(2019-01-03, 02:16)wrxtasy Wrote: Cheapest but not the fastest is the MECOOL Pro W with it's wireless remote running LibreELEC or CoreELEC. It only has 100Mbit Ethernet and is limited to 2160p@30fps HEVC decoding.
High bitrate 45GB+ 4K HDR Bluray Rips playback need a device with Gigabit Ethernet.
Something like a AML S912 Tanix TX9 or the more expensive MINIX U9 - or a S905D device like the Mecool K1 Pro or the Vero 4K+
Fastest for the $$ is an Overclocked, Gigabit equipped (non HDR) ODROID C2 with a wireless USB mini dongle remote. eMMC will be a bit quicker for boot up, but a Samsung SD card will still work well. It does 2160p@60fps HEVC decoding.
For the C2 all you need for power is a USB > barrel power cord, then source power from a TV or phone charger.
All of them will also do HDMI-CEC control, you can use a CEC capable TV's remote.
OSMC or LibreELEC or CoreELEC Kodi on such devices includes a whole bunch of Kodi user configurable HDMI CEC control options.
DO NOT use these cheap AML devices for Graphically intensive 3rd party demanding Kodi Skins and expect Intel i series NUC Skin performance.
Also worth pointing out that the C2 won't convert HDR to SDR - so you are only able to playback SDR content on it (it will playback 10-bit HEVC 2160p HDR content, it just outputs it in 8-bit and won't flag it as HDR or convert it to SDR, so the colours are all washed out, and gamma completely wrong)
I don't know if the C2 correctly has HDMI gamut switching between SDR Rec 709 and SDR Rec 2020 - so even some of the small amount of UHD SDR content may playback in the wrong colour gamut if this isn't supported (i.e. washed out colours with 2020 flagged as 709) It could be that only Rec 709 SDR UHD stuff plays back correctly?
Pretty much every UHD movie released is Rec 2020 HDR (I've yet to see an SDR UHD Blu-ray), so your UHD SDR sources are somewhat limited.
If you are looking to playback UHD HEVC that is sourced from UHD HDR Blu-ray rips - avoid the C2. The C2 is a great solution for SDR HD Rec 709 content though, and very snappy.
With regard to CEC - whilst AMLogic devices support CEC - a large number of them (but not quite all) support it in a very unhelpful way, jamming CEC (and as a result ARC audio) for every other device connected to your AVR and/or TV (yes - even other HDMI inputs), even when the AMLogic is in standby or has been shutdown but left powered.
The only solution in this case is to physically remove the power connection or physically unplug the HDMI connection. I discovered this the hard way when I realised my AMLogic boxes were stopping my Sky HD box automatically switching my TV to the Sky box's HDMI input, and then the ARC audio from the Sky box didn't reach my AVR via ARC (and the sound would only come out of the TV speakers)