Best Kodi box for local content over USB?
#1
What is the best, cheapest Kodi box for playing local content from a USB hard drive, 1080p, connected to a TV?
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#2
USA $69 Xiaomi Mi Box because of the superb, responsive Bluetooth remote, Android TV OS and the fact you can directly connect a 2.5" Hard Drive to it without needing any extra power supplies.

If you need deinterlacing for playing back old DVD and proper Kodi refresh rate switching then there is also the WeTek Hub. LibreELEC Kodi Krypton can easily be setup to run on this device with a few simple instructions and a Micro SDHC card.
Running LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on the Hub will give you a better Kodi device than the Mi Box. A 2.5" HDD can also be directly connected to it as well.

Cheapest is not the best when it comes to Android Kodi. Unsupported cheap Android boxes, form Ship and Forget companies are frankly rubbish for Android Kodi. They are only good for using LibreELEC Kodi on them if you want to do some DIY.

A simple DIY S905, officially LibreELEC supported - Kodi device is the ODROID C2. You may need an external Hard drive power supply to use with that device.

https://wiki.libreelec.tv/index.php?title=Main_Page

The upcoming LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on AMLogic S905 boxes is better than Android Kodi Krypton.
It really depends on how serious you take your Kodi. Wink

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#3
Odroid c2 is realy good will even play 4k hevc only 42 bucks + cost of the emmc and the case and power supply
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#4
This is helpful, thanks. To be clear, the USB drive is an external enclosure with its own PSU. It was once hooked up to a WD TV Live, which would power the drive up and down when it was powered up and down, which was very nice, as it saved the user from having to flip the switch on the HD or leave it running it all the time. Do you know if these Kodi boxes will do this? My experience with Kodi begins and ends with using it on my (HT)PC.
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#5
It also has to work seamlessly with no Internet connection. The idea would be to load the HD with content and use the player in a remote location with no Internet.
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#6
Yes LibreELEC can do that.

The best idea would be to connect your HDD and Ethernet and scrape the TV/Movies Metadata when you have an Internet connection. It is then all retained when you move to a non-internet remote location. Smile

File can easily be played without ever seeing an Internet connection as well.

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#7
Just to let you know, I ended up using LibreELEC with a Core 2 Duo system I cobbled together from abandoned parts. OC'd to 3 GHz, my E6600 and GT520 system can play H.265 rips up to 1920x800 with no problem. Full H.265 1080p stutters, but H.264 is fine. I can live with that. I have a portable Kodi installation on my main PC that I use to scrape metadata for the USB drive. I export its library to individual files, and I Update Library on the E6600 system. Works great, except that Suspend doesn't work. It shuts down but leaves the fans running, and Resume doesn't work at all. No big deal. Great deal for free. Smile
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Best Kodi box for local content over USB?0