Ahoy!

I recently got a new TV and I need some advice on how to best take advantage of my setup.

My current setup: I have an old laptop as my homeserver. I have Pihole on it. I also have setup a VPN with Gluetun that other docker containers are using. To watch movies I have a Kodi + Real Debrid setup on my actual laptop and I would use that with an HDMI cable to watch movies on my old TV.

What has changed now is that I have an Android TV, and to be perfectly honest it was a bit of a hassle to use the laptop to watch stuff especially TV shows because between each episode I would have to get up and use the laptop to play the next episode, and I have to set up my laptop each time because it’s my main device and I need to take it with me everywhere. I have the Kore app on my phone but that wouldn’t work if my VPN is running on either my phone or laptop, which usually is the case.

From what I read, the simples solution would be setting up stremio on the TV with RD and ditch the VPN. However I would prefer if there was a way to route the traffic through VPN. Do you guys know any better solutions?

Thanks in advance for your help. P.S. Cat pic for your troubles

  • assassassin@lemmynsfw.comOPEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Thanks for your comment. Yeah I hear the UX on stremio is so much better that’s why I was leaning more towards doing that. I spent hours to make Kodi UX smoother but at the end of the day it’s a slug for the average user.

    Do you know how I should route the TV traffic (Stremio) through the VPN on my old laptop tho? Or should I just give up on that part

    • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      It absolutely is, I even set up stremio on a fire stick for my sister and she is absolutely technologically illiterate and would never have understood kodi but with stremio she is doing just fine!

      I’m not really sure what you are asking in the second part though. If I’m running stremio on my laptop then I have my airvpn connection running in the background so everything is going via that connection.

      On the fire stick I use the proton VPN app and open that up, connect there then all the traffic on the fire stick is forced to go through there.

      Using either method the stremio traffic has to go via the respective VPN. Maybe I’m missing something with the question though so if I’m being stupid please say and I’ll try and help further :)

      • assassassin@lemmynsfw.comOPEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Thanks for elaborating! Not at all, my bad for not explaining! So what is happening is that I’m using Mullvad, and there is a limit on number of connections I can have. I’m already using them all so I can’t just connect my TV to it as well. However my homeserver (a.k.a. my old laptop) is using one of the connections so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to make the TV traffic go through that too.

        I gotta mention I’m new to all this so if I’m talking outta my butt feel free to laugh at my comment and correct me :D

        • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          Ah OK, im with you now. If there is a way to do that then I don’t know how I am afraid. I would personally just change up the connections so you could use the TV as one of them purely for the ease of it as I like to make my life as easy as possible xD

          Sorry I can’t help any further with that but good luck with your endeavours, if you choose to go stremio I think you’ll be impressed compared to kodi :D