Just build a htpc powerful enough to display media and play games with good performance
Put a tv tuner card in the htpc
Been there done that. I prefer the Nvidia Shield, easier interface to navigate with a remote, I don’t have to login first, it rarely needs an update, no noisy fans, I don’t need to keep a physical keyboard connected to it, it’s way cheaper, I don’t need to mess around with codecs, and there aren’t a lot of unnecessary services and background applications hogging memory and cpu resources.
I get that most of this can be fixed or worked around on a htpc, but that’s effort I don’t have to spend on a Shield.
I have never heard of anyone talk about nvidia shield since 2013 until I joined lemmy. This is the weirdest marketing psyop I have ever seen.