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Recommended mini linux device for streaming to TV (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Looking for a simple mini device that I can plug into TV for streaming stuff via browser/jellyfin and similar, with hdmi and control via bluetooth keyboard/mouse. What do you guys recommend?

Would this be powerful enough for example? https://www.komplett.no/product/1323029/pc-tilbehoer/stasjonaer-pc/acer-revo-box-mini-pc

EDIT: lemmy is awesome, thanks to you I'll save myself a ton of work and/or costly mistakes

Mini pc
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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I share the general sentiment but lower TDP does not equal lower consumption, any "mobile" ryzen since the series 4000 on Zen 2 (7nm) is more efficient at most tasks than an N100 (10nm TSMC node), and barring specific mobo issues all have in general very low idle consumptions. But their iGPUs are a lot more capable, faster at anything, no need to limit yourself to a lightweight Desktop manager. Shop used and you might get more bang for your buck with an older ryzen mini pc than a newer N100 one.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    If the thing is not meant to use as a Desktop, why load it with heavier applications that aren't delivering anything useful?

    No matter how efficient a core is at most tasks, it can't beat the power savings of not actually running needless code.

    My homemade TV Box isn't running a lightweight desktop because I had to "limit myself", it's running one because I'm not losing anything by not having that which I don't use and if that even just saves a few Watts a week, it still means I'm better off, which is satisfying as I like to design my systems to be efficient.

    For fancy Linux Desktop things I have an actual Desktop PC with Linux - the homemade TV Box on my living room is only supposed to let me watch stuff on TV whilst I sit on my sofa.

    Further, there are more than one form of efficiency - stuff like the N100 (and even more, the ARM stuff) are designed for power consumption efficiency, whilst desktop CPUs are designed for ops-per-cycle efficiency, which are not at all the same thing: being capable of doing more operations per cycle doesn't mean something will consume less power in doing so (in fact, generally in Engineering if you optimize in one axis you lose in another) it just means it can reach the end of the task in fewer cycles.

    For a device that during peak use still runs at around 10% CPU usage, having the ability to do things a little faster doesn't really add any value.

    Even the series 4000 Zen2 being more optimized for power consumption is only in the context of desktop computers, a whole different world from what the N100 (and even more things like ARM7) were designed to operate in, which is why the former has a TDP of 140W and the latter of 15W (and the ARMs are around 6W). Sure the TDP is a maximum and hence not a precise metric for a specific use case such as using something as a TV Box, but it's a pretty good indication of how much a core was optimized for power consumption, and 15W vs 140W is a pretty massive distance to expect that any error in using TDP to estimate how the power consumption of those two in everyday use as a TV Box compares would mean that the CPU with 140W TDP consumes less than the one with 15W.

    PS: All that said, if the use case was "selfhosting" rather than "TV Box (with a handful of lightweight services on the side)", you suggestion makes more sense, IMHO.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There are plenty of mobile ryzens with a TDP of 15W, I'm not suggesting a Threadripper for a tv box, that'd be crazy :)

    The -U ("ultrabook") Ryzens are found not only in laptops but also in mini pcs, very efficient (yes even at idle, I have a power meter) are also the -GE and -G APUs despite the higher TDP (35W and 65W) because of their monolithic design. And in mini pcs the system consumes less power compared to putting the same cpus on a beefy ATX motherboard with a hungry chipset and inefficient VRMs.

    Intel+TSMC mobile/embedded cpus are also great choices, same concepts apply.

    I should have written desktop environment (DE) and not manager (I mixed it up with WM, window managers), btw they're not just for actual desk-top computers, some are even optimised for the TV (and input with a remote). I misunderstood that you felt a need for a lighter software setup instead of simply preferring it, my bad, and kudos for making sensible choices, bloat is bad. Happy linuxing.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I see, with your clarification that does make more sense.

    Frankly I would've rather have avoided Intel because, well, they're Intel, but from what I saw when I looked around, the N100 was an x86 designed for that kind of use, had far more computing power than the dissapointing cheap ARM based Android TV boxes I had tried before (I've been using TV Boxes for since well before they were common and the last one was so old that it couldn't handle newer media anymore, so I started looking around and first tried replacing with with a cheap Android TV box) and I could get a Mini-PC for roughly the same price as a good Android TV box for making my own thing fully under my control (i.e. Linux with my chosen media player and services, rather than a closed Android riddled with bloatware), so I went for it and am happy with the result.

    As for desktop environment, in practice the thing just runs Kodi all the time as the frontend, hence is perfect for controlling with a remote, like the one I linked in my original post. Any linux style kind of management I do remotelly from another computers, either from the command line via SSH or via web interfaces. In practice whilst I do have a keyboard and mouse connected to it, they're very rarelly used.

    I later found out that using LibreELEC (a whole Linux distro meant specifically for use as a TV box were Kodi is the frontend) would probably have been an optimal choice for a TV box rather than starting from a light ubuntu variant and customizing it myself, plus LibreELEC would've worked just as well on an ARM based SBC (something like an Orange Pi 3) which would've been cheaper and would've used even less power. That said, I had intended from he start to hang more services from that box (for example, I wanted to replace the NAS "solution" I had in place using my router, which only supported SMBv1) so starting from a more generic Linux distro probably made more sense that using a TV Box specific light distro.

    The thing is a bit of a Frankenstein monster on the inside but doesn't at all look like it when used in my living room to play media on the TV.

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