You might be able to convert to hevc (x265) and trim it down by quite a bit.
You will always lose a bit of quality converting though, even from 1080p to 1080p, but I consider it pretty acceptable for cartoons and things of that nature.
Most of those led strips you get in rolls can be cut at any location and then reconnected. A microcontroller is a great idea like the other user suggested. The ESP32 rocks and is also a favorite of mine but I’d also suggest Particle Argon.
You have to use their ecosystem with it but connecting to it is done for you through their website IDE. It’s very beginner friendly but an esp32 is also quite easy to work with, the esp32 is cheaper as well.
If you get an RGB strip using a microcontroller, you can dynamically change the light depending on the time/weather using one of the free weather APIs, just a thought.
vLLM can only run on linux but it’s my personal favorite because of the speed gain when doing batch inference.