So, my Nexus Player bit the dust after 3 years (it had a good run, and I got it super cheap, so I can’t be mad at the little thing).
Since then, I’ve been using my PS4 as my media device just for ease of use. It has Netflix, Plex, etc. But, it’s kind of annoying that it doesn’t have any casting or DLNA type stuff. It does have YouTube but it’s not easy to navigate using a PS4 controller, so often I’ll switch over to a different input which has a Chromecast plugged in to it. That pretty much covers most of my media playback needs but I’m looking at improving the setup.
We’re coming up to Black Friday, and my TV is starting to get a bit long in the tooth, so I’m considering holding out for a new TV that has Android TV built in to it. Alternatively, I used an NVIDIA Shield at my cousin’s house when I was in Mountain View earlier this year, and I was really impressed with it.
Someone suggested a ROKU, but I have no idea how that works to be honest.
So what do you all use? (suspect a few answers will be Apple TV haha).
I have an Nvidia shield. It’s not perfect but it just sits there and works + it acts as a chromecast when needed. It has the google assistant too if you’re into that kind of thing (I’m not… I find it quicker to press buttons on the remote than shout at it…)
Quite like the idea of having it on the TV! (It did roll out to the Nexus Player before mine bit the dust, but the device was already slow as molasses at that point).
Is it always listening or do you trigger it? I suppose I don’t need it to be, as it’ll be in the same room as a Google Home.
It’s quite easy to access YouTube via Firefox or Amazon’s Silk browser though. I have Firefox set-up for YouTube so when I open Firefox it will bring YouTube. Also if you cast from phone to Fire TV it will automatically open YouTube in Browser so it works fine
I tried Apple TV. I wasn’t massively impressed; partially that was because when I tried it you needed to subscribe to many of the services offered through it, or pay to buy/rent stuff from the Apple Store. Rubbed me up the wrong way somewhat they after shelling out for the Apple TV I’d still have to spend more money to make it usable.
Then I tried Chromecast. I quite liked that, particularly being able to stream stuff from my phone or desktop and ‘cast’ it to the TV. That I found pretty useful.
Lastly I tried a Fire Stick, in combination with Amazon Prime. Key advantage of that one is not having to be sat at my computer to watch Prime Video stuff.
Almost all my TVs have Netflix and iPlayer integration as standard, so I disregard those when considering devices.
Broadly speaking, I would say that a Chromecast is probably the best device to go for. But if you have Amazon Prime then you might want to consider a Fire stick.
I haven’t tried Roku. Literally the only thing I know about Roku is that Ellen likes giving Roku TVs away to her audience.
Chromecast for sheer convenience (Google Home voice control FTW) but PS4 gets used mainly just because it’s often convenient to have physical buttons to play/pause quickly.
I have a 10 year old tv connected to a Chromecast, absolutely perfect for us. I’m just about to start building my raspberry pi to be a plex server and that’ll be us I think
