Stick PC for a media client?

Are mini stick PCs practical to set up as a media player, eg with jellyfin? Some advantages are the small form factor that plugs straight into the HDMI port, and flexibility/privacy vs using a dongle from a shitty company like amazon/google/roku.

Are there any things to watch out for to ensure it has enough compute power and hardware decoding? I just want it to play HD video with a jellyfin app/browser page.

I’m assuming it’s no big deal to install Linux on (x86 hardware?), do you need to watch out for specific device support? Thanks

I found this one on amazon

a.co/d/05wDgslY

it advertises linux compatibility. So, I’d agree with you, installing shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve heard about a project called Plasma Bigscreen, might be exactly what you’re looking for. I’ve also heard flir remotes work pretty will with linux tv boxes. Those plug pcs have usb slots, you might want to figure out if you need an extension cable so the ir can reach the dongle.

I have one of these, and it sucks as a portable PC. As a jellyfish client, it might do fine. One thing you should know, while the power is USBC, it only works with its own usbc, and that adapter is 24v.

Interesting, did you have windows on it, or did you throw a real OS on it? If so, what distro/DE?

It came with windows 10, and claimed to be upgradeable to 11 (it wasn’t). I used it with lmde, though, so the upgrade lie, while was a shite thing to do, didn’t really affect me.

Interesting, I assume lmde would be comparable to a say fedora based plasma bigscreen install resource wise. It’s not like you were using a super lightweight distro. I’m actually surprised the plasma bigscreen devs haven’t made a super light weight install guide based off alpine or a pared down debian or arch for lowend hardware like OP is asking about.

I’m hoping the BigScreen install would be better as a settopbox, but I wanted a portable PC lol

It was smooth enough, just slow. A bit expected for how intensive lmde is, but I really wanted it to work with that. Maybe I’m judging too harshly