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START HERE - Pick the Right Kodi Box (updated Dec 2020)
So, had a play late last night once my media all added.

Unfortunately having to run off wireless for the time being, amd having a few issues with throughput. Cant get anything above 53Mbit/s (about 6MB/s) and its up and down like a fiddler's elbow. With that, the high(ish) bitrate 4K stuff (Planet Earth 2) stutters and stops after a few seconds.

So I increased the cache for all media in advancedsettings.xml to 250MB and fillrate to 30 which appears to have helped tremendously, but still get stutter where the buffer runs out after a few mins.

Checking network throughput while watching, it is still all over the shop. This is bizarre as my Sony XE90 (which is notorious for having crap wifi and ethernet) can manage a consistent 150Mb/s (16MB/s) over wifi.

This is running off an NFS share. SMB is much much worse.

Other than this I am impressed, the UI is slick and the rest of my media appears to be fine.

Any suggestions? Could this be driver related?

Also, whats the best cache size / fill rate for these Minix U9 boxes?
Why dosnt it say that the VERO 4K supports HDR ? cause it does, it might misslead people to not buy this excellent machine.
so i asked about a box with HDR HVEC capabilities few months ago, and people said there isn't any source so its a waste of time. Now i see a lof of UHD HDR stuff and i didnt get any box. Was wondering which one to pick?i already have a raspberry pi 2 tahts running OSMC but its mainly there as a NAS, everything i play through my TV via smb but as you can imagine, 4k uhd bitrates are laggy on smb/dlna. So now i'm looking for a proper box. Been looking at himedia q10, minix u9-h, mi box, nvidia shield. which one should i get if i don't want to overspend?i only need hevc 10 bit hdr playback, with gbit and/or wifi AC, 5.1, DD+,Atmos output
(2017-10-24, 15:33)wapvi Wrote: so i asked about a box with HDR HVEC capabilities few months ago, and people said there isn't any source so its a waste of time. Now i see a lof of UHD HDR stuff and i didnt get any box. Was wondering which one to pick?i already have a raspberry pi 2 tahts running OSMC but its mainly there as a NAS, everything i play through my TV via smb but as you can imagine, 4k uhd bitrates are laggy on smb/dlna. So now i'm looking for a proper box. Been looking at himedia q10, minix u9-h, mi box, nvidia shield. which one should i get if i don't want to overspend?i only need hevc 10 bit hdr playback, with gbit and/or wifi AC, 5.1, DD+,Atmos output

I just bought a MINIX U9-H for 4K and 1080P playback. It was only $130ish and I figured it was cheap enough for a temporary solution, especially since I was able to sell my old Chromebox to cover most of the cost. It works great with 4K and 1080p source material and is STUPID FAST. I am running an Unraid server via gigabit using NFS, I can pull up a full 4K bluray and instantly skip 20min ahead. It's quite impressive. I went with it over the VERO because of the gigabit.

It's not so great for old SD content but that's mostly my kid's stuff and they use the Plex app that's built into our TV anyway.
XBMC specs: MINIX U9-H LibreELEC 4K all day

Home Theater - Samsung 65KS8000 - Denon 3200- Ascend Acoustics speakers - Maelstrom 18in sealed sub 7cu ft - Behringer EP2500

UNraid Server – Pentium G3258 – MSI - H81M-P33 – Antec HCG-400M PS - 8Gb RAM
What is the problem with SD content? I was about to pull the trigger on MINIX U9 until I saw your post. I need it for strictly KODI only.
(2017-10-24, 15:33)wapvi Wrote: so i asked about a box with HDR HVEC capabilities few months ago, and people said there isn't any source so its a waste of time. Now i see a lof of UHD HDR stuff and i didnt get any box. Was wondering which one to pick?i already have a raspberry pi 2 tahts running OSMC but its mainly there as a NAS, everything i play through my TV via smb but as you can imagine, 4k uhd bitrates are laggy on smb/dlna. So now i'm looking for a proper box. Been looking at himedia q10, minix u9-h, mi box, nvidia shield. which one should i get if i don't want to overspend?i only need hevc 10 bit hdr playback, with gbit and/or wifi AC, 5.1, DD+,Atmos output

I got a Minix U9-H last week and I have to say I am very happy with it. I installed LibreELEC to the eMMC as per the guides... At first I was using WiFi, which for some reason was struggling with 4K high bitrate content but turns out it was my router only operating on N not AC. Anyway, now have it running on Gb LAN and it plays everything I chuck at it, no buffering no dropped frames. UI is fluid and I haven't had any crashes whatsoever. All the audio codecs pass through to my Home theatre system too. Could not be happier, highly recommended.
(2017-10-24, 21:50)BigMixer Wrote: What is the problem with SD content? I was about to pull the trigger on MINIX U9 until I saw your post. I need it for strictly KODI only.

I tried to watch an SD show yesterday and it was choppy. It might be because the MINIX only auto switches 1080P and 4K? honestly IDK why, I switched over to the Plex app on my TV and it was fine.
XBMC specs: MINIX U9-H LibreELEC 4K all day

Home Theater - Samsung 65KS8000 - Denon 3200- Ascend Acoustics speakers - Maelstrom 18in sealed sub 7cu ft - Behringer EP2500

UNraid Server – Pentium G3258 – MSI - H81M-P33 – Antec HCG-400M PS - 8Gb RAM
What about minix u9h vs shield?anything im missing if i get the shield instead?
All I want is snappy interface and ture hd, master audio and audio passthrough. 1080p is max my tv support. No need for wifi, as i use lan all the time.

Few questions.

1. Should I get S905x or S912?
2. Any problem with khadas vim?

Thanks.
(2017-10-25, 00:02)joe_sun Wrote:
(2017-10-24, 21:50)BigMixer Wrote: What is the problem with SD content? I was about to pull the trigger on MINIX U9 until I saw your post. I need it for strictly KODI only.

I tried to watch an SD show yesterday and it was choppy. It might be because the MINIX only auto switches 1080P and 4K? honestly IDK why, I switched over to the Plex app on my TV and it was fine.

That is strange. The kids have a lot of old shows. I use Emby over Plex, but I may need to research this more.
(2017-10-24, 18:52)joe_sun Wrote: It's not so great for old SD content but that's mostly my kid's stuff and they use the Plex app that's built into our TV anyway.

All refresh switching and 720p (SD) / 1080p / 4K resolution switching works on AMLogic S9xx devices when setup and HDMI connected properly.
All SD content plays properly on numerous LibreELEC Kodi boxes I've tested, when Kodi is configured correctly for Hardware video acceleration.

What Kodi itself, on any box cannot do is Auto resolution switch downwards from 1080p > 720p
It can only go up like 720p > 1080p or 720p > 4K.

That has nothing to do with Hardware used. It the same for all Kodi devices and is a Kodi limitation.

AMLogic LibreELEC Kodi will also not have the Software Upscalers for 480p content Intel LibreELEC has. AML LE developers really have not seen the demand for such upscaling even tho the AML S912 would have enough CPU grunt to do some Software upscaling.

If you mostly watch 720p video content, set the Kodi GUI to 720p and let your 4K TV do all the 720p > 4K picture upscaling.
Mostly 1080p content then set a 1080p (standard) Kodi GUI resolution and let your 4K TV do all the 1080p > 4K picture upscaling.
4K content will auto resolution switch and output at 4K without the user needing to do a thing.

A LOT of Kodi Android devices cannot Auto resolution switch, or get colorspace outputs correct after resolution switching for 4K HDR Kodi, and its why a bunch of us are using AMLogic S905X / S912 LibreELEC.

(2017-10-26, 04:24)wrxtasy Wrote:
(2017-10-24, 18:52)joe_sun Wrote: It's not so great for old SD content but that's mostly my kid's stuff and they use the Plex app that's built into our TV anyway.

All refresh switching and 720p (SD) / 1080p / 4K resolution switching works on AMLogic S9xx devices when setup and HDMI connected properly.
All SD content plays properly on numerous LibreELEC Kodi boxes I've tested, when Kodi is configured correctly for Hardware video acceleration.

What Kodi itself, on any box cannot do is Auto resolution switch downwards from 1080p > 720p
It can only go up like 720p > 1080p or 720p > 4K.

That has nothing to do with Hardware used. It the same for all Kodi devices and is a Kodi limitation.

AMLogic LibreELEC Kodi will also not have the Software Upscalers for 480p content Intel LibreELEC has. AML LE developers really have not seen the demand for such upscaling even tho the AML S912 would have enough CPU grunt to do some Software upscaling.

If you mostly watch 720p video content, set the Kodi GUI to 720p and let your 4K TV do all the 720p > 4K picture  upscaling.
Mostly 1080p content then set a 1080p (standard) Kodi GUI resolution and let your 4K TV do all the 1080p > 4K picture  upscaling.
4K content will auto resolution switch and output at 4K without the user needing to do a thing.

A LOT of Kodi Android devices cannot Auto resolution switch, or get colorspace outputs correct after resolution switching for 4K HDR Kodi, and its why a bunch of us are using AMLogic S905X / S912 LibreELEC.

Thank you for the reply. That clears it up for me. Helpful as always.
Anyone tested the new Amazon 4k hdr device? Looks a decent box.
I have a question.

What is the different between Libreelec and OSMC?

Is better wetek play 2 with LE or Vero 4k with OSMC?

Thanks.
(2017-10-26, 04:24)wrxtasy Wrote: What Kodi itself, on any box cannot do is Auto resolution switch downwards from 1080p > 720p
It can only go up like 720p > 1080p or 720p > 4K.

That has nothing to do with Hardware used. It the same for all Kodi devices and is a Kodi limitation.

AMLogic LibreELEC Kodi will also not have the Software Upscalers for 480p content Intel LibreELEC has. AML LE developers really have not seen the demand for such upscaling even tho the AML S912 would have enough CPU grunt to do some Software upscaling.

If you mostly watch 720p video content, set the Kodi GUI to 720p and let your 4K TV do all the 720p > 4K picture  upscaling.
Mostly 1080p content then set a 1080p (standard) Kodi GUI resolution and let your 4K TV do all the 1080p > 4K picture  upscaling.
4K content will auto resolution switch and output at 4K without the user needing to do a thing.

Thanks for clarification wrxtasy.

So what options do I have if I want to watch SD (480p) content?  Setting the Kodi GUI to 480p (assuming that's even an option) is going to look terrible. 

If AMLogic LibreELEC Kodi does not have the Software Upscalers for 480p, does that mean I won't see anything on the screen or will it just be really poor quality?

So, is Intel the only realistic option for those who also want to watch 480p content and still have their Kodi GUI set to 1080p?  

I was planning on the getting the Minix NEO U9-H, but now I am not so sure.  Perhaps I will be better off waiting for Intel Gemini Lake.
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