Last time I looked into Chuwi, there was a lively linux wiki/forum somewhere on their website. There may be clues there and maybe an opportunity to ask a question to their engineers (unofficially, of course).
Just mount the 'remote' file system via NFS (or samba, if you must) and play the media on the 'local' machine as if it were a local file. Done. What am I missing?
I use mythtv (FOSS) and it's fine as a PVR (schedule, record and playback broadcast TV) with a SiliconDust HDHomeRun network-attached tuner. It also has playback for downloaded files but I prefer to use mpv for that. Mine is still connected to the internet and I use firefox/transmission for youtube and other functions.
If you're in the US, refurbished thinkpads are probably the best option. Not so much here in Australia (but you mentioned GBP so perhaps you're in UK). Whatever. I bought a refurb Dell Latitude 3120 for AU$229
mfg yr 2021
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Silver N6000 @ 1.10GHz
8Gb RAM
Intel UHD graphics
Intel Wi-Fi 5 9560 (160 MHz)
Bluetooth 5.0
Display: 1366 x 768 11.6" touchscreen 2-in-1
Disc: M.2 256Gb PCIe NVME Class 35 SSD
1.35kg
Runs voidlinux like it was born to it. It's my travel laptop.
It's probably more to do with hardware than distro. That said, using major distros is more likely to win. FWIW I've used fedora and voidlinux on my 3 Dell laptops over the last 12 years with nary a problem. One of them had nvidia but I used nouveau.
voidlinux: gave me much better battery life - I assume because it starts as a minimal system and one adds only the essentials to do the job - compared to the soup-to-nuts distros that pile everything in so that newbies are acccomodated. Of course, the voidlinux approach needs more linux skills - but it's not that hard and the doco is great.
Also, I love the back to basics runit init system and runsv service runner (I'm old so I like that stuff) and the ultra fast xbps packaging system.
You need to take it all (AI or internet searches) with a huge pinch of salt. Even ye olde text books were not infallible and often out of date, so sodium chloride was also required even then.
The code either works or it doesn't - it's all in the testing. If you deploy AI suggestions without thought you deserve the consequences.
Last time I looked into Chuwi, there was a lively linux wiki/forum somewhere on their website. There may be clues there and maybe an opportunity to ask a question to their engineers (unofficially, of course).
There's also https://linux-hardware.org/ which might have something.