[off-topic] TV or not TV, that is the question

[Blake Munro]

Hi Gavin,

If you do go down the route of a mini PC, I highly recommend having a look
at a small form factor 'refurbished' PC. These are essentially ex-lease
office machines and they're dirt cheap. I have a Dell SFF running Proxmox
with a bunch of virtual machines and Linux containers, with a USB HDD
hanging off it for storage. They'd make a great home theatre PC and are
much cheaper than buying something like an Intel NUC.

Here's one company I have purchased from before, but there are others.
Worth checking eBay as well.

https://www.untech.com.au/collections/desktops-and-workstations

Good luck!

Regards,
Blake Munro

On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 at 20:03, gavinwc <gavin.chester at gmail.com> wrote:

> Brilliant! Thanks, Dan.
>
> I had such devices completely off my radar and had been searching
> fruitlessly for a cheap external TV tuner in a dongle form rather than a
> set-top box. When I expanded my search to your suggested "set top box" I
> found several such devices under $50 and available in-store locally. Thank
> you. That's a "dah" to me and why I knew asking others would help :-)
>
> BTW: Your setup you describe is not alien to me and have done that myself
> before. And, while I like the simplicity of what I've had for about 10
> years (a fanless raspberry-pi running libreelec for kodi dedicated to the
> TV), my most recent thoughts are to also have a setup with computing
> activities available on a much more powerful i5 or i7 miniPC to also lie
> back in bed with my wireless keyboard and wall-mounted 43" screen rather
> than balancing a 17" laptop on my lap.
>
> Hope everyone has a safe 2024.
>
> Best regards,
> Gavin Chester
>
>
>
> On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 at 16:48, Dan Buzzard <dan at danscomp.net> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just have a Ubuntu PC plugged into my TV with wireless keyboard and
>> mouse and just use it to watch media like I would on a laptop or at my desk.
>>
>>  I don't watch TV. But if I did then a TV set top box would be the way to
>> go.
>>
>> https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/blaupunkt-btv3stb-full-hd-set-top-box
>>
>>
>> These devices are meant to allow old TVs to receive modern digital
>> broadcast and from what I've seen most of them haven't gone "smart" yet.
>>
>> -Dan
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 30 Dec 2023, at 3:44 PM, gavinwc wrote:
>>
>> Hi People,
>>
>> Season's greeting to you all, even non-Christians and atheists like me :-)
>>
>> This is a very pedestrian question from someone who has been quietly
>> lurking for nigh-on 25 years now with very little to say over that time,
>> but I respect your collective experience for a source of good advice -
>>
>> Problem: I abhor any "smart" device, phones, fridges, TVs, etc. But, we
>> have decided to be decadent and get a new TV. Our existing dumb TV is long
>> in the tooth and faulty, but I have long augment its features with
>> streaming services via a raspberry-pi/kodi setup. All I really want to do
>> is upgrade that sort of system, maybe substituting the pi box with a more
>> powerful mini-PC like an Intel NUC, or something similar so I can also lie
>> back and do a bit of web browsing occasionally.
>>
>> But, where are all the "dumb" TVs these days!?
>>
>> I know this dilemma is the stuff of many wasted bytes and pixels online,
>> but my searching for solutions is proving very time-consuming with many web
>> pages outdated. I know I can supposedly not activate the TV's smart
>> features, and have done that in the past, but other family members soon
>> couldn't cope and activated them anyway. Besides that, I don't trust that a
>> deactivated smart TV is just sitting there as a fully passive receiving
>> device of free-to-air broadcasts.
>>
>> At this stage, because I'm also looking to do some computing operations,
>> I'm looking at a cheap IntelNUC mini-PC mated to a BIG UHD monitor (eg,
>> Dell 43"), but such a setup lacks a TV tuner for free-to-air reception.
>> External TV tuner dongles also seem to be a dying thing these days and web
>> pages are mostly outdated. What to do?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Gavin Chester
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