Selfhosted

I've personally been using a raspberry pi with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I just run jellyfin in Firefox and navigate with the mouse - the keyboard rarely ever being necessary. I was able to increase the icon size so it's acceptable on a tv and bookmark any streaming websites I use. It's certainly not as clean as using something like an apple tv, but it's serviceable and I don't have to fiddle with plugins like when I tried Kodi. Honestly though, apple tv probably fulfills what you're looking for like others have said.

Its AppleTV.

I'm currently using a raspberry pi 5 flashed with Konstakang's Android TV image, it works pretty flawlessly and takes less than an hour to set up, assuming you have the APKs of everything you want to install. You don't need to mess around with Google play services because most TV android apps are also designed to run on firesticks which don't have it.

The one issue I have encountered is that the Jellyfin client very occasionally won't play some 4k HDR media in the default player (all my 1080p stuff works fine) so I also installed MPV and I turn on alternative player in the Jellyfin settings in the rare case something doesn't work.

LibreELEC on an old chromebook!

I use the ONN 4K Pro and the ProjectIvy launcher. You can completely hide the standard Android TV OS launcher and its ads. Button Mapper is another good app to have on Android boxes. The remote is full of app-specific buttons that I've either disabled or remapped to alternative apps

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton

I have no idea which codecs are supported.

If you don't want ads creeping in everywhere, the only prebuilt option is appletv. otherwise you have to build it yourself :/

I use Chromecast with android TV, it's about perfect with jellyfin, and if I were to domit again I'd probably spend the little extra for the 4k model even though my TV is 1080p (more horsepower). You can run a different homescreen to somewhat degoogle it.

Probably not what you're looking for given what you've lined up here, but I live and breathe with it every day and it's great, and as an added benefit you can cast from a lot of services or websites as well.

I second the AppleTV recommendation based on your disgust with the Roku UI ads, I am completely on your side there, but my similar search has bought me to AppleTV.

I currently run Amazon Fire Sticks which also have UI ads but my pihole is catching most of them and it’s dirt cheap with h.265 support. Plus it runs various hacked apps like TVMob, Cinema, and Cyberflix. That’s what keeps me from moving to an AppleTV or an n100 box already.

It's surprising how slow open source is on replicating Roku. So many manufacturers could be using Linux to bypass androidTV and RokuOS bullshit. I suppose AndroidTV is good enough even despite that.

My plan is to use the $20 Onn (Walmart store-brand) Android TV box LTT recommended as being eminently jailbreakable about a year ago, but I haven't actually gotten around to hooking it up yet so I can't authoritatively endorse it.

AppleTV connected via Ethernet.

You’re chasing a unicorn with your requirements.

Way over-budget for your taste I guess but I still wanted to make a note here for representation sake. Look into the brand Zidoo. I have Zidoo Z9X 8K, it's the best client I could dream of! ~250$

Cons:

• Android based (outdated AF but still)
• Maybe not so secure (http server always on while the device is on, atm)

Pros:

• Very good support of Dolby Vision, 4K (8K maybe?)
• Very pretty, both hardware and software very polished IMO
• The remote is glorious, tactile with backlight
• Lots of other cool things
• Very snappy Android experience
• it just works™
• The audio downmixing works great, compared to the Google TV which was very bad
• First party Jellyfin support among others

👋😢

3. If you do not want stuttering, use a graphics card. Higher energy consumption but you can play everything

If it's an option, the Xiaomi mi box it's a cheap android TV device that plays probably everything. Costs around 60 euro in eu. If not you coul always go for Google TV with a custom launcher to block stock android launcher ads.

I use Kodi with the jellyfin plugin, but I can’t recommend that for ‘normies’ because the interface is not simple, and I still have glitches with it.

I’m also looking for a solution like yours, but wanted you to have that feedback.

For my parents, I got a $150 N100 mini PC (tiny little thing), installed Bazzite, installed Jellyfin, and got the Pepper Jobs W10 Gyro remote. You have to configure Jellyfin to know it’s running on a TV and to accept keyboard input (the remote acts like a keyboard), but then everything works great. It’s a little over your budget, with the added remote.

Nothing to add, but also interested in this same scenario. I could only think of the Nvidia Shield.

If you're happy with the Roku hardware and you're going to cancel all your other streaming services, why not just firewall block the Roku from reaching out of your local network?

If you do that, Jellyfin will still work fine, and you won't have the ability to get posted ads or anything else from the Roku, so it'll just become a Jellyfin box.