[thebertster]

Here's an update to my earlier "review":

I have completely ditched the provided cheap and nasty remote. I always intended to use my Logitech Harmony anyway, so I learnt all the buttons from the provided remote and basically it worked as well with the Harmony as it does with the original, i.e. it is unusable. Same problems of non-response and "stuck" keys. I am certain the problem is software/driver here. I therefore switched to the USB IR receiver I was using with my Pi, and this works perfectly.

As far as GUI performance is concerned, I would say it is now on a par with RaspBMC on the Pi. I don't know if this is the result of updates (there have been several since the previous review), ditching the OSMC remote, time or some combination of the three, but I'd say it's now usable - though not the improvement on the Pi that I was expecting from the Vero hype. It does, however, take much longer (about 5-6 seconds) to start playback of any video - this is definitely much longer than it takes on the Pi.

Unfortunately I have to retract my statement that video playback is flawless. I have found several videos in my library that playback perfectly well on the Pi but experience horrific stuttering and frame skip on the Vero. I haven't yet worked out the common factor, but they are all SD videos running at 50Hz (and I have it set to match refresh rate to video frame rate just as I did on the Pi)...yet other 50Hz videos playback fine.

Also, CEC simply does not work at all. I primarily use CEC to turn off my TV when the Kodi Screensaver kicks in (I don't use it for remote control) - this function works perfectly well with RaspBMC on the Pi, but with the Vero, CEC does nothing. I see from another post that this is yet another thing that is acknowledged as not currently working on the Vero.

The crashing problem still happens (Kodi exits to a blue screen with a square sad face then Kodi restarts shortly afterwards), but I've noticed it seems to be significantly worst in the first few minutes after a reboot and tends to be when going into a menu from the home screen (doesn't seem to matter which - TV Shows, Movies, Settings). I have only had one crash that has occurred after the system has been up for a few minutes. I am using a MySQL data store (as I was with the Pi). The problem seems to be related to SYSTEM uptime rather than KODI uptime (i.e. if I exit Kodi and let the OS restart the process, the crashing doesn't occur but if I reboot the system, crashing occurs frequently for several minutes after reboot).

I'm still not impressed at the quality of what I have purchased. This is a commercial product, priced and advertised as such, and making pretty bold claims which in my view have not been delivered on. I feel I was completely misled and that in fact my money was used to bank-roll the development of the product I paid for in advance. I am pretty sure this is just the result of naivety and overambitiousness rather than a deliberate strategy, but nonetheless, it leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

I would feel less cheated if, for example, pre-orders had been taken and the volume of these used as evidence to obtain a bank loan or other investment - the money should have been taken from customers at the point that an actual product was delivered. Instead, my money was taken in full (I purchased three units for myself and two friends) in November on the expectation of a product being delivered "by the January 2015 if not before" which was not actually delivered until late March and even then is not working properly. Perhaps the problem is with trying to apply an Open Source mentality (which is appropriate to OSMC) to a commercial product (Vero running OSMC). Nor can Vero be compared to a Raspberry Pi which is clearly marketed as being a low-cost "build your own" platform in the spirit of Open Source - Vero is marketed as a commercial consumer media centre solution which happens to be running Open Source software developed by the same organisation.

I am going to hold on to the Vero in the hope that eventually these issues will be sorted out, but I continue to be more than a little annoyed and disappointed at what has happened here.