[johnvick1]

I've ordered one of these to run Kodi amongst other things - I've got Kodi running under Windows, Mint, Android and Raspberry Pi using shared MySQL library. My question is what OS is likely to give the best results with Kodi on this device? The choice comes down to Android 4.4.4 or Ubuntu 14.04. Anyone have experience with this?

[noggin]

The XU4 hasn't historically had a lot of love from Kodi developers - mainly because the Exynos SoCs in use don't have the greatest driver support in Linux, and there were cheaper SoCs that were more suited to general Kodi use with better support. Don't get me wrong - the hardware specs of the XU4 are impressive (USB3.0, GigE, and a very fast CPU) it's just that the boards weren't cheap enough to generate interest. At the price they are sold, once you add a decent sized eMMC, case, PSU etc. you are close to a Chromebox price (in some regions) which includes USB 3, GigE, WiFi/Bluetooth, a case etc. and full x86 support (which gets a LOT of development effort).

There are some builds of OpenElec over at the ODroid forums that may be worth a look, and I think there is basic hardware acceleration and refresh rate changing support. ** EDIT - my mistake. Looks like the OpenElec builds I thought included XU4 support only claim support for the U2/U3/XU3. I suspect there will be a version of Kodi you can install from an Ubuntu repo that will deliver some kind of support **

No idea whether there is 23.976/59.94 support, and from memory there was no deinterlacing, and audio was PCM 2.0 with possible DD/DTS support. I had an older, Exynos-based U2, and didn't really ever try Android.