> You can run your own linux HPC, but those get locked to 720p quality.

That is demonstrably not true.

If you run Jellyfin and pirate using thepiratebay and yandex searches, you can get 4k 7.1 audio shows.

It's not the OS but the streamimg sites, like netflix and others are locked to 720p.

My point exactly.

Why would I pay to be abused and treated like a potential theif if I pay for services, but if I pirate I do get the best quality and experience?

If the company's paid experiences were top notch, I'd have stayed.

But it turns out 40TB, 20 cores, and an Intel Arc for high speed transcoding easily handles 200 shows, 3000 movies, and more. And the big upside? No more 'killed by Netflix' or trying to figure out what streaming platform has THIS show today.

Come on, they are obviously talking about streaming services. Everybody knows you can pirate anything at any quality.

Apple TV is pretty good and not very pricey. It’s a good value

Apple TV has to be one of my favorite purchases over the last five years. It just does what it says on the tin and gets the hell out of the way otherwise. I've bought three of them and disconnected all our tvs from wifi in favor of using these devices.

they are great little devices. Has its own tailscale app too and can be used as an exit node! useful for me as the TV is pretty close to the fiber box on the wall.

I struggle a bit with the remote control and UI in several apps

The remote control is definitely hit or miss. I don't have any trouble with it, but I swear my wife has ten thumbs when she's using it. She hates that thing.

Great device, if only they could make a decent remote. The older silver one was like a slippery soap in the palm, while the next (black) one was hopeless to figure which side was up or down.

My newer 4K controller started acting up recently and I had to ifixit.

Starting at $130 is kind of pricey. A Roku Ultra isn't as capable, but is $80, and a Roku Express 4K+ (no wired ethernet, no dolby atmos) is $30. Roku likes to snoop and push ads too, of course.

And how usable are they if you're outside of the Apple ecosystem (i think I saw an article recently that someone was stuck and needed to use a mac or an iPhone to get unstuck).

I haven’t had any issues with mine yet but I have lots of Apple devices so I am not the best to answer this question.

But, as far as Roku they are subsidized by selling your data and pushing ads as you call out above. Not really a fair comparison. Just like you have to pay more everywhere for the ad free tier you end up paying more for Apple TV.

I will say though that the Apple TV handles 4K flawlessly. I am willing to bet that it has quite a bit more power than any of roku’s offerings.

The bigger problem with running on a PC is UI. No longer will it work well with a simple remote that only needs 10 buttons.

It's definitely less ergonomic but I successfully trained my extremely non-technical wife to use a VNC client on her phone to control the media center PC so she can watch streaming/youtube with an adblocking browser.

If you go to the trouble of setting up a media server and Kodi/Plex on the TV, and install a barebones launcher that avoids all the ads on the official launcher, the remote still works well. I don't know whether to blame Sony or Google but every system update brought bigger and bigger ads to the point that I took an afternoon off to sideload an extremely plain ad-free launcher.

I had a media center PC that was usable with a remote control in 2008.

Choke full of XVID cams, I bet