Login at Kodi Home

lolwatpear · 2013-07-18, 03:10

I have no device to watch to media on my tv, and I'm getting sick of waiting for a good device that is around the $40-60 mark that is required for the Pi. I had the Pi, but I don't want to deal with its slow menus. The pivos is outdated, better than the Pi, but it is also 2x the price of the Pi. Finally, the mx2 is decent, but it is also twice the price, and there seems to be no linux build in sight.

I don't see any perfect solution to what I want. Does anyone have any advice?

artrafael · 2013-07-18, 03:23

This is never a perfect solution and all systems will become outdated. You can:

keep waiting until there's a device in that price point that has the oomph you desire,
or spend a reasonable amount of money to get a reasonably powerful system now that will run Linux and XBMC well.

If your budget maximum is $60, then your options are limited for now... unless you're amenable to purchasing a used PC from Craigslist or similar.

nickr · 2013-07-18, 05:43

You get what you pay for.

lolwatpear · 2013-07-18, 05:51

(2013-07-18, 05:43)nickr Wrote: You get what you pay for.

The problem is that the raspberry pi is old, yet it still the best at the price point. Someone could make a lot a money releasing a better 'pi', right now. The specs in the chinese android sticks are great, but they have little support.

tential · 2013-07-18, 06:06

IMO, for the Intel NUC devices you get a lot for your money. If I was getting anything, I'd probably get that. $300 for a full functioning PC is nice.

Sadly though you're right, there is no cheap standalone thing that does XBMC perfectly. XBMC means different things to different people. It'll be awhile before we see this happen. The Cortex A12 ARM processors look perfect for this though. My Samsung Galaxy S3 handles XBMC very well, and the A12 is supposed to be much faster.

Android works very well though. I haven't noticed any problems with it at all. If you get a decent processor on an Android device you'd be fine. The Ouya maybe? That should be much faster than my phone since I have an S3 NA version (dual core Krait) and that's a Quadcore?

nickr · 2013-07-18, 06:28

The key is always access to the hardware graphics acceleration for proper playback.

**Kib** · (This post was last modified: 2013-07-18, 14:09 by Kib.)

I have my hopes on this box

To be honest, 40-60 dollar is not a lot of money for a device that will be the center of your multimedia viewing experience.
At this point 100-150$ for a decent experience, or 250-300$ for a great experience seems reasonable.

~~Ned Scott~~ · (This post was last modified: 2013-07-18, 18:56 by Ned Scott.)

The lesson learned is that specs aren't everything. Good software support on "outdated" hardware can often result in a better HTPC than something "new" at the same price point.

Case in point, my Apple TV 1s are still my go-to HTPCs. Apple TV 1 was very low-end hardware back in 2008. They run linux OSes and are fast, play just about anything thanks to hardware decoding, output 1080, are reasonably small, and cost me less than $100 to get running (at least the second one did. The first one I have is a referb from Apple back before the ATV2 came out).

Don't worry about what someone says is outdated or not. Focus on the end-user experience.

GortWillSaveUs · (This post was last modified: 2013-07-18, 21:51 by GortWillSaveUs.)

Seems like,..$60 HTPC and outdated is an oxy-moron.
Do yourself a favor,....put some money away for a few months and spend $300-400 and you'll be glad you did.

(2013-07-18, 18:55)Ned Scott Wrote: Don't worry about what someone says is outdated or not. Focus on the end-user experience.

AWESOME advice!!!