>Problem solved, no money spent, best of both worlds.
Many new problems:
* Gamepad costs roughly 70% the cost of any entire 4k/HDR Roku setup. A first party game pad costs $50-65 dollars, while a HD Roku costs $80.
* A gamepad is VASTLY INFERIOR to a remote. This one is very easy. Gamepads are crappy, crappy remotes. The back triggers (L2 R2) are stupidly mapped to seeking causing endless fastfoward/rewind triggering by mistake. The buttons are unintelligble (what does a Square do to my movie? What does Y do to my TV show?) and are only usable by basically the 1 geek who set it up and is unusable by all other users who have to learn custom button mappings per application
* Kodi is vastly inferior to Roku for average use, like Netflix. Users must use unsupported, buggy third party non-Netflix based Netflix add-ons which are inferior in every way to an officially distributed Netflix app. At this point, the best solution is the PAID "PlayOn" subscription service, meaning the user must pay monthly just to access basic apps like Netflix which are free monthly on Roku (outside of the actual subscription, which both methods require)
I'm sorry but Kodi is pretty crap as a home media solution, have you ever relied on it for your full library and media consumption and watched it be used by the less tech-focused people in your home? Regular users, children, elderly people?
Roku is easy for my grandfather to use. Kodi + a Xbox1 controller? Not so much
Well, I already had all the hardware, and the hard disks already have most of the content.
I kind of disagree about gamepads being bad remotes. The default mappings are bad and I do agree about the triggers. We don't need more than half the control to do forward and rewind. I had remapped mine, particularly to add changing subtitles and audio streams.
But: the gamepad is the control I can use without having to look at it, because it is not a matrix of similar rectangular buttons, and after a while everything is just second nature. For me, nothing is faster or more intuitive now. And the buttons are REAL solid buttons, not crappy pieces of rubber. I get frustrated when I have to use a regular remote control now.
I don't use Netflix because I'm not in the USA and in South America it honestly sucks. And they hunt and shutdown VPNs now.
However, nothing beats the price of your Roku for a new setup. That one I concede. Your setup is much cheaper. But you can't play Batman Arkham games on it :D
Many new problems:
* Gamepad costs roughly 70% the cost of any entire 4k/HDR Roku setup. A first party game pad costs $50-65 dollars, while a HD Roku costs $80.
* A gamepad is VASTLY INFERIOR to a remote. This one is very easy. Gamepads are crappy, crappy remotes. The back triggers (L2 R2) are stupidly mapped to seeking causing endless fastfoward/rewind triggering by mistake. The buttons are unintelligble (what does a Square do to my movie? What does Y do to my TV show?) and are only usable by basically the 1 geek who set it up and is unusable by all other users who have to learn custom button mappings per application
* Kodi is vastly inferior to Roku for average use, like Netflix. Users must use unsupported, buggy third party non-Netflix based Netflix add-ons which are inferior in every way to an officially distributed Netflix app. At this point, the best solution is the PAID "PlayOn" subscription service, meaning the user must pay monthly just to access basic apps like Netflix which are free monthly on Roku (outside of the actual subscription, which both methods require)
I'm sorry but Kodi is pretty crap as a home media solution, have you ever relied on it for your full library and media consumption and watched it be used by the less tech-focused people in your home? Regular users, children, elderly people?
Roku is easy for my grandfather to use. Kodi + a Xbox1 controller? Not so much