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I gave up on HTPCs after a decade or more of trying because I never found a good way to control it that was practical for everyone in the house. I ended up with a Roku Ultra (even though me feelings toward Roku are luke warm) because it has a simple remote, or can be controlled/automated by home assistant, or can be controlled from Alexa (via a custom skill I wrote), or it can be screen casted to, or it could be controlled by a Harmony Hub (RIP Harmony).

But separate smart box together with a dumb TV is the the way to go.

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transientpunk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I put Kodi on a raspberry pi, and my TV supported CEC, so I was able to use the TV remote to seamlessly control Kodi. It was as close to a native interface as I could wish for. And that was all the way back in 2016

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- ruckblack@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  CEC is such a nightmare of a technology though. I have problems with it constantly to the point where it’s just expected it won’t work 50% of the time, and it’s impossible to troubleshoot
  
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  - jeanofthedead@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I have to unplug my docked Steamdeck anytime I want to watch any other input because screws with the CEC functionality so much. It’s a hot mess.
    
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- Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah, Kodi was slick when I had it. That was about 40% of what I used the HTPC for though.
  
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- Bluefruit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Never knew about CEC, learn something new everyday! Thats pretty neat.
  
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Terevos@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Harmony was how I controlled my HTPCs. But once I moved from MythTV to Plex, I just started using Roku or Google TV frontends. They just worked so much more reliably and were super cheap.

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- Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I tried to get the the HTPC working with Harmony. Even got a flirc to extend it’s capabilities, but never found a decent way to get good mouse control with it.
  
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  - Terevos@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Oh I never tried using the mouse with Harmony. I’m not even sure I knew that was possible.
    
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Bluefruit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Valid point, not everyone likes to use a mouse and keyboard for watching shows in the livingroom.

My tv is “smart” but ive never setup any internet for it effectively making it dumb.

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Illogicalbit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
You could not have described my exact scenario any better. I’m in the same boat.

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