this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
37 points (97.4% liked)
BuyFromEU
3350 readers
107 users here now
Welcome to BuyFromEU - A community dedicated to supporting European-made goods and services!
We also invite you to subscribe to:
Logo generated with mistral le chat Banner by Christian Lue on unsplash.com
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Those devices are subsidised and you end up paying through all the subscriptions to Amazon (for example), lockin to Amazons ecosystem (they push their content and rentals) and the data scraping, and being sold to advertisers. Youre paying much more than that to Amazon in the long term.
Meanwhile you can get a raspberry pi 5 started kit for £82 - including the pi, a case, SD card to put your OS on and a HDMI cable. Then its just a bit of time to set up a system how you want it - lots of guides online. Its even a fun project and you learn a bit about setting up a system how you want it.
Personally I would put a bit more money in and get an 8gb pi plus a case for an nvme card, and a 512gb card. Then you can run the OS off the nvme and have loads of media storage, and a snappy machine with the ram. In that case you'd get the 8gb pi for £76, case for £38 and a 500gb card for £36. £144.
Yes it is more expensive than a fire stick for £60 (often on sale for £45 in fairness). Yes it costs more at the front end and there are compromises with 4k streaming and HDR. But you then have a device that is 100% yours, 100% private and secure and is also very versatile. You have a full linux OS to do with as you wish - including install steam and stream games from your PC or play lower powered games locally or use a huge range of linux tools and apps.
For example my PI runs a Jellyfin Server so I can access content from any of my devices, and it also runs Home Assistant so I can control my home, and Synching so I can transfer files between devices, and more. A media stick can't do any of that.
My point is that like for like is not a fair comparison. Tge media sticks are subsidised and huge compromises to your privacy, plus aimed at locking you in to a corporate ecosystem. It coats a bit more upfront for your own device but you get much more bang for your buck. And you save yourself in terms of privacy - Amazon can't scrape your data to sell you stuff or sell you to advertisers, and you dont have the privacy nightmare of the microphones listening for their Alexa service.
You're totally right but that does not compare to just buying a working device for 40 euros, specially in a place called /buyeuropean, but I concede at least the pi is English
Comment chains like this really highlight that the Lemmy userbase heavy skews towards a tech savvy crowd that enjoys tinkering with stuff. And that this userbase is really out of touch with "normal" people who aren't particularly tech savvy and who want things that Just Work™. Having to set up a whole system just isn't an alternative to a Fire Stick to >90% of people.
For the technically inclined but not quite techies, they can just install LibreELEC on an SBC (which can be but needs not be a Pi) or a Mini PC.
Of course that still won't be simple enough for the vast majority of people out there, but it does lower the barrier somewhat because LibreELEC is all preconfigured to turn the SBC/MiniPC into a media device so people don't need to know Linux (though it is Linux and if you do know Linux you can do in it all the other stuff you can do in Linux).
I second that. It feels like a lot of people in the Fediverse expect normal people to have intermediate programming knowledge to use things. "Normal" people without technical knowledge are entirely convenience focussed. Stuff needs to work out of the box and controls need to be intuitive. Installing stuff needs to be with a press of a button and not typed out.
Agreed. To few people manage to take another perspective and distance from their use case and technical abilities.
Agreed. Plus, I'm too in that <10%. We are just a smaaaaaal niche
I'll have to have a look into this. I think I'm prejudging how bad my family are with technology. I'll have to test them.
I have made one (Raspberry Pi 4+case+memory+remote incl. software) for someone before. If done right, it shouldn't be an issue for the family.
But it should be made by someone with convenience in mind and not by a total IT nerd who expects you to know python or another programming language just to use a device. Had plenty of those before.