After spending the last few days, tinkering and trying to put together an HTPC for my family, I wasn’t able to get a smooth enough experience to match even our old, ad-filled, laggy, Roku. In particular, every streaming service I tried needed to be controlled almost exclusively by mouse, as everything has been reduced to electron apps/websites with little-to-no keyboard or controller navigation support. As such, I’m looking for other options, although considering how quickly these platforms change and how outdated a lot of the information available on them is its hard to single out the best options.

In particular, I’m looking to be able to:

• Use Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+. Ideally other services too, since we tend to juggle subscriptions.
• Control it with a remote, controller, or similarly simple device
• Be able to cast to it from a phone

Does anyone have much experience with options for this - esspecially if you’ve tried multiple and can compare?