There's a lot of fragmentation, but things are getting better. You can do all that with a FireTV stick for $40. It runs DRM apps, has a Kodi fork MrMC in the store (or you can sideload Kodi), Miracast for general screen casting, apps for other casting protocols, a YouTube app for Google content.

Against Balkanization, Fan.TV and other guide apps combine all your streaming sources and antenna TV into one. And everything can be controlled from your phone.

There's still room for improvement, but we have it pretty good. The biggest problem is figuring out what hardware and software you need with all the options out there. We're just spoiled for choice.

This is what I use, and I love how responsive the Amazon FireTV remote is. I have the FireTV hidden behind my TV and the remote works from anywhere in the room regardless of if I'm pointing it at the device or not.

The age of IR remote is almost gone.

Now they use a accelerator/gyroscope and a dedicated RF channel to provide input. Plus that you can transmit also more data ( Wii remotes send the battery status too, for example ).

> Netflix and Prime are finally acceptable on Linux thanks to Pipelight but that solution's not for everyone.

What's weird is that Amazon Prime worked fine on Linux in 2010 without any trouble, and now it requires Pipelight.

And Hulu, too, used to work but no longer does.