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The Celeron NUCs or Celeron Chromeboxes from the last year or so should have no issue with 1080 Hi10P videos. I was very hesitant to believe this myself, but a lot of people finally convinced me that it worked reliably.
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2016-11-03, 11:29
(This post was last modified: 2016-11-03, 11:36 by Pajoe.)
For the last 2 years our daily player is a ASUS CHROMEBOX-M004U Celeron 2955U (1.4 GHz) with 4 GB running LibreElec (jarvis?) It's not perfect but works with our HD Homerun over the air and plays most everything OK - we use a Flirc remote adapter. I do have a RPI2 that plays most everything really well but is extremely slow updating the library - it takes hours. We also have various Roku models that don't get used too often as they can not handle many of our home videos, and we canceled Netflix.. ( Roku does not do Kodi and we prefer Kodi)
As I get my Christmas want list together I have been considering adding the the new Xiaomi 'Mi Box'. I really can not add something very expensive like a new NUC or a new, higher powered Chromebox or even the Nvidia shield. I like the idea of Android TV, as it could also replace our main Roku 3 that we do not use too often these days. The $69.00 Xiaomi 'Mi Box' really sounds good, but I know some other low cost kodi boxes are better supported.
Would the new Xiaomi 'Mi Box' be best or Odroid c2 etc? I don't really need Netfilx but may want to sign up again.
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A bunch or IR remote controls (MCE IR remotes, Harmony's) work out of the box with the C2. It has its own IR receiver.
You can also program your own IR remote if you fancy a bit of DIY, and maybe learn something in the process.
Then there is also comprehensive HDMI-CEC remote control built in as well. Same as the RPi2.
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wrxtasy & ned - thanks for the replies. It sounds, at least, that I'm correctly understanding the various issues as I laid them out in my original post - which is some small consolation. (Though I'd rather have been wrong about there being no "perfect answer".)
It feels like the conflict isn't so much wanting hi-10P on it's own, but the combination of hi-10P and 10-bit HEVC in a single box. From the threads I've scanned, it seems like any i3/i5 NUC can do hi-10P in software - it's the 10-bit HEVC hybrid decoding that's the question mark. (There are plenty of posts saying 4k 10-bit HEVC is a no-go, but info on 1080p is thin.)
As for buying an android box, then tossing it and upgrading to a Kaby Lake NUC once the dust settles - it just seems like a waste to throw a third of my budget at something I don't plan to keep. (The Odroid is an exception, at $40). But I guess if the Cubi 2 is likely to have several months of growing pains (libreelec is apparently on kernel v4.8, which supports Kaby Lake - but who knows?), and I can't be confident in a Skylake NUC handling 10-bit HEVC, then that's the remaining option.
Maybe if I stick it out until the end of the year, there will be some reports on the Cubi 2 from Kodi users running linux.
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2016-11-07, 12:16
(This post was last modified: 2016-11-07, 12:17 by ximae.)
I see that the odroid c2 is constantly recomended with LibreElec, is there a reason for this, instead of just using the ubuntu image or even an android build?
Im asking because id prefer to have an os capable of more things, like specially using chrome/chromium, etc. I can always autostart kodi from them if needed.
Is that recomendation based on gui performance or just a few extra features?
i really am only going to use a 1080 non-cec display with hdmi audio.
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2016-11-07, 12:49
(This post was last modified: 2016-11-07, 13:24 by Pajoe.)
ximae : I have also been strongly considering the odroid c2 but found that fully equipped with emmc, power supply, shipping, case etc. the price is lower than the Wetec Play2 - but it the Wetec Play 2 may do more out of the box, as well as OTA/SAT TV
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2016-11-07, 14:36
(This post was last modified: 2016-11-07, 14:44 by Pajoe.)
I understand, Ximae . I do have some experience with linux, but not a guru in any way whatsoever. I started using it after it became too difficult to get drivers for OS/2 Warp but really did not enjoy using it until the early boxed sets of Suse and later switched to Ubuntu variations somewhere around version 6 ? Not sure, my memory is not as good these days.
Our main media player is a Chromebox running LibereElec, but I also have a couple RPI's, with one Rpi2 running Libreelec. From what I can tell, LibreElec is a scaled down linux, just enough to run kodi. I am far from an expert but would guess that if you already have a good linux machine it will run Kodi just as well.
Personally, I prefer the set top boxes, also like having a few drives attached to the Chromebox as it works as a pretty good media server, maybe not as good as my regular server that uses NFS, I also have an old AIOS HD media player on the network that I only use the internal drive for TV media storage, it's good enough for that quality, prefer to keep the bluray stuff on the nfs server. It's really mess of junk thrown together but for the most part works.