Hello Armbian'ers,
I'm a veteran Debian user and occasional system administrator, but - have zero experience with TV set-top boxes / media streamers. I now find myself in a position of needing one: In a rental apartment, I have a wall-mounted TV with HDMI in but an old, custom, non-upgradable vendor-specific OS and no network connectivity.
To be honest - I don't particularly need my box to be ARM-based, nor do I need my OS distribution to be Debian. I mean, that would be the nicest, since my desktop is Devuan Chimaera (~= Debian 11), but I would definitely settle on any reasonable Linux distro.
Anyway, my questions:
1. How can I educate myself about my different options? Manufacturers (I don't mind ones which are relatively unknown in the west), key features which might not be obvious to a PC user, buyers' guides etc.?
2. If I get some specific recommendation of a TV box - how do I evaluate it (reviews, fine-print, benchmarks, compatibility lists etc.)?
I'm not asking you guys to write up an encyclopedia for me as an answer to this question, but rather for a few pointers and directions to follow, to resources off- and maybe on this site.
PS - I've read this and it seems quite discouraging regarding boxes with Armbian support - either it's essentially discontinued (AmLogic) or there's missing info :-(