How to replicate the "smart tv experience"?

What are you complaining?

"Not comfy to navigate" IS the real Smart Tv experience.

Can agree. My $1800 TV has the slowest interface ever and only 8GB of storage space, most of it being taken up by the OS. It's laggy as hell and a major pain in the ass to navigate cause of it. It's like using a $50 Android phone that keeps closing the app you're using cause it has 512MB of RAM.
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I've given up on smart TVs. Mine has never been connected to the internet. I slap a fire TV to it (yeah, I know. I'm weak...) and forget about it. If that gets too slow for the task I'll get a new one for 40€.
- 40€
  
  For that price you can buy good monitor. For that price you can buy small computer. For double that price you will never need to think about replacing TV because "it's got too slow"

OK, buy a webcam and set it up so it's pointed at your couch or wherever you sit in front of your TV. Make the webcam audio and video stream available on a public server. Then do all your web browsing in vanilla Chrome with no ad or script blockers. Make sure that you always have tabs open for Amazon and Facebook, and allow their web apps access to the webcam data.

The smart TV experience.

I have no idea what I wanted to see, coming into this thread, but I got exactly what I've expected
And then act surprised when you find leak of yourself doing something inappropriate going viral.

On the software-side of things; Kodi is cool. As for remote control, consider referring to Kodi's Wiki-page on the matter for options.

Btw, honestly your query is way too vague. If possible, please provide us with more info so that we can better help you 😉.

I just probably need ~~to buy a fire stick~~ a software with a tv-like UI, where I can use a remote to visit streaming websites in an easiest way.
- Thanks for enlightening us! Fortunately, the answer in my original comment should still satisfy your needs.
- Kodi is what you are looking for.
  
  Run it on Pi 4 or a NUC. We use Disney+ and Netflix on ours, although Prime video does not work (although it should, I just have not made any effort yet).

I have one of those wireless keyboards with an integrated touchpad. It’s plugged into a small PC, which runs Linux Mint, Firefox, Jellyfin. Plenty comfortable and no invasive tracking.

I would recommend you a wireless keyboard with an integrated touchpad, it makes it easier to control everything from the couch.

KDE has an interesting project that lines up with this. Unfortunately I'm not too sure how progress is. Plasma Bigscreen

This comment now makes me wonder why there’s isn’t an kind of Desktop Environment that specifically made for TV and game console, with the UI design that is easy to use with remote/controller and touchscreen
- It's easy to adjust a DE for it, the issue is that no apps are built to work on a big screen. There's basically Steam, Kodi and that's about it.
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- You have basically just described Kodi.
it's very much not any good at all
- It was hit or miss for me too. I remember is looking good and navigating well, but apps didn't work. What were pain points for you?

Kodi on a raspberry pi supports “CEC” so your TV remote “just works” to go through the menus

Thanks for this. A remote was the biggest concern I had with moving.

I've built a 2nd/3rd generation Intel PC out from a Small Formfactor HP machine.

Put 8GB of memory into it and a 500GB HDD. The whole thing costed me around... 35-40USD and got a remote for that machine for 20USD. It's under my TV, in sleep mode so the remote can wake it up any time and the Power button on it puts back to sleep.

Running libreELEC, which is a Linux system built around Kodi, and for Kodi there are lot of streaming plugins available - Netflix too. It can pretty much play back 1080p without issue, and maybe even 4k, but I couldn't test it properly because I have a Panasonic plasma TV and that's only full hd.

Had some stuttering issue with Wayland, but with x11 it runs perfectly. If I set up the video player to synch framerates at the beginning and end of the video, it runs smoothly.

These plugins use Kodi's UI, so they are easy to navigate. It can't get more comfortable than that, Kodi is way better than any shitty Smart TV system out there, especially those Android TV abominations.

So yeah, a 2011ish PC, a DVD/Blu-Ray drive, USB remote, libreELEC and you never need any other media player equipment.

One thing needs to be done, tho... I have to use DisplayPort <-> HDMI for video out and the adapter doesn't really communicate with the TV so have to build an USB/LPT-CEC interface for it (Arduino or Pi Pico) and with that, the TV would turn on/off, change to AV or back to TV when the power state changes of the PC and also would be able to control Kodi with the TV remote too.

Could you please get a little bit more in detail with the USB/LPT-CEC interface and the wake up and put to sleep mode with the remote control?
- I now have a simple USB remote control. Since it's USB, it can wake up the PC from sleep when I press a button on it.
  
  The USB-CEC would basically emulate a keyboard and send keys for the PC accordingly the CEC message the TV sends. If the PC is in sleep, the USB adapter could wake it up.

I'm at the couch constantly and just use a wireless keyboard and mouse on the coffee table. The mouse also works fine next to me on the couch as long as I'm not gaming that way.

I did explore the possibility of scrolling options with the TV remote a while back, but the vast majority of PC video cards do not support HDMI-CEC.

Your video card doesn't need to support CEC if you can get your hand on one of those: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter
@circuitfarmer I do that too, but honestly, I wish I could use my Xbox controller instead.

@danileonis

If it's the input the problem, I use KDE connect to use my phone as a remote control. You can use the gyroscope in your phone to point to the screen like a Wii controller.

Plex

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Roku

I will second the Roku. I tried this a few years ago and kept running into issues. Some sites like Netflix don't offer HD resolution on PC. Then there are other services that have sketchy support for Linux. HBO and peacock are 2 examples.

I use my PC for personal streaming and a Roku for the main TV
- I used to pay for Hulu live tv but decided I wasn't getting enough out of it and bought a Roku instead. Now that I have it with free apps like PBS, crackle, freevee, tubi, Plex, Pluto, xumo, and a few others plus a few paid subscriptions like peacock, paramount, and basic Hulu, I have more content than I know what to do with for a fraction of what I was paying for live tv ($85/month in addition to my internet bill). It wouldn't be possible without very fast and reliable Internet however.
Yup. Get a $30 Roku and call it a day.
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Logitech K400

I've been using mine for 10+ years, maybe changing batteries once.

I currently use it with a NUC loaded with linux mint, and have the UI HD scaled (it's an out-of-the box option).

The only native functionality of the actual smart tv that I use, is the power button.
- Question: How do you watch content encoded in HDR-10 or Dolby Vision on a Linux box? I'm pretty sure *Nix supports neither. Do you simply not watch that kind of content?

I like downloading video files with BitTorrent and playing them with VLC.

Lol same but it's not exactly "smart"

So what you could do is get one of those wireless gyro mice. Then just point it at the TV like a magic wand and move your wrist around to control the on screen cursor.

Came across this https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/some-android-tv-firmware.4571981/ when looking for Android TV source code

Just buy a htpc remote. There are plenty of "remote" which is actually a wireless keyboard with touchpad/air mouse with media control buttons, but with remote form factor. Some of them even have IR learning capability, which allow you to control your tv by cloning your tv remote's IR signal (tv power, volume, input source, etc).

Smart TV experience? As is tons of ads in any app? Crappy user interfaces, out of date apps and plenty of tracking? You want to replicate that?

FWIW I never experienced any of the above besides the tracking, that's there for sure.
...isn't the point of OP's question to look for alternatives to that sort of experience? Personally I am also looking for a way to make my Linux PC usable for TV use because navigating with a keyboard and mouse is annoying when sitting on a couch tbh.

Off topic but I'm surprised by the amount of smart tv hate in this thread.

I have a Philips TV with Android TV. I use it for YouTube, Twitch, Spotify and occasionally for other streaming services. I actually really like the experience. Everything is a few clicks on a remote away, the UI is clean, it works reasonably fast.

I'm not going to argue about privacy though, that's definitely terrible.

What's more comfortable than a steam controller?√

With Bliss you can fairly accurately replicate the smart tv experience, Google play store is a bit if an issue atm, but hopefully that will be resolved soon. sadly one if the biggest issues is opengapps. is fairly slow, so when major updates happen you are stuck for a while

Buy an Xbox + remote.

$250 and you'll have the most capable HTPC gaming machine out there.