[Hameed_Farah]

Hi all,

I want a device that can Run Kodi to play the media I have on the network (1080p at most) and it needs to be very user friendly so the wife can use it without drilling a hole in my head. It also needs to be around $100. Other features that are nice to have but not quite necessary are
some split screen gaming
stream online TV
play UHD 4K videos
play Satellite channels

After a lot of reading I ended up with 3 options,
The Tonbux MXQ, Matricom G-Box and the Wetek Play.

My personal preference so far is the Wetek Play because then I can simply throw away all the players around the tv and stick with on all-in device which is great. but my previous experience with all-in ones isn't that great, particularly because I need a user friendly device.

So what do you guys suggest?

[wrxtasy]

Lets start with User Friendly first otherwise you are going to be in the bad books with your Wife.

I would only get a device with Mature bug free Firmware, good after sales support and a nicely integrated remote control. These devices come from guys like MINIX and Wetek/OpenElec. Plus Firmware on these two gives you proper 23.976/59.94Hz synced video playback with Dynamic Refresh Rate Switching. Everything just works.

You will otherwise have to put up with a bunch of Headaches with other cheap devices and to be rooting around on the Freaktab website looking for Firmware that works.
Most of the reviews you read on Amazon are from people who have not a clue, especially in the Kodi/Android market space.
Don't get suckered into a device with a long impressive specs list. This is Marketing 101.

Basically you get what you pay for with these type of Android boxes. How much would you pay for Wife Friendliness ?

The Wetek Play meets those criteria (excluding4k), the only slight negative is it seems a tad underpowered running a pretty old AMlogic SoC.
I suggest reading this review first:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2054255

You are still going to have to add a HDD to the Wetek if you want to record TV.

MINIX have a nice NEO X6 with a more powerful AMlogic S805 that also does HEVC decoding (also no 4k), but it does not have a plug in tuner.

---

The preferred way of going about TV viewing and using Kodi is to place a small Linux device with a HDD and TV Tuner Stick hanging off it, on your local Ethernet network and run a TV Headend Server. Hide it out of plain sight if Aesthetics are of concern.
That way you are not limiting yourself to any sort of box to act as Kodi/TV Headend client. You can choose a Android device or Linux/OpenElec or anything else.

The cheapest way to run a TV Headend server with a Gigabit Ethernet port is the ODROID-C1 running OpenElec. But they are sold out at the moment until early August, unless you look hard.
The next cheapest is a RPi2 running OpenElec but that has a 100Meg Ethernet. There may also be others with Gigabit that run OpenElec at a low price as well.
Fast Ethernet is important for a server.

W.