A PC. You can buy an n100 mini PC. There's different interfaces and os's for htpc's. You can buy a remote that works with PC's and those handheld keyboard/trackpad combo's work pretty well.

[–] burgersc12@mander.xyz 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The 2.4ghz connector for those trackpad/keyboard combos never worked more than like 10 feet away so the couch wasn't an option (until I got one that used BT)

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I actually bought one of those corsair lapdog things when they were new (the keyboard+mousepad with built in USB hub) and it's honestly fairly comfortable. Wired connection.

[–] Lydia_K@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have an old laptop hooked up my tv already, but using the Bluetooth keyboard and TouchPad to navigate traditional desktop focused applications is such a cumbersome activity that both my husband and I never bother to use it, we just grab the remote and use the default tv interface.

I was specifically asking about the remote control and more tv- like interface software. I've never managed to get kodi to be anything good, not sure what I'm missing with that but it's always super clunky and bad to use.

Someone else suggested plasma big screen, I'm going to install and try and get that configured up today, see how it goes.

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's a couple of different OSs that are based around Linux and Kodi. You can use steam big picture mode and an Xbox controller. You can add non steam apps and browser links. You can install Android TV in Windows.

[–] Lydia_K@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

Android TV is what I'm trying to escape 😀

Thanks for the suggestions, I guess I'll look around for a pre-configured Kodi setup, people say that can be good.

I did give plasma bigscreen a try, but overall it seems to be not working well on straight x86 hardware, it's intended for ARM devices mostly it seems.