[_archon_]

You have described a Raspi media center with a remote and the wifi turned off. It may take a couple seconds longer to boot, but you get back VLC et al in exchange, and there are many good, free options to use it as an interface for your NAS.

What a time to be alive

[janfoeh]

I have one lying around anyway, so maybe that's another viable path. I'll take a look at how appliance-like I could make such a Raspi, in terms of UX.