[Acquiesce]

For the past few days I've been reading the START HERE guide as well as the Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide and many other threads in order to buy a TV box that would suit my needs: a simple 1080p TV, very slow to navigate in a external HDD folder architecture, and a NAS, which is basically unused since my TV can't read its videos.

Thus, the idea was to buy something with Kodi on it, plugged to my NAS and to my TV.

Because I would like to keep the price down to 100€, I first looked into the AMLogic Android media players. After a little digging I noticed that they all looked the same despite the different brands (which is not a good sign), that they all seemed pretty cheaply built, that some users reported some issues after 3/6months, and that most of them are sold from various foggy Chinese site (not saying that Amazon is better than these sites but...).
Then I looked into the MINIX U1 & U9, the Vero 4k and equivalent, which cost most of the time more than 100€.

The problem is that I'm not really into Amazon products, so I would rather like not to have different Fire TV boxes or sticks and so on, the Jetstream 4K ultra seems to be Out of Stock everywhere, and the Xiaomi box is not recommended.

So I started looking into the RPi 3 B+ and Odroid C2, since I don't mind getting a wee bit dirty, but a friend told me that if I had to change my TV anytime soon, I should get at least a S912 socket (not really sure why - something H265 related), which none of them have.

So as you may have guessed now, I'm very confused about what to do next, what would you advice me?
If I had to sum up my needs I would say: any box that can run Kodi in order to read videos on my NAS, something that can read 4K (I don't want to buy something now that will be outdated too soon), possibly with Android (so my girlfriend could use it) and possibly under 100€.

Also, would an ODROID-XU4 be any good? I haven't read much about it on this forum.

[aerogems]

Do you care about Netflix/Prime Video at all? If so, that's going to limit your options considerably.

I know you say you're not big on Amazon stuff, but bang for your euro, the new Fire Stick TV 4K is probably the best on the market right now. Supports HDR, DolbyVision, Dolby Atmos... So you'd be covered if you ever wanted to upgrade your other hardware. You may also want to consider a Roku device. You can't run Kodi on it, but Plex is an option, which is pretty similar to Kodi in a lot of ways. I am also somewhat partial to the Vero 4K+ (even though I don't own one) because there's one or two company reps lurking around these forums to answer questions. Having direct access like that could be well worth the premium over the 100€ you want to keep it under. Something to think about. 

I haven't been able to find any particulars on why, but in one of those stickied threads is a note about how Kodi v18 will be the last one to support the S912 SoC, so you may want to avoid those.

[mr.igor]

For 1080P and any codec including x265, any S905 box will do. Be sure to get 2G ram and 16G storage internally. More is a waste and less can cause issues. Kodi does SMB quite well so as long as your NAS provides it you are ok. o/s version doesn't matter much other than never buy a box with the latest android version; it WILL be flakey.

Typically you can attach two external drives up to at least 8TB each and they will mount automatically.

Only problems I have had with cheap boxes have been the power dongles and remotes that die after 3 months. If you attach external drives make sure they are self powered. I use Yatse on my phone as a remote.

If you want support with guaranteed reliability and 4K performance, then you have to spend money. If you just want to access a library of 1080P stuff then $50-$75 is more than enough. I have had very good experience with Beelink, and there are other low end suppliers who have decent reputations.

You also don't need a super fast network. Even low end wireless set ups have plenty of bandwidth to stream 1080p video locally.

Some cautions:
- you should be willing to figure out small problems with hardware, android, kodi, and network
- these low end setups can be confusing for the luddites in your house. Spouses and seniors may be puzzled by the whole thing.

Example 1: I have one box that I have to run an hevc coded video within, say, an hour after boot else playback will not be hardware accellerated and performance will be abysmal. Then again, it only cost $25 and otherwise performance is excellent.

Example 2: Most boxes do not have power switches. This bothers many people.

Example 3: Wifi remotes sometimes need a poke to get going, probably due to network discovery issues. Many non-techies have trouble with this.

In other words: people who want things to "just work" should look elsewhere.

[wrxtasy]

LibreELEC / CoreELEC / OSMC Kodi capable devices that are of higher quality vs the rest:
(Will play virtually anything you throw at them - set and forget)

- MINIX U9 (HDR)
- MINIX U1 (Non HDR)
- Vero 4K+

All come with Wireless remotes which makes a big difference to usability. All have Gigabit Ethernet.
The MINIX Hardware has the best passive Chipset cooling I have seen.
The USB Mini receiver dongle - MINIX A2 lite mini keyboard remote is worth the money, simply for the integrated OFF / ON functionality, when used with MINIX devices, that can subsequently turn OFF / ON, HDMI CEC connected equipment like TV's as well. (The one remote concept).

The last time I changed batteries in the A2 lite remote was over 9+ months ago, even after heavy usage. It's got fantastic battery saving power management it seems.

That is what you are paying extra $$ for.

A mini keyboard remote after long term Kodi usage is also very very handy for Kodi Keyboard shortcuts.

Alternatively there are many Chinese AMLogic S9xx clones, all with pretty much the same hardware in different cases, some with only 100Mbit Ethernet and poor WiFi and virtually all have rubbish Infra Red remotes at the budget end of the market.

It's why suggestions like you see in THIS post (click) are made.

PS: The Samsung EVO (click) branded microSDHC cards are recommended for widespread AMLogic LE/CE compatibility.

[Acquiesce]

First of all thank you all for your kind replies.

I guess that I'm definitely going to give up on the Chinese TV boxes. Then the question is, if I were to find the MINIX U9-H (since it is HDR and not the U1, correct?) and the Vero 4K+ at the same price (~135€), where should I go considering that my needs would still be:

any box that can run Kodi in order to read videos on my NAS, something that can read 4K (I don't want to buy something now that will be outdated too soon), possibly with Android (so my girlfriend could use it)

If I understand correctly the MINIX seems to be the right choice, but I just want to make sure.
Also, is there any guide on how to use LE on the MINIX (is there any dual boot?)?

Once again, I do appreciate the help very much!

[Sam.Nazarko]

If you definitely need Android, then the Vero 4K + won't give you that today and you would need to find something else or be prepared to wait a while. 
The Minix is an S912 chip however; so the future of it after Kodi v18 is unclear.

[ozkhan1]

If you definitely need Android, then the Vero 4K + won't give you that today and you would need to find something else or be prepared to wait a while. 
The Minix is an S912 chip however; so the future of it after Kodi v18 is unclear.

Why is it unclear?

[Sam.Nazarko]

The S912 does not have licensed Mali libraries. It uses libhybris to work with Linux.
This is not possible (in current state) with Kodi v19 which will use GBM / V4L2 as there will be no mainline support.

This is why S905D (which has a long term support) was used on Vero 4K + to implement Gigabit Ethernet instead of S912.

[Acquiesce]

So if I understand correctly nothing left suits my needs & price range..

I might have expressed my needs wrongfully though. 
I don't really care about the Android side of the box, it would be something like 20% of the used time, mostly for Youtube and sometimes for some local TV replays, and only for my girlfriend.
Buying an extra mSD card and having any Linux based Kodi is good to me, I'm not planning on using the Kodi app on Android, I don't see why I should bother with Google's Android while Linux would work flawlessly.

Based on that "new" fact, which device could I buy and be happy with it for the next years?

[tredman]

YouTube works fine on Linux Kodi (as do lots of catch-up services, you'll have to be specific which ones to confirm though)

From the above, if i were you, i would go for the Vero, but with the caveat you will only be able to use Kodi and it's add-ons.

[ozkhan1]

Dude.. just get a raspberry pie 3. You just need 1080p kodi, you dont want 4k, you dont want apps, so its fairly simple. You friend recommended S912 on case you were goong to buy a 4k tv. But it doesnt llook like thats your immediate need. So rpi3 will be perfect, cheap and easy to set up.

I know its fairly easy to overcomplicate this issue given the number of people will swarm you with their favorite choices. But its rather simple in your case.

In fact i would look into the new fore tv stick as well. It may have some tradeoffs but it looks pretty solid and its within your price range.

[Sam.Nazarko]

You can get YouTube via Kodi.

We chose to use S905D in 4K + to deliver Gigabit Ethernet so we could keep our long term support for Vero. It wouldn't make much sense to release a new product (s912) with a shorter lifespan. 
We are maintaining Vero 4K / Vero 4K + until 2022.

Obviously, I'm far from impartial. 

Sam

[wrxtasy]

You can get YouTube via Kodi.

And the Netflix and Amazon VOD Addons for 720p (AMLogic - OSMC / LibreELEC) copy protected streaming when Kodi v18 Leia drops.

We chose to use S905D in 4K + to deliver Gigabit Ethernet so we could keep our long term support for Vero. It wouldn't make much sense to release a new product (s912) with a shorter lifespan. 
We are maintaining Vero 4K / Vero 4K + until 2022.

Obviously, I'm far from impartial. 

Sam

If I were running a commercial business, that is exactly the same decision I would make.

Cheap, fast, AMLogic hardware like S912 running LibreELEC / CoreELEC may or may not make it any further than Kodi v18 Leia (depends on open source GPU driver development during the next year). Android Kodi will still continue to work.

[Acquiesce]

Thank you all for your answers, I shall go with the Vero