tivo[.]com/products/stream-4k
At the basic level, this is a cheaper version of the Google Chromecast with Google TV -- it's an Android box with a surprisingly decent remote that can automatically set itself to work with many [most?] TVs. It has 2 main interfaces... it has the basic Google TV interface, showing the Google TV compatible apps that are installed from Google's Play Store [where you can find & add more apps], and the TiVo interface, which is itself basically a Google TV app. Using the TiVo interface you look for the show or movie you want to watch from across all your streaming services, rather than first starting the app for one of those services, then choosing what you want to watch. Performance is OK compared to lower & mid range Roku devices [though no comparison to the Roku Ultimate], but the WiFi is a bit weak, Very often losing the 5 GHz signal in our bedroom, where the Roku has Never had a problem.
What the TiVo Stream 4K does that no Roku can is use VLC to play Blu-ray video from external storage, which is what I was after. Note: VLC cannot play Blu-ray discs with DRM -- having a Blu-ray movie on a hard disk means that DRM has been removed. Note also that unlike the Windows version for example, the version of VLC available for Google TV does not understand the Blu-ray format -- you have to navigate to the movie itself [[Title}\ BMDV\ Streams\]. That means that when the Blu-ray is copied you want to only copy the main movie using a single .m2ts file [the movie on the original disc may be split across several .m2ts files].
The most expensive Roku has a USB port, & can play Blu-ray video, but there is no app [AFAIK] that will play that video & show the original subtitles. It *may* work if you OCR the subtitles to .srt, but that's an extra, somewhat tedious job to perform with every movie. VLC is available for FireTV devices, but using external storage is a bit of a hack, and one that I was afraid would not work the way I needed it to, with a powered USB hub connected to a 2.5" external conventional hard disk. It's asking a lot of one of these streaming boxes to power a conventional drive via their USB port, *if* it would even work. That said, my experience getting the TiVo working was not as easy as I had hoped, or expected.
The TiVo Stream 4K has a micro USB port for power, but uses a USB-C port for external storage. All of the powered USB-C hubs I found supply power Only to the USB-C cable, not the regular USB ports, where I needed it for the hard disk. So I figured, no big deal, I'll use a regular USB 3 hub with a USB to USB-C adapter, & as a bonus, since the hub had a charging port, I'd use that to power the TiVo. The 2 adapters I have wouldn't work. I ordered a USB female to USB-C male cable from Amazon that's supposed to work with data -- that didn't work. The only thing I found that did work was using a USB male to USB-C male cable that came with an external hard disk housing, using a USB male to USB male connector to connect it to the hub.
And the TiVo Stream 4K works pretty well for what I intended -- as a simple, small device to play Blu-ray movies on an external USB hard disk -- but should work just as well for regular streaming too. The version of VLC that's made for Google TV does not have all the controls etc. I'm used to, e.g. no chapter selection, but it's enough.