Hardware advice
#1
Question 
Hi all,

Been a while since I've posted on here as I've been very happy with my setup and Kodi has been working fine across my devices in 1080p world but tomorrow I receive a new 4k TV and need to start upping my gear to start playing 4k hevc content. I've read the buying guides and other "what should I buy posts" but can't decide due to the problems I'm reading within those posts or little caveats what would be best for my needs.

I try to be thorough with my posts and provide as much background information, so you can advise me as best you can. So bare with me.

The TV I've bought is the hisense 55M3300
Richersounds link for retail specs - http://www.richersounds.com/product/tv--...se-55m3300
German manual for brochure specs - http://hisense.de/fileadmin/user_upload/...5M3300.pdf

And my current setup (all running krypton nightlies) is:

2 x rpi2 running libre elec
2 x Acer revo RL70 (1 bitstreaming via an AVR) running Windows 10
1 x Denon AVR (which will be upgraded at the weekend to this: DENON AVRX520BT http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-r...x520bt-blk)
1 x Surface Pro 4 (i5 128gb with Intel HD 520 graphics)
All content fed via gigabit from a custom server (apart from the Surface, which receives it's content via WiFi AC only, no Ethernet adaptor)

I am potentially looking for now (until the 4k HEVC hardware becomes more reliable/mainstream) to replace the bistreaming Revo RL70 with (from reading here) either a Shield TV or somehow use the Surface Pro 4 to holdout until the Wetek hub or better gear comes out. The problem is, the surface pro 4 is skipping frames (not dropping) in Kodi with 4k hevc 10 bit content but they play fine (frame drop every now and again when running on battery power) in the Movies & TV app which, from reading I'm guessing is a Kodi issue in terms of not being able to handle 4k 10 bit yet?

I purely use Kodi, no Netflix, Amazon, Sky Go requirements - If I use any of these when friend's come round it will be through the TV's apps, surface or xbox one.

Any suggestions are welcome and thanks for reading Smile
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#2
4K 10bit HEVC hardware decoding using Kodi: (output as 8bit)
(Note a HDMI 2.0 device needs to be bought if you want 2160p to be output at greater than 30Hz.)

4K movies will be 23.976/24fps and only need HDMI 1.4.

Running a Kodi 4K interface at 24 or 30Hz is slow and not ideal, you really need 50/60Hz.

- HiMedia Q10 Pro (be aware of bugs like 23.976fps video sync)
- nVIDIA Shield (the Shield may output 10bit at 50/60Hz, ask in its Hardware thread)
- MINIX U1
- ODROID C2
- a number of AMLogic S905 clone boxes
- upcoming WeTek S905 series of devices.
- Intel Skylake using Software decoding - an adapter is needed for Display Port to HDMI 2.0 (do thorough research yourself)

Don't need Android Apps and just run OpenELEC or LibreELEC;
- ODROID C2
- a number of AMLogic S905 clone boxes
- upcoming WeTek S905 series of devices.

All these devices pro and cons have been done to death in very recent "New Hardware advice" threads, so I will not go about repeating it all.

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#3
Thanks, after much deliberation today I went with the Shield TV. I looked at the other options and I think for now it'll tide me over and seems the most mature solution and looks the best sat beneath the new TV. I'm going to save up and replace it eventually with an NUC towards the end of the year/start of next year and move the Shield into the bedroom. That way my main TV devices will be able to do x265 and then my 2 pi's I can look to replace around the same time with either Odroid's or something else entirely by that point.

Thank you for not just replying but your other posts and threads too Smile I'd of been going in fairly blind and scrounging around on-line to find information from all over otherwise.
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