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I'm wanting to stream music to parts of my house (garage, back patio) that don't need a television or a full htpc, using my phone. Source will be mainly FLAC files residing on a server in the basement, available over gigabit wired and wireless. I'm looking at XBMC on Android primarily because in my experimentation streaming from one instance of XBMC to another via DLNA seems to just work in a fairly bulletproof manner, unlike a couple of other cheap boxes I've tried. XBMC also opens up the possibility of simply controlling the box via a remote like Yatze.

Needs:

- Analog stereo audio outputs
- Wi-Fi
- plays FLAC (gapless would be ideal, don't know how much hardware figures into that being as XBMC is capable there)
- Able to have XBMC autostart on boot
- isn't going to need maintenance/rebooting once set up (this thing will have no screen or input devices attached)
- Cheap (under $100)

Performance/processing power really doesn't matter much as long as networking is fine and the above points are covered. This will never play video, and nobody will ever use the XBMC GUI to know if it is stuttery or slow. It's just a dumb headless renderer, and I know XBMC is in some ways overkill and not intended for this usage but it seems to work if I can get the right piece of minimal, stable hardware.

The G-Box midnight seems like a pretty good example of the type of thing I am looking for, but frankly the length of that thread *looks down* makes me wonder if it's as stable a platform as I'd prefer, even once I get the proper firmware installed and things tweaked as needed. Or is it fine? At $75 it's certainly a deal, if it works without too much pain.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Droibox ace (cheap only £50...), droibox mx (I have), and dongles.

Android dongle's wifi range too low although they are very cheap, and not very stable.

I will check those out, thanks.

Antisuck... may want to check someone's post count before going with their advice. Maybe look through their posts. Are they all promoting one device? May want a second opinion.

I know nothing about android boxes though.

Thanks cwide, not buying anything based on a single recommendation of course.

G-box still looking like the front-runner (bonus it's available in the US, on Amazon no less), I'm wading through forum threads trying to determine if it's as functional and stable as I want once the proper firmware and software is applied.

What about the Raspberry pi? If you are not happy with it you can always use it for something else...

How will you control the device and select which songs to play if there are no input devices attached?

What are you actually trying to do? You have music on a server. You don't need xbmc to play music, particularly as you're not hooking the device up to anything to display the xbmc interface. You could do this with an iPod, or any Android phone connected to your home network. There's a stereo jack, and a screen built into them too.

(2013-06-09, 14:28)joelbaby Wrote: [ -> ]How will you control the device and select which songs to play if there are no input devices attached?

As I said, using my phone.

Quote:What are you actually trying to do? You have music on a server. You don't need xbmc to play music, particularly as you're not hooking the device up to anything to display the xbmc interface.

As I said, xbmc-to-xbmc seems to be a robust DLNA implementation in my setup, or I could use an XBMC remote like Yatze to run the new box directly.

Quote: You could do this with an iPod, or any Android phone connected to your home network. There's a stereo jack, and a screen built into them too.

I don't see the plus in needing to plug speakers into my phone or tablet and leave it sitting there so I can listen to music, when I could have a small dedicated box for the purpose and be walking around using my phone as a remote.