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steph40 · 2015-09-06, 22:57

Hi everyone,

I am looking at building a box using kodibuntu with orange pi plus which can be found here:

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/...89300.html

Has anyone try that? Would it work.

I am new to media box but not new to building computer Smile

If you have other suggestions go ahead I didn't buy nothing yet.

Steph

noggin · (This post was last modified: 2015-09-07, 00:04 by noggin.)

The Orange Pi range are based on Allwinner SoCs which have poor Open Source drivers for the VPU (the bit of the SoC that actually plays video). There have been a number of attempts to improve this, and all so far have failed. All winner don't really seem to be that interested in working with Kodi devs to sort this, and apparently have a patchy history with open source licence compliance.

If you are looking for a decent Kodi experience then the Raspberry Pi / Pi 2 or the AMLogic series (C1+ etc.) have much better quality video and audio driver support, and are thus are much better Kodi platforms.

There has to be a a strong reason not to go for the Pi 2 these days. (HEVC being the main one)

steph40 · 2015-09-07, 01:00

Thank you, that is exactly what I need to know.

Pi 2 was on my list. Still torn with making a box or getting an already made box like g-box Would pi 2 run kodibuntu? Or would it be better to run something like osmc or openelec?

noggin · 2015-09-07, 09:44

(2015-09-07, 01:00)steph40 Wrote: Thank you, that is exactly what I need to know.

Pi 2 was on my list. Still torn with making a box or getting an already made box like g-box Would pi 2 run kodibuntu? Or would it be better to run something like osmc or openelec?

There are official Pi 2 build of OpenElec, and some very cutting edge development builds posted here. OSMC is less of an 'appliance' build and allows you to install other Linux stuff using apt-get etc. (as it is Debian based)

Kodibuntu, being Ubuntu based, isn't really supported on the Pi 2 (as the Pi couldn't run Ubuntu as the ARM CPU-type it was based on wasn't supported. The ARM CPU-type in the Pi 2 is supported, but Ubuntu really isn't a big thing on the Pi)

steph40 · 2015-09-07, 15:18

Well I just got my hands on a used computer with q6600 cpu 4gb ram and 160gb drive that I might change for ssd. I think that should do pretty good for my needs. Just missing blu Ray which I can add later.

If there is anything else I should know or be aware of, feel free to reply.

Thank you

Steph40

noggin · 2015-09-07, 16:08

What GPU do you have? You might want to put a low cost nVidia graphics card in there. A Q6600 will be quite power-hungry, and may need quite loud cooling. I wouldn't invest heavily in upgrading it with stuff that you can't repurpose later (so SSD and GPU make sense)

steph40 · 2015-09-07, 16:27

(2015-09-07, 16:08)noggin Wrote: What GPU do you have? You might want to put a low cost nVidia graphics card in there. A Q6600 will be quite power-hungry, and may need quite loud cooling. I wouldn't invest heavily in upgrading it with stuff that you can't repurpose later (so SSD and GPU make sense)

It has a AMD Radeon HD4350 HDMI HTPC. Maybe I'll put a cheap watercooling, will evaluate when it gets here. You are right it is more power hungry then I originally wanted but it is one of those ebay make an offer thing that I didn't think would be accepted, but it did.

Steph