Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Before you throw it away, you can sideload Kodi onto it, and stream local content, IPTV, and other (not super legal) entertainment sites.

Be your own streaming service, and keep using the FireTV stick with the Jellyfin app.

Jellyfin on the firestick. Remove internet access from the stick (LAN only).

Alternatively, DNS block amazon communications (Pihole, adguardhome, etc).

Edit: you can also install adguard, or other ad blockers directly onto your firestick.

Edit 2: there are also a number of ad preferences burried deep in the settings. My fireTV has no adblocker, but only displays static banner ads on the homepage.

Why is nobody talking about stremio? The user interface and experience is very close to netflix (better at times) but it plays torrents instead.

If you pair it with a real-debrid subscription after you first try it solo it takes it to the next level.

It’s just amazing

And you don’t have to buy anything. Stremio can be installed on your firetv stick

EDIT: forgot to mention that you need the torrentio or torrrentio lite add on for stremio.

FireTV stick, yo mama's so fat, she brought a spoon to the Super Bowl.

Intel NUC for $50 from eBay and smarthomebeginner was all I needed for this

Look into Jellyfin and the *arr suite for automating downloads. If this seems too complicated for now, just get a cheap 1 TB external SSD, a VPN (check out mullvad), a torrent client (i suggest qBittorrent or Transmission), bind the torrent client to the VPN to prevent leaks and off you go!

The simpler method has some drawbacks, not all TV's support all codecs and formats, you have to move the external drive from your computer to your TV for example. Getting Jellyfin setup will give you a more streaming service type of experience and if someone else than you might want to watch something, start with Jellyfin.

If the Jellyfin experience is horrible and you just really wanna watch a movie to relax on a saturday, maybe take a look at Plex.

If you already have the MiniPC just lying around then great, just use that! If you don't have it, you can also host Jellyfin + the *arr suite on your PC (unsure about Windows compatibility) and start them when needed or have them run in the background when your computer starts.

keep the fire stick and install Plex on it. my Plex servers are about 20tb and it's 90% of what I use my fire stick for

Raspberry Pi 5 + Debian + KDE bigscreen

If you're looking for a decent setup but maybe not the cheapest- Nvidia shield with an external hard drive would work very well.

You could always build or buy a nas and just run Plex as an app through either your current fire stick or get a cheap Roku stick (although now you're back in the same ad garden for a player but Roku is minimally invasive imo- especially with a pi-hole for dns)

Is there a way I can interact with it using a remote?

I was surprised at the number of remotes that sell on AliExpress that have an actual keyboard on the back of it, covered with a plastic seal, that sell for dirt cheap like $5, and are meant to be used (and recognized as by the OS) as an actual keyboard.

So, yes, regarding this option, is an actual minipc a solution and can I interact with it properly, yes, you sure can ☺️.

Oh, and some even had a little touchpad on the front 😂. So cute 😂.

I'm also interested in this. I've seen that used mini PCs can be found for under $100, which is still pretty pricey for this need imo, but I'm sure it's a good choice for setting up a Jellyfin server and maybe some general home management type stuff like security cameras or smart lights or something. If you already have a PC, you might be better off using that to grab media and then throw it onto a drive that you can connect to the USB of your TV if it has one. Alternatively, maybe run a long HDMI from PC to TV? Or maybe something like a Steam Link could get that done? Combine that with a phone app to control your PC from another room and you're in business. It really depends on the volume you're looking to watch though because that would be a headache to do more than just a few times per week. I wish I could be more helpful to you, but I'm just some spitballing idiot who also doesn't know until somebody with more experience chimes in lol.

I myself am flirting with the idea of building a gaming desktop that could fill this role as well as serve as a modern Steam Machine running Chimera OS. I bought a used Steam Deck a while back and fell in love with the UX, but while it's amazing for a handheld it's a little underpowered for gaming at home. I have built a few Windows PCs about ten years ago, but any nuggets of wisdom regarding differences today, Linux tips, etc would be greatly appreciated. I've done a bit of homework, but people on Lemmy seem to be super knowledgeable about this kind of thing.

Don't get rid of it, install Kodi and/or Plex on it

I just installed SmartTubeNext on mine for ad free youtube and it turns out I can pair it with and cast from YouTube Revanced on my tablet, and it carries over all the skips for SponsorBlock as well. Don’t even have to be logged in to SmartTube, works fine with the default anon view. You don’t even have to keep them connected. Once SmartTube receives a playlist, you can disconnect the cast and SponsorBlock sections still work.

https://troypoint.com/smarttube/

At this point all I have on it is Kodi, Twitch, SmartTubeNext, the free Roku app for old tv series, and RetroArch for pre-N64 games.(edit: it may very well play n64 games etc as well, it’s more an issue of storage space for me. My Kodi library is pretty big.)

Pair it with a pihole and Twitch is also ad free.

Netgear router + 2tb thumb drive + makeMKV 👍🏼

Lots of great info here, commenting so I remember this thread!