Justtop MK808 vs Raspberry PI
#1
Hi

I've done a quick search through the forum to see what people think of the Raspberry PI and the Justtop. Although I didn't find any results for Justtop, there are results for MK808. I'm hoping I can get some opinions on which is a better purchase between the Raspberry PI and the MK808. I have a budget of about £40 in total and intend to use it as a media player (Local video files, pictures, youtube, hopefully stream Lovefilm) and as a basic NAS/file share. I'd be adding a local drive to it from which I'll be playing the media. The NAS function is really so that I can play certain videos from my tablet and somewhere to store a copy of all our photos.

Raspberry - approx. £25
MK808 - approx. £34 inc. del (I hope the link is allowed - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009NNXY1W)


Raspberry PI Pros
  • Cheaper, but the accessories with the MK808 balance it out IMHO
  • Has a 100MB LAN port - my TV is right next to the router, which I suppose makes it fine with WiFI on the MK808
  • CEC support - I have a Toshiba with Regza so this sounds appealing
  • More possibilities regarding OS (I think)

Raspberry PI Cons
  • Need to purchase accessories, though I could probably put some stuff together from bits I got at home
  • Many reports of it being sluggish and the network transfer speed being very slow


MK808 PI Pros
  • Has everything needed to just work out of the box - though I'm sure some tweaking or updating will be in order
  • Faster processor


MK808 PI Cons
  • I'm not the biggest fan of Android (though I have a nexus 10, it keeps crashing)
  • Reports of the WiFi not being very good for streaming media. Not too much of an issue as I plan to play videos off an external drive directly attached. But could be an issue for YouTube and Lovefilm

Probably not the best comparison but I'm at work at the moment and they are going to order some Raspberrys so I could save myself some delivery if I order mine in the same batch.

Thanks in advance for any help/guidance.
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#2
Wow! 243 views and no responses? Have I asked a stupid question?

Anyways work has been kind enough to lend me one of the PIs that they've ordered, so will see if it's "good enough" and will report back. I have some Amazon vouchers so still considering the option of getting the seemingly more powerful Android devices.
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#3
I have owned a raspberry pi. Had it overclocked running rasbmc. I didn't find it a great experience. Quite sluggish.
Upgraded to atv 2- found that to sluggish.
Just brought a Lenovo q190 - now perfect.
Moral of the story...
You get what you pay for.
At the start I wish I knew just to pay a bit more to be happy.
Buy the best you can afford.
That's my thoughts
+ I have no idea about the justtop sorry
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#4
I have both a Raspberry Pi and an MK808. The MK808 is faster than the raspi which makes the experience a little nicer. However the MK808 didn't support HW decoding, at least not when I was using it. So I had to use a workaround that allowed an external player (MX Player) to be called from XBMC, which I found annoying and not very refined feeling. This was a few months ago, so that may have been fixed since then, not sure.

Android wasn't ideal either. For example, I'm not sure how well it supports IR dongles for remote controls. It didn't seem to recognize my MCE IR dongle. And I found XBMC to be a bit unreliable in Android. I'd get crashes here and there.

So neither of these will give you the ideal XBMC experience. If I had to choose between these two, I'd go with the raspi. In fact, that's what I'm currently using with my bedroom TV. The MK808 is collecting dust right now.
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#5
I have a MK808 with the stock Android.

I use www.xbmcandroid.com XBMC version because it use Player MX to video playback which use the GPU. It's fast, and can play 1080p movies. I found it hard to control it with mouse and keyboards. A PC version of XMBC is much more easy to use it with just a keyboard or a remote control.

Also, I have Raspberry Pi which I'm about of trying how it works.
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