[Binford81]

Any help would be highly appreciated. Looking at buying a media box but with so many options out there its hard to know which unit works better than another and which one is of higher quality. My needs are mainly for Xbmc streaming live tv over seas as well as hd. Heres what choices ive found so if you can kindly make a recommendation on which ones are quality and which ones to avoid.

Mx2
Jynx box
Nuc
Cubox
Mygica
Ruku
Pivos
Crystal box
Amazon fire

Also, is there any advantages or disadvantages of running lunix over android? One shop who offers a linux based unit says linux is better for streaming without buffering an lag but for all i know it could be him just pushing his own product.
Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks ladies and gents

[illiac4]

Nuc beats them all from the list and this by far.
For media center linux is better then android. If you are not capable of installing linux from scratsh then use openelec.

[nickr]

Actually more accurate to say "a small x86 [1] box beats them all from the list..."

There are plenty of small capable x86 boxes that well outperform any arm box at present. Start asking your vendors about:

*24p (actually 23.976Hz) support
*25Hz and 50Hz support
*HD audio passthrough
*DTS and AC3 passthrough
*High bitrate and high encoding level bluray material
*mpeg2 support (for watching PVR sources)
*deinterlacing support (ditto)

[1] ie a "proper" PC, which of course includes x86_64.

[Ned Scott]

NUC.

[Binford81]

Appreciate the feed back guys .

[bluray]

My needs are mainly for Xbmc streaming live tv over seas as well as hd. Mx2
Jynx box
Nuc
Cubox
Mygica
Ruku
Pivos
Crystal box
Amazon fire

If you are looking for a media player, you can leave PC out of the list. If you are looking for a PC to run XBMC, you can leave media player out of the list.

You should compare NUC to Brix and other mini PC's instead, and you should compare Ruku to Apple TV and other media players instead.....