pirate, there is free content and some laws allow for ripping and streaming your copy to your tv or other device.

qmr•3h ago

So don't pay the streaming providers if you want 4K.

Vote with your wallet and dollars.

Sail the high seas.

yjftsjthsd-h•7h ago

> I would love an Arch or Debian based distro powering my TV streaming apparatus.

I'd prefer one of the immutable variants for that kind of appliance device. My personal bias is toward OpenSUSE MicroOS, but Debian or Arch based would also be good. (That doesn't mean you can't ssh in, just that there are more guardrails and the system can better self-maintain by default.)

giancarlostoro•6h ago

Immutable is a new part of the distro world for me I kind of want to like it but last time I tried to setup one of those Atomic distros it didnt really work for me, I appreciate them for what they are but it made me realize what I personally wanted was Arch, bleeding edge so I always have up to date software.

Atomic distros would do it for me I think. Something very stable.

Course atomic distros make me think of Debian more than anything ;)

yjftsjthsd-h•6h ago

Atomic and update speed are orthogonal. And ex. https://blendos.co/ and https://arkanelinux.org/ are atomic Arch derivatives if that's your speed. (Not explicitly endorsing either, but they're there.)

ThatMedicIsASpy•7h ago

I would not want to deal with anything and have a stable system so Fedora Atomics or a custom ublue image.

https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template.

grebnek•5h ago

Would be nice if valve released a steamOS box, steam big picture for gaming/game-streaming and Plasma big screen for other media. Like you know can use the plasma desktop on steam deck.

somat•3h ago

I am halfway convinced the idea of a "10 foot ui" driven by a remote is... well not wrong, but perhaps we could do better. Have the big screen be for just that, a spot to display video. Have the remote control, with the entire UI, be on a phone. I would keep the interface as a web interface so you don't have to screw around with an app to make it work, and include collaborative features so everyone gets to fight^wshare over what is shown.

KetoManx64•1h ago

You can already do this with KDE-Connect. Touchpad input, send text, change volume, open URLs. Works great on my Media PC in the living room.

MattTheRealOne•9h ago

This is great news. I am currently using regular Plasma on a mini pc with my TV, but it would be great having an optimized interface. That being said, without apps also being optimized, it would not be that significant of an improvement.

giancarlostoro•9h ago

Which distro do you use? :)

MattTheRealOne•9h ago

I am using Fedora Kinoite since I mostly just use Firefox on my TV, so the limitations of an atomic distribution are not relevant for my use case.

ThatMedicIsASpy•7h ago

To me it would be relevant to my use case since a TV box is not something I tinker with or want to have to worry about updates.

WorldPeas•8h ago

currently using a NEC billboard with an OPS module and linux mint (not ideal, when the monitor connection sleeps, the audio turns off). This could be good, especially now that there are a dearth of 1.6b small models that could probably run on the SFP's APU (though I could be wrong)

aquova•8h ago

Oh this is wonderful news. I had stumbled upon Plasma Bigscreen a few years ago, and while it looked like exactly what I wanted, development was pretty dead. I shall have to take a look at running it again, it would be great as a Roku alternative

raffael_de•7h ago

How does this work? You write an ISO file on a USB stick and plug it into a TV? Or do you need something like an Amazon Fire TV stick with an HDMI plug? Does this project have a GitHub repo?

bundie•7h ago

> Does this project have a GitHub repo?

Here you go: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/

MattTheRealOne•6h ago

This is just an interface for a Linux distribution. You would still need a computer plugged into the TV to run it on. I use a Beelink mini PC with mine, but I have not tried this interface yet.

IshKebab•7h ago

I don't understand why so many TV interfaces waste the top half of the screen with nothing...

Anyway a big flaw with custom smart TV OSes is that you won't ever get proper support for commercial services like Netflix and Prime. You can't even use Android apparently because it needs widevine nonsense that only commercial Android versions have.

prmoustache•7h ago

I am pretty sure most netflix subscribers don't pay for the 4k enabled subscription anyway.

Are their public stats somewhere?

FuriouslyAdrift•7h ago

I haven't found anything more reliable and performant than a nVidia Shield Pro plus Kodi

imiric•7h ago

Nice! I currently run KDE on my HTPC, and I might give this a try. I hope it allows playing media with external players like mpv, instead of having its own media player. A way of loading remote libraries would also be welcome.

stuaxo•6h ago

I have an Android TV and its pretty disappointing.

If this can get some of the missing pieces sorted (like input from a remote, and a decent onscreen keyboard that works with it), it could be pretty decent.

I could imagine using some Android TV apps with this via waydroid.

shmerl•6h ago

Plasma Mobile didn't get far, but nice to see Plasma Big Screen progressing.

dark__paladin•3h ago

Perfect timing. Was just about to redo my linux set top box (a beelink mini PC with Arch on it). Fucking pumped to try this out.

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