[mohsin125]

Hi guys,

Ive spent my last 5 days trying to find a solution to connecting xbmc to my tv through any device. I stumbled upon usb tv sticks (mostly under £50) and then media boxes e.g. neo x7 or g-midnight. However i cannot be sure in what box to buy as every product ive looked seems to have problems.

I am not someone whos had much experience with xbmc either and what i actually need a device for is the following:

1. Xbmc to stream live sports and tv shows (thats all) and ability to stream in HD
2. Browse internet on my tv and have a youtube app
3. Playing downloaded videos from my device


I am extremely confused with the choices and I would really really appreciate any advice from you guys. Please let me know any boxes/devices that meet my above requirements.

[RemoGaggi]

Take a look at this post and choose your flavor. Good luck

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=94199

[mohsin125]

Hi thanks for the link but I already had a look at it. It talks about building a new HTPC but im talking about media boxes in the market running android or linux not windows. Thanks though

[trogggy]

If you want to browse the net and don't want a pc then you're looking at an android box.
Bear in mind that xbmc on android will not be as polished / stable as windows / linux builds. If it were me with those requirements now I'd be looking for a mini pc - 6 months from now the answer would possibly be different.
Can't help with which android box, sorry.

[mohsin125]

I was wondering, wont the linux boxes also have browsing in them?

[joelbaby]

However i cannot be sure in what box to buy as every product ive looked seems to have problems.

Your observation is an accurate reflection of the situation.
Android XBMC is not officially supported by team xbmc, even though it is being worked on heavily.
For £100, there is not much guaranteed to work well out of the box.

There is stuff that works, and the most reliable and supported is the Pivos XIOS DS ... but this is old technology, and you're better off waiting for whatever Pivos releases in the near future. New hardware is long overdue from them.
There is also Raspberry Pi, but again - its not the fastest hardware out there.
Gbox Midnight MX-2 have great marketing.
Ouya has a strong community, and xbmc on their device just recently started working right.

At your price point, my advice is wait. There is some super exciting stuff around the corner. The Cubox-I (or anything based on the i.mx6 processor) is really the one to watch. http://www.cubox-i.com/ .This little box has everything you need hardware wise, and there are a lot of developers working with it.

If you don't want to waste your money then:

Spend £200 building a Celeron NUC and put OpenElec on it.
or
Wait.

XBMC is good for people who like to fiddle around, and can cope with frustration. Pivos is a company that has gone a long way to invest and provide a decent consumer experience, but I find it hard to recommend their hardware knowing that something much better will be just around the corner.

If you want something now, and must stick to your price point, then I'd pick the Ouya, Geniatech ATV1200 or Midnight MX-2. But you have to go in with your eyes open, knowing that it may not work 100%.

[noggin]

Spend £200 building a Celeron NUC and put OpenElec on it.

Or spend £129 (after Cashback) on a Celeron Revo RL80 with OpenElec on it. Comes with Celeron 1007U/2GB RAM/500GB HD/802.11b/g/n (inc 5GHz)/Bluetooth/USB3.0/GIgE, HDMI and DVI-I. (Outperforms the 847 Celeron NUCs)

I've done it - and it works very well indeed.

[mohsin125]

Thanks alot guys! I will definitely go for the celeron processor ones and get openelec on it. Btw can u browse internet and download and watch stuff from the internet? What about flash player?

[noggin]

Thanks alot guys! I will definitely go for the celeron processor ones and get openelec on it. Btw can u browse internet and download and watch stuff from the internet? What about flash player?

For web browsing and Flash you're probably better off going for XBMCBuntu rather than OpenElec - though this may be a little trickier to set-up. XBMCBuntu effectively gives you Ubuntu + XBMC - so you can drop out of XBMC into Ubuntu for web browsing, though this isn't optimised for use with a remote control (which some Android devices, to be fair, are)

OpenElec is really XBMC only - no web browser included. Sorry - should have re-read your original post.

OpenElec (as well as XBMC) does have a number of plugins - some of which are likely to do what you want.

(It also has useful stuff like TV Headend as an add-on, so adding a DVB-T/T2 USB stick allows you to watch Live and Recorded TV within XBMC - effectively giving you a Freeview PVR - if you're in a DVB-T/T2 area like the UK)

Where the Android solutions fall down is in areas like audio support (even getting Dolby bitstreams out of many of them is a struggle - you can forget about Dolby True HD or DTS HD MA) and refresh rate (50Hz is tricky on many, and 24Hz almost unheard of - and auto switching quite unusual)