Is a PI fast enough to drive HD TV via HDMI?...

I had no problems with a Pi3 fed with terrestrial and satellite from tvheadend and netflix, all 2K rather than 4k, the widevine plug-in was a bit tricksy to setup.

IIRC, it was a Pi3 that I used around 2-3 years ago on an HD TV (1920x1080). I have done the same with a Pi4. IME, a case with a fan is a very good idea.

HTH

My experience is that with a very good heat sink a Pi4B doesn't get over hot. I use the aluminium armour one e.g. at

(no affiliation - just a happy customer)

Yes, and also because the firmware has got a lot better since the early days. With my Pi 4 in an el cheapo alu heatsink case, on the floor in a cool corner of the house, it never throttles.

That's an excellent-looking design. Thanks for the link!

Does it have thermally conductive foam pads or similar that contact the tops of the relevant chips?

I now looked at the link and it turns out that's the same one I have; yes it has those stick on foam pads. I had some trouble with them, one disintegrated when I tried to peel away the protective film. Pimoroni sent me a new one but it was exactly the same. Because I was very, *very* careful it wasn't another complete disaster, but yeah, that's why I called it "el cheapo".

Left... photos...

I liked the look of that too, but wondered whether it might have a bad effect on WiFi reception?

The Pi 4 can handle h264, particularly if using a carefully configured distro, like libreELEC.

However, I don't really understand the raison d'être of media centres. Sure, I can understand TVHeadend serving broadcast TV, if you like a mix of dumb propaganda and reality TV, but I prefer to just have internet and shared drives on a standard desktop under the TV.

When I tested the Pi 4 it wasn't up to serving a desktop with video, VLC, YouTube, at HD. Now some people say a Pi 4 can, but in the past I have tried with underpowered machines, and it has been very fragile.

I now use an old intel 2500K, it needs a cabinet to hide it, but it is just so much less stress, particularly for x265.

Use the Pi 4 as a server and a proper PC as a HTPC.

Don't you ever watch a DVD?

Or listen to a CD. All my DVDS and CDs are on my media centre, so are some audiobooks and over a thousand E-books.

Even live internet radio allows me a better interface if I build it myself.

And my media server is, if you know how, globally accessible, so defeats a lot of country specific broadcasts.

I was very glad that, armed only with a laptop, I could read my books, watch my videos, watch TV, listen to the radio, listen to my audio collection from a hospital bed....

Essentially I wanted to build a single https portal which would give me a unified access to all these things from anywhere in the world.

And instead of having CD players and DVD players and radio tuners, simply have it all in one big backed up box. Along with all my personal data.

There is a bit more on UK TV than those, although I agree they are the dominant content.

The problem is that I have over 1TB of recorded videos on the server, and so the thing needs to be networked.

That is really the sort of answer I was looking for, so thanks. So we are certainly out of Pi Zero territory and into Pi 4 B territory.

Looks like a basic setup is a bit under £70 (- $100)

Might be worth a punt

Well I have a spare PC now although its a bit power hungry.

>

It does. It would ne better if PI had a connector for external antenna.

Not in the last 10 years, maybe 15, no. I threw the CDs and DVDs away ages ago.

Music, E-books EPUB, MOBI, I put on a sync drive (Syncthing) shared with my laptop, mobile and tablet. That works well, no hassle about transferring/uploading books. I do the same for the mobile camera, in reverse.

Yeah, I remembered you telling me your hospital had mobile access. I've been to two hospitals in the last month and neither did. But, yeah, in principle, you can remote share a drive. I don't, being happy to use Netflix or Amazon Prime for video, and syncing for smaller stuff.

All my stored media stuff is files, so a NAS or synced drive solves this. I use a Pi as a NAS.

You could rip your CDs if you wanted to.

Yeah, any solution needs a network.

Not quite, Pi video playback relies on hardware acceleration. If that always worked, was supported, it is possible a lower Pi might work. The problem I have found is that it can be flaky, or unsupported. So a carefully supported distro like LibreELEC will work, because a lot of attention is paid to hardware acceleration. In the past, Raspbian didn't work because acceleration was not well supported.

It's a bit of fun, and Pi4s do make brilliant servers, if it fails.

My new power monitoring plugs tell me my TV, computer, and speakers use

130 watts. For 2-3 hours a day, that is only a bit more than the 11 watts, my speakers use on standby 24/7. But, you are right about the power, probably the best thing to do in such circumstances is to ask yourself "What would Greta do?".

I had no problems with the pads. Bit fiddly, but ok. I've got a couple - different colours so I can easily distinguish the Pis

Ah. As I use my Pi4s with wired connection and disable WiFi that is not something I've tested. Goos to know though.

It does...its a usb socket :-) You plug a USB wifi dongle in...

Actually there is a space on at least a Pi Zero where you can solder a coax...

LibreELEC on a RPi 3 handled YouTube (at least at 720p) just fine. I'd still be using it, if I didn't have need for more streaming sources than just YouTube.

I went from the RPi to a Rock Pi X: same form factor, but with an Intel Atom that can run normal Linux distros (or even Win10 if you're so inclined). I put Gentoo Linux on mine (same as on my desktops, with my home server (a Ryzen 5 2600 on a server motherboard) doing the heavy lifting of compiling packages for it. LXDE, Brave, and Kodi are compiled for it: Kodi for media stored on the server, Brave for most streaming. It also runs the LBRY desktop client to grab content from that network.

The Rock Pi X may have since been discontinued, but there are "stick PCs" built around various Atom and Celeron CPUs that would be comparable, if slightly larger.

Yeah, I know. Some also do cutting and soldering on PI 4. But... I would probably cut all around. :)

Thank you for that link. That looks like rather well-designed from a thermal perspective.