[Emulle]

Hey guys and gals, 

I am looking to buy me a small & cheap dedicated device for playing back 1080p material with audio ranging from 6ch AAC, DD+ all the way up to DTS HD-MA & Dolby TrueHD (No DTS X nor Atmos). 
What I have gathered from this thread is that the small android box AMLogic S905W seems to take the price.

Hi mate. Welcome.

The S905W really is entry level and I would only use it for 1080p & DD+ and HD audio running CoreELEC Kodi.
The specific ones with the included USB mini dongle (rounded) remote do not have Bluetooth. You really need a USB mini dongle receiver remote to use CoreELEC.

I would just like to have some questions answered before I venture on to purchase one of these: 

1. Will I be able to use a Bluetooth Remote to control KODI?

No. Bluetooth remote's - getting them to be fully compatible, if they connect at all in the first place is one big can of worms.
USB receiver Mini dongle remote's / keyboards are a lot more compatible, because they are Plug n Play. Plug USB receiver in and away you go.

The MINIX A2 lite remote is my personal favorite.

2. Can I use an external HDD to playback the files? (No streaming for me just yet) 

Yes but some Android devices have issues these days with NTFS or exFat formatted hard drives. Especially the new Fire TV Stick and the Mi Boxes and a bunch of other Android devices running Android Oreo. No issues with the Linux based Kodi OS's like LibreELEC or CoreELEC.

3. Can the device be set to always boot to KODI?

Not sure about Android, but LibreELEC / CoreELEC boots straight into Kodi. I would not use cheap Asian sourced boxes for Android Kodi anyway.

4. In the future I might start streaming HBO, Netflix & ViaPlay - will the device be capable of streaming from these services? (I am a complete newbie in the world of streaming, as I only have 8mbit line at the moment).

This is where you have to buy legit Netflix approved and DRM certified devices.
All the dirt cheap Android TV boxes from Asian sellers will not have the necessary approvals. See Post #1, down near the bottom of this very thread for detailed specifics.

And oh, I need 24p auto refresh rate change. I cannot do without it.

Hello, and thank you for your response! 

After having done some more research it seems as if the S905W, or perhaps any of the AMLogic boards will not work for me. 
Sometimes I'll watch Anime which require software decoding. 

I will check out the Amazon Fire - having only glanced it, it do seem quite capable but I cannot find any info if it will handle Hi10p media. 

Perhaps in the end my best bet would be a small PC running one of the kodi distros.