[wrxtasy]

- No Apple, simply as i don't have any other Apple devices, would only make sense if i have an existing Apple
- Silent and small, a NUC (I prefer passive cooling over a tiny annoying

You do not have to be an existing Apple user for the following to make sense....
Bang for the buck a $105 (USA - DirecTV deal) - Apple TV 4K IS the most powerful & capable media player on the market. It will easily chew thru a really large library without battering an eyelid.

But you can only use a limited number of inbuilt Skins (not Aeon MQ7) with the MrMC App on the ATV 4K. The new Ariana one about to be released is a ripper. I believe there is an inbuilt WOL Addon with MrMC. CEC control may or may not work, but there are many remote control options (like self programmable IR control) with the ATV 4K.

I suspect you are going to have to sacrifice something if you want speed, Intel only and CEC control to fit under the $200 price range.

CEC control is not guaranteed to work with anything. It's not any sort of standard that is strictly adhered to by TV manufacturers.
However, if Pulse8 CEC control works for you with the RPi currently it should work with the Pulse8 CEC adapter on Intel or LibreELEC / OSMC on AMLogic hardware as well.

In the AMLogic range, the S912 Gigabit equipped MINIX U9 would be the fastest, followed very closely by the Gigabit (S905D) Vero 4K+
Both running LibreELEC or OSMC Kodi from eMMC storage, and both using Wireless remotes which make a hell of a difference to Kodi responsiveness. (CEC control has too much lag by comparison)

The S912's will only be able to run a Linux based OS, like LibreELEC up to Kodi v18 Leia due to the GPU video driver used and major Kodi rendering changes occurring within Kodi v19 M.

SSD equipped Intel would still be faster vs anything AMLogic.
Ideally for 1080p only you want something that can hardware decode 1080p 10bit HEVC like Apollo Lake onwards architecture or an older i series Intel setup that could do CPU software decoding of HEVC like an i series Chromebox.

Mr Chromebox aka @ Matt Devo would know what is what for I series Chromeboxes. .