KDE Plasma Bigscreen (Android TV alternative) is back from dead
KDE's Android TV alternative, Plasma Bigscreen, rises from the dead with a better UI
Not exactly self-hosted but I know many jellyfinners here would cherish this as well.
That's looks much better.
I tried the older version for my htpc and didn't like it.
I would love to see this keep improving.
Is this basically a DE? Could you run steam and full on gaming PC off this?
Baeically its a somewhat stripped down version of plasma ment to be used with a controller or remote, but it is only a DE, so applications that arent controller friendly are going to stay that way.
Setting steam to launch big picture by default tho would basically turn any powerful pc you have into a steam console (steam big picture) with an extra home screen (plasma bigscreen) that shows all your other applications
I wonder if you could eventually get it built into Bazzite
The thing is without this, if you somehow exit steam, you are toast and need to plug a keyboard or access via ssh. Having a DE with controller support like this would indeed rock, as I stop depending on steam for launching things.
It's an alternative shell for Plasma, so theoretically you should be able to do anything in it that you can do in Plasma.
On my Arch box it installed a minimal set of Plasma utilities to support it, which means my setup is still very limited (and I can't turn off screen lock!), but I haven't tried if it would change if offered a full Plasma install.
I can most certainly launch Steam, Kodi, Jellyfin etc.
Or is it a "mode" of KDE? Like can you use a distro of KDE and then put it into Bigscreen mode?
It's using plasma-nano session, which is a minimal Plasma session, and adding a launcher and settings app from what I can see.
You can run it in a regular window if you install the dependencies and use kde-builder to compile it and run. See the Dev docs at https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/
If you do decide to install all the kde-builder stuff, I'd suggest you use a distrobox container to make it easy to remove the many, many packages that it will install in order to set up the build environment
It's not that. Or at least you have to reboot into it.
...or can you just load a desktop environment without rebooting... Keeping your apps open...?
What does DE mean in this context?
Desktop environment
It's a Linux concept. Basically, imagine you could have a Windows 11 PC with the Windows XP GUI or with the macOS GUI. In Linux, these kinds of different GUIs are just desktop environments, which you can install as you see fit.
Conversely, you can also have an OS without a desktop environment, which is basically what's used on Linux server PCs.
Can't wait to switch to Desktop Mode on my SteamDeck to open Plasma BigScreen.
Glad to see it being picked back up. I tried it previously and I really didn't like it. It felt half baked. The new version looks like a substantial improvement. Now if only every streaming app didn't lock their services behind DRM and mobile apps.
Couldn't you get around this by making the "apps" in bigscreen be browser shortcuts to their respective streaming website?
As others have mentioned, the websites tend to be limited both by resolution and functionality.
My TV supports CEC(most do these days) which will pass the remote input onto the devices connected to it, like a computer. Which means with Plasma Big Picture I can navigate with my remote, and any app that supports navigation with simple arrow key input would work great.
Unfortunately, the streaming websites, last time I tried, absolutely suck at that and assume you are navigating with a mouse.
That only would launch them and probably won’t support remotes properly.
This definitely looks like a project to follow
Does it have Stremio and an equivalent to YouTube ReVanced/SmartTubeNext? If so, I'm sold. I'm tired of the slow clunky interface on my Android-based TV. Paid nearly $2K for this fucker and they couldn't even be bothered to give it a CPU with more than 2 cores, nor more than 8GB of storage space. Like a cheap Chinese Android phone from 2014.
Let's goooo!
(And let's support!!)
HALLELUJAH!!! I was wondering what was going on with this project. I have so many old laptops waiting around just to be converted for Plasma Bigscreen so I can get rid of my android TV boxes that run like garbage
For real. My nvidia shield (the tube version), has been struggling with 4k HDR playback lately. It needs frequent reboots. I later come to learn that the device is 32 bit, yet it's one of the most competitive devices in the space? Silly.
Fun horror story I learned recently, so are many, many, many of the things that share their internals, commonly, tablets. good luck figuring out whether this specific 4gb ram tablet has 64 bit, aka the majority of em either dont. Some are even using 64 bit processor with 32bit android build, so even if the processor cna handle it, no 64bit applications for you
Wow this looks to be really promising!! I would LOVE to get rid of my current Nvidia sheild Android TV setup, as that contain the mast part of Google I'm forced to use.
Looks promising. Does remote controllers work with it?
Nice! The revival is further along than I thought. Can't wait to put it on my Steam Deck. And maybe my desktop PC will move into the living room in the near future. Would be the perfect timing.
Looks nice! I'm getting it set up on an old Pi right now for a new media center in my basement.
I tried it like a year ago, and there were really a lot of things I dislike. Let's see how it goes. Would be nice, because I still don't have a good solution for this.
I ended up with a kde desktop set up that was good.
I used a mini handheld keyboard by Rii, it had a touch pad. There are many different styles of it. But with the customization kde has, I got a pretty fluent set up. It was a full desktop but almost more like android in terms of usage.
It is getting a complete makeover
Nice
Finally, an OS worthy of my "alternatively sourced" content library!
Never seen this before, might have to try it on my TV PC. Do like the interface!
can you sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root on it?
I kinda want to ask how well does firefox work? I kinda want to try using amazon prime one firefox with ublock origen (yes I know jelly fin and plex plus other tools exist) just curious
When I've used Prime Video before it worked flawlessly in Firefox with ublock, but that was on a laptop
Try Stremio and you can skip all that
Does it support Dolby Vision?
Because if not, I'm not sure how it's going to compete with Android TV devices.
Are you sure that Dolby Vision is a main selling point of Android TVs?
Unlikely, Dolby tech support requires that the license for Vision or Atmos etc has been bought for that particular machine. Never seen a media player where the end user can buy the license separately.
edit: Also those Android boxes only support DV Profile 5, which is DV used for streaming, If you want to play a UHD BluRay rip in mkv format in the highest quality DV profile, Profile 7 with Full Enhancement Layers, you need to find a Oppo 203 or 205 or one of the clones. Those are basically the only players that can play UHD BD mkv with DV Profile 7 FEL.
MS do sell Atmos (and DTS:X) support as an individually licensed thing, threough Dolby Access and DTS Sound Unbound on their store.
I do wonder how it could work in Linux, as well as getting things like commercial streaming services in 4K.
Presumably some sort of black box hardware would be needed (for the super top secret Widevine L1 shit), the manufacturer of that can pay the Dolby fees, and then just some basic open source code to call the hardware features.
Dolby Vision is not th catch. The catch is it will never work with major streaming platforms.
Yeah, it's just what would work for me once I cancel Netflix Premium Plus with Reduced Adverts.
mpv supports Dolby vision (along with the Jellyfin clients that depend on it), but if you mean with streaming services, that's unlikely to happen due to DRM.
Lol idek what Dolby vision is. Don't they do sound?
It's basically HDR (the 10 bit display kind, not the Half Life 2 kind), but with more metadata.
What I find is that if you have a Dolby Vision capable TV, it will be already calibrated to something that looks good, rather than you having to fuck around telling it how bright "paper" is or some shit.
HDR displays are surprisingly tricky, even without Dolby Vision or HDR10+. Especially if you're mixing SDR and HDR content on a display. I tried it a few years ago on Windows and it was flat out awful. I think they've fixed a lot of it up now with Win 11, but even they took their damn time over it.