Button Mapper, retroarch and google home to control my lights

TinyCam Pro to run a webserver for IP cameras that don't support it natively. Like WyzeCams.

Chrome : I use it to display my Home Assistant servers dashboard. Shows who's home, calendar, what lights are on, Pi-Hole stats and the weather. I used to use Magic Mirror sans mirror for a dashboard.

That is my use case for an old tv and Nexus player. There are other service display uses for business, like menus and patient paging. I've also seen them used in house windows for holiday displays, Halloween, Christmas.

At its core android tv is just android and can theoretically run any android app, though it might not look right...

Gamepass

Send Files to TV for sideloading apps.

Mame4Droid for retro gaming

Attaching a Zwave/Zigbee dongle to an Nvidia Shield and installing the SmartThings app used to turn it into a home automation hub... though I hear the SmartThings dongles are hard to find these days and Samsung is discontinuing the service on Shields entirely. It was cool when I had it, but I switched to Hubitat. It was nice to use that horsepower for something beyond streaming video.

I like HALauncher . You can use it to make custom channel groups for the Android TV home screen that can also include sideloaded apps (but not on the CCwGTV). And it is free. It's also a simple replacement launcher if you want to take the steps to replace your home screen launcher.

I like MiXplorer and MiXplorer Silver as Android TV file managers. MiXplorer Silver is a paid version of the free MiXplorer that you can purchase on the Play Store, to help fund the continued maintenance and development of MiXplorer. I also use Downloader in combination with MiXplorer (and this site ) to manage sideloading apps.

What not media consumption apps do you guys recommend for my device tailor made for media consumption alone?

For a TV? Do you use TV for other things then video? Gaming I guess if you're into it, could be fun. Other then that...