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
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.
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.
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
This definitely looks like a project to follow
Can’t wait to switch to Desktop Mode on my SteamDeck to open Plasma BigScreen.
Never seen this before, might have to try it on my TV PC. Do like the interface!
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.
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?
Many streaming service websites limit browser streaming to 720p.
Looks promising. Does remote controllers work with it?
I expect so.
KDE Connect also works great as a remote control for many things, presumably including this.
I’m wondering what I’ve done wrong with KDE Connect as I could never get it working on any device across 3 different smartphones
HDMI-CEC seems to be currently unsupported. So you won’t be able to use your TV’s remote yet.
The article actually stated that the featured is untested.
Controller support exists, but getting TV remotes to work over HDMI CEC is still untested.
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.
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.
Let’s goooo!
(And let’s support!!)
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.
Does it support Dolby Vision?
Because if not, I’m not sure how it’s going to compete with Android TV devices.
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.
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.
