[MrCrispy]

What is the actual speed difference in GUI on ARM vs x86 (i.e. Android vs Chromebox/HTPC) ? Is it really night and day for large libraries?

There has been lot of talk in the other threads about how some of these boxes have their own internal players that can playback 3D ISO as well as HD passthru.

The only way it does what it does is by replacing the default Kodi video player, like we used to do with DS Player. That means that it is a dead end, and as soon as we get Kodi 15 or whatever it will be a piece of abandonware most likely as Himedia moves onto the next box. I only like recommending solutions with fairly broad community support that use standard Kodi features, because that means it will work fine with future versions of the software. The Himedia box is a hack designed to get around current limitations that will be like a time capsule of our current limitations years from now. A Chromebox will improve with every update. The VidOn Box isn't perfect, but I feel they are providing better community support than Himedia and at least they aren't pretending they have a Kodi solution.

I agree with this, but I don't understand why current boxes will become abandonware with the next version of Kodi? Is that generally what's happened in the past? AFAIK they just run the regular Android version of Kodi, with the only 'hack' being the workaround to use the external player, which is fully supported in Kodi.