Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - Printable Version +- Kodi Community Forum (https://forum.kodi.tv) +-- Forum: Discussions (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=222) +--- Forum: Hardware (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=112) +--- Thread: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) (/showthread.php?tid=94268) |
RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - poofyhairguy - 2015-02-20 (2015-02-20, 23:32)tdw197 Wrote: You don't need a powerful machine for a pvr backend, unless doing things like com skip. Or re-encoding. Sometime people don't want to archive stuff in interlaced MPEG2. I get what you were saying though, it doesn't take a lot to be a PVR backend at a basic level. Technically a Chromebox probably could do it all with more storage. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - bym007 - 2015-02-20 (2015-02-20, 23:44)tdw197 Wrote:Me too, been running a NAS box using esxi for n36l and now g8... Its the bollocks!(2015-02-20, 23:41)nickr Wrote: Recording over the network certainly alleviates the storage problem. As far as nases go, I have a fear that I'll find some program that wont run on the nas. I prefer the flexibilty of a pc with linux, but a nas is right for some people. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - Rickt1962 - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-20, 20:40)poofyhairguy Wrote:(2015-02-20, 20:12)Rickt1962 Wrote: Found this while doing a search for the BEST BOX that can do everything and Do not see the category.......... A Set Top Box stb that can do Kodi/XBMC .... And Live TV tuner since I am in the U.S. the tuner can be 2 choices DVB-s2 which works for small dish satellite FTA or ATSC for antennas both as a option would also have DVR capabilities. I have a PC with HDhomeRun 3 tuner thru Comcast with XBMC so I am not a noob about these things LOL. The reason for this post was for people to Post Boxes that are already built with those Features . I have couple now with Vigica they do the DVR and have XBMC the problem is not enough memory for XBMC with large libraries. So I am looking for other brands that are Great Community already have and tested. The Vigica C70s is great for people that want all in one box for Satellite TV or ATSC with XBMC for small library 2000 movies and 4000 TV shows and for streaming. I need more And don't want to build STB's for a lot of TV's RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - Rickt1962 - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-20, 20:47)nickr Wrote:(2015-02-20, 20:12)Rickt1962 Wrote: Found this while doing a search for the BEST BOX that can do everything and Do not see the category.......... A Set Top Box stb that can do Kodi/XBMC .... And Live TV tuner since I am in the U.S. the tuner can be 2 choices DVB-s2 which works for small dish satellite FTA or ATSC for antennas both as a option would also have DVR capabilities.Wetek are a sponsor of openelec and have a box with built in dvb-s (not sure if it is s2). Thank you for pointing me to another BOX ! Will check it out.... hopefully others will post more to add to the list Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - tredman - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-21, 00:02)Rickt1962 Wrote:(2015-02-20, 20:40)poofyhairguy Wrote:(2015-02-20, 20:12)Rickt1962 Wrote: Found this while doing a search for the BEST BOX that can do everything and Do not see the category.......... A Set Top Box stb that can do Kodi/XBMC .... And Live TV tuner since I am in the U.S. the tuner can be 2 choices DVB-s2 which works for small dish satellite FTA or ATSC for antennas both as a option would also have DVR capabilities. Would you not be better with one setup box /server with multiple tuners shared to other kodi boxes? Having multiple boxes running tuners seems a bit inefficient. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - poofyhairguy - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-21, 00:02)Rickt1962 Wrote: And don't want to build STB's for a lot of TV's You don't. You build one box full of tuners and at least one large HD. Like every tuner you want in the house period. And that box is your backend, which is then serves to the clients. The clients are either Pi 2s or Chromeboxes depending on what can be afforded. That is best case. Quote:hopefully others will post more to add to the list I hope so too, thank you for the feedback! RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - AbRASiON - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-20, 07:20)MrCrispy Wrote: What is the actual speed difference in GUI on ARM vs x86 (i.e. Android vs Chromebox/HTPC) ? Is it really night and day for large libraries? I'm going to quote some near 2 year old data, but I used XBMC on an Apple TV2 and it scarred me it was such a horrific experience. The CPU was just, just fast enough and the flash ram was mediocre, meaning on a huge library, navigating it meant crappy slow thumbnails to pull up. My MiniITX machine with a small cheap SSD and cheap Pentium thrashes it completely, library navigation is a breeze, even at 2200 movies, 70+ TV shows. Since my data is 2 years old though and it's 2015, you'd think we'd be close to being able to have sub $199 Android boxes with some actual grunt. I know the Samsung S6 is rumoured to use some kind of new fancy flash memory which is about 3x faster than old flash ram. When this kind of stuff is common place, perhaps navigating a large library won't be so difficult. I'll keep my eye on these threads but I'm not convinced even in 2015, there's 'definitive' XBMC / Kodi machine available yet, still. Which has eth / wifi / couple of USB ports, HDMI out, under $200 and it's REALLY more than powerful enough for 1080p and or x.265 encodes of anime for example. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - nickr - 2015-02-21 Why obsess about finding an android box to do those things when chromebox will do it now for the price you seek. Why the obsession about android media boxes at all? I know about the netflix/amazon addons. But is there any other reason? RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - poofyhairguy - 2015-02-21 The problem isn't the flash memory. Heck a NUC with a rotational HD will still feel faster on a large library than an Android box. The problem is the Kodi GUI (like like a lot of GUIs, Android is the same way) depends on single core performance for the best experience. ARM (outside of Nvidia and Apple) nowadays is about throwing a lot of cores at the problem, rather than two powerful cores. NVidia's stuff unfortunately isn't showing up in boxes, and Appletv's are no longer a good solution. Most of the stuff we get is standard ARM, which quite frankly is poor compared to the best ARM chips. The reason Samsung isn't using Qualcomm it its Galaxy S6 is because Qualcomm used generic ARM chips this generation (aka like we find in all these highend sticks/boxes) and Samsung found that to be unacceptable. The good news is that we are getting there. My iPad Air 2 with the A8X can decode my worst non Hi10 x264 file on the CPU. In a year or so that level of CPU power will be in cheap ARM boxes, along with a GPU that can decode HEVC at a high level. If Android TV gets Google to fix the problems we have with Android as a HTPC OS (namely 24p support and HD audio support) then maybe by then we will have something that finally puts to rest the need for an Intel box. Between now and that day a lot of people will buy dead end Androidboxes in this hobby and that will be sad, hence my thread to try to steer people to the right (Chrome)box. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - AbRASiON - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-21, 00:50)poofyhairguy Wrote: The problem isn't the flash memory. Heck a NUC with a rotational HD will still feel faster on a large library than an Android box. On the Apple TV2 the problem was without question the flash performance. The program would change page and 12 more movie thumbnails had to load and god damn was it slow compared to a decent intel machine with an SSD. Perhaps this could be alleviated by XBMC having a pre-fetch for the next page coded in (like ACDSee and XnView pre-loading the next image in rotation) Regardless, changing page in the movie library was atrocious and I've never used a machine which wasn't a PC which did it acceptably. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - Rickt1962 - 2015-02-21 This is a vacation house that has a 8' dish and 3' dish using diseqc switches 4x1's going on DVB-S2 tuners with gig Ethernet and 1.5 meg DSL and since I will not always be around to set things straight when a server is down. It is a whole lot easier with each person watching TV in different rooms have control of their Box. Someone can be watching Live TV up to 4 different channels limited to the LNB's and others watching XBMC using My Cloud on SMB. Once a year switch out the drives to ones up to date with newer movies and TV shows The dream Android STB would be 16 gig internal memory but all the ones Ive seen only have 4 gig or Kodi would some day have the ability to relocate the Data folder to a SD card or Thumb drive on the box. You can do this now with HTPC's but not Android unless you can get one that is Rooted so you can move Kodi off the box to a SD Card P.S. Again this all stems from all the Artwork for Fanart and folder pic's and you run out of memory with 4 gigs other then that The new STB's on Android are great ! Low power very quick to play anything I already have been in contact with the Vigica manufacturer about upping the Memory ! The box only cost $ 76.00 triple the memory add $ 20 to price And you got a great STB RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - MrCrispy - 2015-02-21 (2015-02-20, 15:41)poofyhairguy Wrote:(2015-02-20, 07:20)MrCrispy Wrote: What is the actual speed difference in GUI on ARM vs x86 (i.e. Android vs Chromebox/HTPC) ? Is it really night and day for large libraries? Thank you. I wasn't trying to brush off or make light of the external player support, I agree with your points. In fact I do have a Chromebox which I bought after I gave my HTPC to someone else. I'm just looking for a cheaper alternative but it seems like nothing really matches it for the price point. I don't know how much money the Chinese oem guys have to spend on software, from what I've seen their margins are very thin and they are in constant flux with new models every month. The exact same problem (lack of software support) applies to Android tablets as well. My guess is it takes a lot of time and talent to write proper libraries to decode all kinds of content and then contribute it back to Kodi codebase, it takes the legions of open source coders and Intel a while to do it, I wouldn't expect the same from an oem, and they often won't be allowed to disclose proprietary chipset details. If and when Android TV 5.0 is a real product and lifts these limitations and adds proper hw support, then the game might change. RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - sfa303 - 2015-02-22 poofyhairguy thanks for your clear and concise posting on hardware. I am no techie and still a newby have been attempting to use XBMC/Kodi with a Matricom G-Box MX2 for nearly a year now. Frustrating! I feel it is time to get a new box for Kodi. I am looking to spend around $200. And I have not done anything like it but believe I can install OPENELEC /Kodi ( per the instructions of Matt Devo). Plan to use as a standalone. So I am looking at the Chromebox. Since my router is a TM-AC1900 Dual-band built by ASUS, I am under the impression that it would make sense to get an Dell Chromebox. Because I want to use the AC band and the 5GHz operating frequency to connect to the Chromebox by WIFI. The WIFI router to Chromebox distance is about 67 feet and line of sight. Dell Chromebox 3010 Desktop Computer - Intel Celeron 2955U from New Egg with shipping is $178 I believe the Kingston 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3L 1600(PC3L 12800) Laptop Memory Model KVR16LS11S6/2 will work to bring the Chromebox to 4GB memory. New Egg has it for around $20. I typically use Private Internet Access as my VPN. Anyone know if a Robolinux 7.5.3 OpenVPN Setup will work ? Any comments or suggestions before I start? sfa RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - wrxtasy - 2015-02-22 (2015-02-21, 00:42)nickr Wrote: Why obsess about finding an android box to do those things when chromebox will do it now for the price you seek. Why the obsession about android media boxes at all? I know about the netflix/amazon addons. But is there any other reason?I agree with this statement and that of Poofy's. Too many compromises with the all in one Android attempted solution - they are at best a hobby box and not worthy of a main lounge / home theatre Kodi solution using a remote control from an armchair. The RPi 2 really has set a new benchmark for a cheap pure Kodi box solution if you don't need HD Audio. Buy a kit with a quality power supply and bury it behind the TV or in a cabinet. It is the Kodi device to get if your cannot get a Chromebox in your part of the world. Cheap to upgrade to the next version too once you have the Kit with all the parts. Get the Chromebox or one of its derivatives for HD Audio and the superior - affordable Kodi experience. Supplement both with a Amazon Fire TV stick or Chromecast for paid streaming services if you have a Dumb TV. Job done RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (UPDATED FEB 2015) - rmcmanus - 2015-02-22 So I have a Fire Stick with Kodi side loaded and it works well. I figured I can keep that in the bedroom. Now I'm looking for something a more powerful to put in the living room to go along with my XBOX One. Since my XBONE has all the paid streaming apps, I really only need a device that runs Kodi smoother and faster than the Fire Stick. After reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that the Chromebox is the way to go, and ASUS Chromebox was brought up multiple times. Will the Asus Chromebox M004U with only 2Gig DDR3 give me the least amount of load time browsing through the library (like Genesis)? Also, does it support 5G wifi? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220572 |