[JustASimpleQuestion]

Hi all. I currently have Kodi running on an AppleTV2. It's a bit long in the tooth and I am looking to upgrade. I have reviewed the "START HERE" thread as well as many other threads in this forum and I am pretty confused and overwhelmed, so I was hoping I could get a few minutes of your time to try to help me pick out hardware.

Requirements
Here are things I "need":
- Excellent UI speed in Kodi including in large libraries (1500 shows, 5000 movies). AppleTV2 is very sluggish at UI tasks. I want to be able to jump into a file with no slowdown, switch between UI views, scroll through a huge library, haul up actor info, etc. without any kind of load time.
- Plays 720p x264-encoded video files well. I don't encode to 1080p for space reasons. Maybe I will in the future, but 720p is all I need so far.
- Supports Netflix
- Is silent / passively cooled (are there any boxes that aren't?)
- Has a UI that is not totally hideous for the main launcher or allows me to customize the main launcher to make it not hideous. Ideally also does not advertise content. I own the stuff I want to watch, I don't need to be sold other stuff
- Will support Kodi 17 and the new skins.
- I don't want to have to open up a box and do surgery on it to have it support Kodi. I know some boxes require shorting or flipping pins or stuff like that.

Here are things I would "like":
- Supports Netflix in HD (720p or 1080p is OK, no need for 4K as we do not plan to buy a 4K TV in the next 5+ years)
- Has hardware H265 or fast enough software H265 so I can begin encoding in H265.
- Has decent support for other apps (I do have Amazon Prime although I rarely use Prime Video, various cable apps like Showtime would be nice too)
- Has a remote that doesn't require line of sight--so RF or BlueTooth support--and isn't ugly and isn't filled with superfluous buttons. Ideally something simple like the AppleTV2 remote, but with RF. Ideally there is also no lag for the remote.
- Is possible/easy to upgrade Kodi versions as new versions come out.
- Ideally the box is small and discreet
- If it's Android, ideally a company with a track record of delivering Android OS updates.
- Low power usage, eco-friendly.
- Do any of the non-AppleTV boxes support AirPlay? If so, that would be neat.
- Price is not critical, but I feel like the $100-ish tier of players are what I'm looking at, not $250+ or <$50 type stuff.

Here are some things I don't care about at all:
- Playing 4K files
- Any kind of fancy audio at all (I use my TV's 2.0 speakers)
- High colour files, I keep seeing stuff about 8-bit versus 10-bit. I don't encode to need this stuff.
- Weird framerate videos--this seems to be a huge focus in all the Android box threads I click here.
- Chromecast support
- Any kind of gaming support
- Kodi plugins or addons of any kind
- Any Kodi feature besides TV and Movies
- Any kind of television or cable support
- Internal storage

Candidates
My initial search started with an AppleTV4. I like Apple's UI and remote. I like Apple's hardware support. On the other hand, I don't like needing to constantly worry about jailbreaking, no Amazon Prime support is a bummer, the new price is a little high, and Kodi support still seems preliminary. So I guess I'll hold off on the AppleTV4.

Amazon reviews and a lot of stuff I find on YouTube suggest the Matricom Gbox Q2 is quite good, very fast, acceptable default UI and allows you to switch launchers in Android. The price is right, the box is not too ugly. The remote is a little bulky. The problem is I can't seem to get information on whether or not this does Netflix in HD or not, since I know that's a big issue.

The Kodi forums seem to like WeTek devices. I checked WeTek and one red flag right off the bat is that I literally can't tell the difference between their products. What is the difference between a WeTek Core, WeTek Play 2, and a WeTek Hub. The threads on the Kodi forums do not seem helpful. It looks like the Hub is cheaper than the Play which is cheaper than the Core. Size-wise that seems to be the order too. The remote controls are totally different between the three but the Hub's looks the best. I like that WeTek sponsors Kodi. But I would like help trying to figure out which of these meets my requirements the best. Is one model older than the others? They're all still for sale. The Hub seems to have a bizarre side antenna; is this required to use WiFi or is this a OTA TV antenna? It seems like the Hub has less ram, but what does this mean for real performance?

The nVidia Shield TV seems like the most professional product I've seen and videos suggest it's still the fastest box out there. Unfortunately it comes with a truly ugly looking game controller so I'd have to buy an extra remote, and it's game focused, and while the UI looks sleek and professional it also seems like it highlights a bunch of stuff I don't care about. It's twice as expensive. Is it worth the extra money? I feel like I'd be paying for a bunch of gaming stuff I don't need. Is Kodi well maintained on the Shield TV?

Raspberry Pi is cheap, but would need a separate remote, and a case, and I think there's no way even an RPi3 has comparably smooth performance to the $100-ish dedicated boxes, so I think I'm going to avoid the RPi for now. There seem to be a ton more Android boxes, and then there's the build-your-own option using Intel NUC. There's also the Chromebox. Some people talk about the difference between Android and Android TV. Should I care about this? Does this affect me? If so, how? Can you install one on hardware that comes with the other? WeTek seems to support OpenELEC as well as Android. What's the trade-off? Better speed with OpenELEC but fewer programs and external features?


Thanks in advance for your time. I really appreciate any support I can get. I am tech-savvy but not an AV geek and a lot of the product comparisons I see talk endlessly about specific SOCs, different video and audio standards, etc. and it becomes very difficult for me to tell if a certain difference is relevant or not. Please feel free to just reply to specific questions or just give me an answer. No need to quote everything, I know my post is very long!

Short version:
- Main objective: Kodi (incl/ Kodi 17) runs like absolute butter and I never run into any UI sluggishness
- Secondary objectives: Remote is small and simple, H265, HD Netflix
- Don't care about 4K or fancy audio

[wrxtasy]

Amazon reviews and a lot of stuff I find on YouTube...

Strong warning to everyone reading, especially the Newbs. Amazon reviews and YouTube are known to be full of paid for product advertisements full of spin and BS. They will not be objective, and miss out on vital examination of features that actually need in depth analysis.

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From the START HERE - Pick the Right Kodi Box, please read it !!!

Q. I've heard only certain Android or Win10 Kodi machines can play 1080p or 4K DRM copy protected video streaming ?

Yes that is correct. Netflix is very particular about which devices they 1080p or 2160p (4K) certify and NO cheap Android devices from Asia, can or are willing to get the required certification and HDCP keys to stream copy protected video content. They will be limited to 480p Max resolution for protected video content. See the Green comparison link above for further details.
Supported 1080p DRM Kodi devices:

• nVIDIA Shield (4K + HDR)
  
• Amazon Stick/FTV1 + FTV2 (4K)
  
• Intel machines running Win10, using either dedicated Apps or a Web Browser, very likely other OS's as well.
  
• WeTek's Core, Hub and Play2 devices (note audio is 2.0 only)
  
• Apple TV4
  

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I can give you a brief rundown on WeTek's AMLogic linup: (all HD Netflix)

• Core - 8-bit HEVC(h265) decoding + Internal WiFi Antenna
  
• Hub - 10-bit HEVC decoding + External WiFi Antenna = more sensitive WiFi receiver
  
• Play2 - 10-bit HEVC decoding + Internal WiFi Antenna

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Boxes:
(SPMC or MrMC are specific versions of Kodi optimised for various hardware platforms)

• Very remote control friendly Android Apps the main focus with a side order of Kodi (SPMC or MrMC) = nVIDIA Shield or Amazon FireTV2
  
• Kodi the main focus, with decent supported boxes using LibreELEC = Intel devices or well sorted AMLogic boxes
  
• You will need at least an I-series Intel box to software decode 10-bit HEVC, only recently released ones support 10-bit HEVC Hardware decoding
  
• Apple TV4 does not need Jailbreaking, you download MrMC (Kodi fork) and away you go. However there are Kodi Addon and Skin limitations, as certain parts of Kodi code had to be taken out to get the MrMC App into the tvOS App store.

[JonSnow88]

I don't think your going to find the perfect box for your needs with the price point you have set.

The closest option for you is the Sheild TV, or possibly an Intel NCU with Windows 10.

Hub and Play 2 use the s905 SoC while the older ones use the s805. Frankly most are happy with these s905 boxes as they are quite smooth but from your post your not going to be happy with it and should probably go to the higher end.

Price plays a huge factor, i have the s905 box and its a huge improvement over my pi2 and again its very smooth as i have yet to notice any sliggish UI but my library is still under a 1000. I feel if i had your library size the Hub/Play2 would fit the build for me, but based on what i read it sounds like you'd be better off with a Sheild.

[JustASimpleQuestion]

Strong warning to everyone reading, especially the Newbs. Amazon reviews and YouTube are known to be full of paid for product advertisements full of spin and BS. They will not be objective, and miss out on vital examination of features that actually need in depth analysis.

Okay so what I'm taking from your reply is that the Raspberry Pi and Matricom Gbox Q2 do not play Netflix above 480p (I did see this question when I read the Start Here thread, but it talks about 1080p and 4K when I really only want 720p--and then I was further confused because the WeTek Core says it has Google Widevine while the WeTek Play2 says it has Microsoft PlayReady and Google Widevine and when I Googled, it said PlayReady was related to Silverlight's DRM, which is what I thought Netflix used, so then I was second guessing whether the Core or Hub had HD Netflix. Like I said, I keep finding a lot of information but it's very overwhelming and not very clear to me. Thanks for clarifying this one issue.

[JustASimpleQuestion]

I don't think your going to find the perfect box for your needs with the price point you have set.

The closest option for you is the Sheild TV, or possibly an Intel NCU with Windows 10.

Hub and Play 2 use the s905 SoC while the older ones use the s805. Frankly most are happy with these s905 boxes as they are quite smooth but from your post your not going to be happy with it and should probably go to the higher end.

WeTek says the Core uses a "S812-H". I have no idea what a bunch of random processor numbers mean--this is a big problem with almost all the information I found online, people are obsessed with reporting specs in terms of part numbers but not with providing any information about what the specs mean. I Googled them to try to figure out and apparently the S812-H is faster than the S905 in most regards, but I can't tell what that actually means in terms of real-world performance, load time, UI smoothness, etc. Like I said I don't care about gaming or whatever, just using videos. I know the Shield TV has way higher benchmark numbers, but I don't know how those benchmark numbers translate and if the Shield TV's UI layer is going to be more resource hungry than the other UI layers.

Is there any info out there on what kind of limitations a Core would have, if that is faster than the Hub and Play 2? Like, in the real world, what kind of trouble would I run into? Are there demo videos of people using Kodi on a WeTek Core with a large library? A lot of the review videos seem to show it running really smooth but only on small libraries, and in the mean time wrxtasy in this thread said not to trust YouTube videos so I'm not sure where I should go from here.

[JonSnow88]

I cant say for old products but the Hub/Play2 will play HD Netflix. There is no reason to consider the older WeTek boxes

[JustASimpleQuestion]

I cant say for old products but the Hub/Play2 will play HD Netflix. There is no reason to consider the older WeTek boxes

I honestly can't tell what the older products are; the website doesn't present them in any kind of chronological order, the blog is filled with event announcements rather than product announcements. I can tell from the name that the Play 1 is older than the Play 2. And since the Play 2 is for pre-order now, I assume that's the newest. But I can't tell what the order of the Hub versus the Core versus the Play 2 is and what the rough power ranking is. It looks like the Play 2 is designed for TV/satellite stuff, which I don't need, and the Hub is smaller, which is good but not necessary.

They all have totally different remotes. The Play 2 has a remote that looks like a TV remote, the Core has a remote that looks like the AppleTV4 remote, and the Hub has a remote that looks more like the older AppleTV2 remote--so even from the remote designs I can't tell which is more recent.

I went to the Minix website because they are a Kodi sponsor and their product lineup was even more confusing, dozens of identical looking boxes with slightly different numbers.

[JonSnow88]

I run my library off a sql server and the pi2 and s905 both work with my library which is around 800 items. The pi2 is slower to load files, search or scan etc but i also dont bother with actor info.

Like i said in real would speeds i think a s905 will do just fine but it wont be the fastest which is what your looking for. Also remember if you do get a wetek box and boot LE from the SD card, if you use a crap card expect crap performance. If your running Kodi from Android it may have limitations as well which other can fill you in on.

Im using a cheap Android s905 box with LE and for my needs its perfect for the next few years.

[JustASimpleQuestion]

I run my library off a sql server and the pi2 and s905 both work with my library which is around 800 items. The pi2 is slower to load files, search or scan etc but i also dont bother with actor info.

Like i said in real would speeds i think a s905 will do just fine but it wont be the fastest which is what your looking for. Also remember if you do get a wetek box and boot LE from the SD card, if you use a crap card expect crap performance. If your running Kodi from Android it may have limitations as well which other can fill you in on.

OK thanks. It's good to confirm that the S905 boxes do beat out the PI and to get a reminder to get a good SD card if I'm going to use OpenELEC. I would be very interested in learning if the Android limitations affect my use case! Thank you!

Can you comment about SQL server library speed versus just the local sqlite libraries that Kodi ships with? I have two boxes that I keep synced using a task that fetches the libraries and manually keeps the databases in sync every few hours (I also use the task to take backups of my library!), but I'd be open to MySQL for a library if it's significantly faster than the local libraries.

[JustASimpleQuestion]

I can give you a brief rundown on WeTek's AMLogic linup: (all HD Netflix)

• Core - 8-bit HEVC(h265) decoding + Internal WiFi Antenna
  
• Hub - 10-bit HEVC decoding + External WiFi Antenna = more sensitive WiFi receiver
  
• Play2 - 10-bit HEVC decoding + Internal WiFi Antenna

Hi, I saw you edited this useful into into the post. I don't really know that the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit is--when I google I mostly just find people talking about anime, which I don't watch. I normally only watch files that I ripped and encoded myself and have never looked into 10-bit. I don't even know if any of my Blu-Rays can use 10-bit.

Are there any other differences between these three boxes in terms of how they perform in Kodi? For example, the Hub has less ram--does this make Kodi run less smoothly? Also, the Core seems to have a slightly better processor, but I'm guessing based on the HEVC stuff is slightly older -- what does this mean for real-world performance? What's the real difference between internal and external wifi? Is it in terms of speed? Latency? Buffering issues?

I guess what I'm saying is that from what you've presented to me, the Hub is the best, but it's also the cheapest and smallest. This makes sense if Play2 is bigger to fit the TV equipment that I don't need--but I just want to make sure that cheaper doesn't mean skimping out in other regards versus the Core.

• Apple TV4 does not need Jailbreaking, you download MrMC (Kodi fork) and away you go. However there are Kodi Addon and Skin limitations, as certain parts of Kodi code had to be taken out to get the MrMC App into the tvOS App store.

I did read this in threads, but it looked like MrMC was for sale, and it wasn't clear to me if it would keep synced to Kodi as new versions come out, if it would support the new great looking Kodi skin for V17, etc. Meanwhile, regular Kodi seemed to need either jailbreaking or some sort of signing hack that seemed to cause a lot of trouble for people. I am pretty sure I am not going to go with the AppleTV4 for some other reasons (not sure if it does H265 video files, generally feeling like Kodi was more mature and more actively developed on other platforms at this point, mixed reviews about the current Apple remote, etc.) but it's good to know the situation is not as bad as I feared.

[wrxtasy]

The best word of Advice I can give you is get a well supported Kodi box.

The RPi, WeTek, MINIX, Shield, FireTV, ATV4 and various Intel boxes will get the best support going forward.

1500 shows, 5000 movies:
This all points to either a powerful nVIDIA Shield or a well sorted Intel Box running LibreELEC Kodi, maybe an AMLogic one with LibreELEC running from eMMC Flash storage like the ODROID C2.
If you want speed and fluidity you are going to have to pay for it. Its that simple.
SSD or a HDD equipped Intel will be the quickest, followed by the Shield and then AMLogic S905 devices, running LibreELEC.

It is very hard to comment on early development versions of Kodi Krypton 17.0. However I did try the latest nightly version on the WeTek Hub yesterday and was a bit surprised as Hardware decoding of various codecs, with proper refresh switching and smooth 24p playback worked pretty well. Amcodec video Hardware decoding was working well, maybe its been re-introduced and not ditched after all for Android Kodi Krypton.

[JustASimpleQuestion]

Hi wrxtasy, thanks -- it seems like you are saying that LibreELEC has smoother performance than the built-in Android if I am going to get an Android box. Can you speak to the main differences? I know LibreELEC is basically like booting right into Kodi, so I will probably lose some of the other applications, but what kind of performance boost am I looking at?

I appreciate that my large library might require a bit more spending to get running smoothly. Does anyone on this forum have a library around the same size so I could see demos of what a large library runs like on the Shield versus the AMLogic devices would be like? That would be super handy.

[wrxtasy]

I don't really know that the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit is--when I google I mostly just find people talking about anime, which I don't watch. I normally only watch files that I ripped and encoded myself and have never looked into 10-bit. I don't even know if any of my Blu-Rays can use 10-bit.

Most HEVC content going forward is going to be encoded in 10-bit, really you need Hardware decoding support or a powerful I-series Intel box to support decoding this. For AMlogic this means S9xx boxes.

Are there any other differences between these three boxes in terms of how they perform in Kodi? For example, the Hub has less ram--does this make Kodi run less smoothly? Also, the Core seems to have a slightly better processor, but I'm guessing based on the HEVC stuff is slightly older -- what does this mean for real-world performance? What's the real difference between internal and external wifi? Is it in terms of speed? Latency? Buffering issues?

An external WiFi Antenna is always going to be better than a small internal one. Dual band AC WiFi better still. MIMO Dual Band AC WiFi better yet. Really if your serious about streaming latency I would not be using WiFi at all. Ethernet all the way.

Also be aware ALL, Kodi hardware currently running vanilla versions of Kodi Jarvis will be subject to a Kodi memory leak problem, unless fixed. I'm sure this will, or has been addressed in Kodi Krypton.

[KoopaTroopa]

@JustASimpleQuestion

LibreELEC is Linux, and you are right you will "lose" all Android applications but only if you use LibreELEC only.

With Wetek Hub you can dual-boot between Android and LibreELEC, this means on Android you get HD (720p and 1080p) Netflix AND Kodi on the same OS + the other Android Apps (Amazon, etc...). With LibreELEC you get zero Netflix, but you get smoother/faster/better Kodi. However, a lot of users HATE the remote on the Hub.

Also, RPi3 can software-decode some HEVC content but I've heard it's not very good at it. Definitely no hardware-decode as well. So if you're planning on encoding your content to HEVC (x265 and the like), the RPi is not the greatest at playing it back on your TV.

Difference between Android and "Android TV" can basically be boiled to Android TV apps work FANTASTICALLY well with a remote UI. Android apps on a TV are "shit" in comparison because they are trying to run on phones, tablets, and other devices so their inputs might be a mouse, or a remote-as-AirMouse, or a remote with directional buttons, or a finger, or whatever. In short, they will frustrate you if all you want to do is watch the content on the TV.

--

I have an ATV4 and I use it for Netflix and smart apps (Plus7 and other similar streaming apps to Showtime or HBO Go), I do not use it for Kodi. However, the remote is awesome.

For myself for Kodi, I still use a Mac Mini and an Acer Revo. It is the Revo which via SMB has a library of about 100+ shows with upwards of 3000 episodes, and about 500 movies. The library GUI is acceptable to me for most tasks especially navigation. I would probably go with a purpose-built NUC if I cared about snappy performance with HEVC and UI like you, but this gets away from your budget.

[JustASimpleQuestion]

Thanks for the detailed answers KoopaTroopa and for continuing to follow up wrxtasy