[Lazee Wolf]

Hi all, I was wondering if you could help me out. I'm looking for a cheap XBMC solution for my bedroom. Ideally I'd like an Android box which can run more demanding skins smoothly and playback all mkv, mp4 and avi files. I plan to use the box for the following...

* playing compressed 1080 (about 3-5 gigs) and 720 (about 1-2 gigs) movies from a HDD which is plugged directly into the box.
* watch youtube and other online streams
* watch catchup services like iPlayer, 4OD, etc

I've heard of the Pivos and the Ouya. What would be good under £100 box for the UK?

[Starstream]

Pivos or TLBB would do the trick though the linux firmwares of those are limited to XBMC plugins for online media.

If you want access to Android apps then Pivos has Android firmware with access to Google Play market store. The XIOS is £125 from here but they are local to you, the TLBB costs £99 but that is preorder & TLBB has no Android firmware.

Ouya doesn't have access to Google Play store and XBMC software is not as stable as the above units however it does have a faster GPU so it could handle some of the more demanding skins but it has no expandable internal storage so all that fanart on those high end skins will fill up the internal storage very quickly. The XIOS has a micro SD card slot so it can save all that data to to the card, micro SD card must be bought separately.

[GortWillSaveUs]

If you're looking for something portable,...I'd suggest the Nexus 7 32GB version and it works awesomely with NetFlix and XBMC,..and all for ~$200