[wrxtasy]

I have *just* found that Popcorn/NMJ, while acceptable for a movie library, doesn't cut it (for me) for a large music library. So that caused me to search .... and land here.

Tell me if I have this right - for no transcoding or HW decoding, I can buy a Celeron/Pentium Intel NUC and I am good to go with Kodi??

Jeff

Yes that is correct for Audio. You will get HD Audio passthrough (no transcoding) on Intel NUC's and Hi-Res Audio like FLAC's will be decoded by Kodi and output as Bit Perfect, Multichannel 24bit/192kHz Audio to your AVR with no loss in Audio quality.

Stay away from anything Android if you are an Audio Geek, there was a Hi-Res Android Audio limitations discussion HERE

For video if you want Hardware decoding of the HEVC(H265) compression standard you are looking at Intel Apollo or Kaby Lake Intel Microarchitecture or ARM AMLogic S905 platforms running LibreELEC Kodi, which also have no audio limitations.

However - Be aware you need to do detailed research about new Intel "Lake" architecture. Since the introduction of a Display Port to HDMI 2.0 converter chips on some platforms there are all sorts of Audio problems. Ask in relevant thread about such issues.