this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Sounds like the trash taking itself out, no? If I don't want smart features in the first place, then I see this as an absolute win. Nobody should be connecting their TV the Internet in the first place. Always make sure to use things like android TV boxes, fire sticks ect.. over using the built in "smart" features as those TVs will be phoning home all day and serving you ads the minute you connect it to the Internet lol
Just build a media pc. Those media sticks have trackers and telemetry too.
As soon as RAM isn’t more expensive than the TV.
Personally i’d rather pay more for equipment than have these assholes tracking my viewing habits. But you could throw ddr4 in it. Should be fine for a simple HTPC.
I don't get the whole ram catagories. DDR3, DDR4, DDR5. They make it seem like the higher the number, the better the ram, but I always thought ram was just a space for computers to temporarily store information until it was ready to call on it.
So from my perspective 16GB DDR3 should be the same as 16GB DDR5. But that's clearly not the case.
The biggest differences are speed and max amount of ram per module. For a htpc those shouldn't matter much. I wouldn't personally go to ddr3 unless I had some free sticks hanging out since the spec is about 20 years old now.
DDR3 is also pretty power hungry. Source: me, who built a homelab out of old DDR3 rackmount servers and can now no longer afford to run them.
I just wish there was a way to control the PC as easy as a tv remote. I would totally do this except my wife and kids just want to hit a button on the remote instead of fiddling with keyboard or a track pad or controller of some kind
FLIRC is your friend! It's a USB IR receiver that you can train with literally any IR remote you have. Once you set it up (and it does take a little elbow grease to train it), it just works.
My HTPC is running Bazzite and boots into Steam big picture mode. I watch media using Kodi and control everything using a Sofabatton remote.
This setup is almost as seemless as when I was using an Nvidia Shield and a Logitech Harmony remote.
The keyboard and controller are not needed, except for gaming.
The only negative I've found, is that I've not yet worked out a way to power on the PC from the remote.
Keep an eye out for the new Steam controller. It can interact via gyro, touchpad, and traditional controller input methods.
Yes! I'm saving now for a steam machine when it comes out too
I use LibreELEC on a mini-PC for my home TV. LibreELEC is a Linux distribution that runs Kodi and is pretty good for a media centre straight out of the box. I use a Rii Mini K25 remote (with a dongle) to control it: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B06XHF7DNQ
The downside is I can't control the TV itself with this, but this can be sorted out with a USB IR receiver (like this: https://amzn.asia/d/0hvzkP93), LIRC (https://lirc.org/) or something similar, *and a universal remote. On my to-do list lol
I have a DHCP reservation for the TV itself and it's blackholed on my network. The only reason it's connected at all is so I can monitor what it tries to do.
Edit: Also need a universal remote for the IR solution so it can talk to the PC IR receiver and the TV IR receiver separately.
I had this running on a raspberry pi, but it had constant crashing issues. I may give it another go with a mini pc
I believe Kodi supports IR remote controls.
My family stayed at my house and “the TV wasn’t working,” because it doesn’t have network access and I use an Nvidia Shield instead, so they connected it to the Wi-Fi and ad overlays showed up in the menus! I’m still mad about it years later.
Luckily I dodged a bullet and it didn’t brick it or anything, and the ads went away when the internet access did. I just disconnected it from the network and manually banned the MAC address in case anyone else tries it again.
And then banned your family from using the remote.
Then why are you mad?
For one thing the same ad could have gotten stuck on the TV menus forever.