It really depends. For the purpose of “SmartTV” the Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM served it’s purpose. If you wanna do more, then yes, it is underpowered. For usual Kodi functions that arent just TV/streaming, you may need something better.

I second that. It feels like a lot of people in the Fediverse expect normal people to have intermediate programming knowledge to use things. “Normal” people without technical knowledge are entirely convenience focussed. Stuff needs to work out of the box and controls need to be intuitive. Installing stuff needs to be with a press of a button and not typed out.

I have made one (Raspberry Pi 4+case+memory+remote incl. software) for someone before. If done right, it shouldn’t be an issue for the family.

But it should be made by someone with convenience in mind and not by a total IT nerd who expects you to know python or another programming language just to use a device. Had plenty of those before.

You can make a replacement for like 100€ with a Raspberry Pi, a lightweight Linux distro with KDE and Kodi.

A Raspberry Pi and Kodi.