Good day! I am trying to find a good alternative as not to use the"smart" functions or using an Xbox to consume our media. I found a few options ie like plasma big screen but it’s no longer in development. Essentially I would line love to have it running on an rpi4 and just hooked up to the TV.
have a look at OSMC, you write it to the Pi SD card and it gives you Kodi all setup and ready use. you can even use your TV remote to control it
Could it do Plex instead of Kodi? Always found the Kodi UI pretty amateur dev.
no, its based on kodi. but there are themes you could try
Kodi ui is great! No different menu every single week with them Shoving ads down your throat and stuff. Every interface for every add-on looks exactly the same. Easy to find what you need.
There’s probably a Plex add-on for Kodi. At least, there is for Jellyfin and Emby. If you don’t like the UI, try changing it. I prefer the one called “Arctic: Zephyr - Reloaded”. You’ll need to customize the homescreen a bit to get the most out of it. That way you can make it show widgets of your content, e.g. the latest content added, continue watching, specific libraries, etc. That, at least, works very well with Jellyfin through the Jellycon add-on.