[mastermindjapan]

Hi all,

This is my first post to the forum and firstly I just want to say thank you to everyone contributing to the forums as it is very informative and helpful to newbies like myself.

Having done a fair bit of reading reviews and device-specific forums, I'm decided to seek for opinion and advice from some more experienced members.

I'm in the midst of purchasing a device to fit my requirements, which are very basic - purely video streaming on Kodi (no intention of android gaming etc).

I know that the NVIDIA Shield is very highly recommended and I have that shortlisted as a possibility, but it's just slightly out of my budget and I want to start off with a device that is closer to what I can afford currently, before diving deep into the world of Android boxes.

Netflix and Plex are not top on my priority list, but it would be nice to have.
I know that the Nexus Player is a good entry android box but it does not have eternet connection (can be fixed with an adaptor), but it's expensive in the UK currently.

I was thinking along the lines of Amazon Fire TV, NVIDIA Shield (out of budget), Matricom G-Box Q, Minix NEO U1…

But what really intrigued me is the £50-£60 android boxes that seemingly have the same features as the above suggested more expensive and popular boxes.

So what I'd like to ask really is; which of these "lesser" known branded boxes have good after market support?

I see boxes like MXQ or MXIII and M8S, Wetek, Beelink, Tronsmart being recommended quite a fair bit… do I need to do more reading on this topic?


Anyways, I've rambled on for my first post and hope that some one can assist along my virgin journey.

Kind regards,
M

[tredman]

Wetek offer good support imo, i have a Core & a Play and the support on their forums is excellent, as is the after sales, if needed.

The Wetek Core would be the one I'd get if I couldn't stretch to a shield (I have both)

[sdsnyr94]

Also take a look at the Wetek Core : http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=238923

They are a Kodi sponsor, and their support has been very good. I've had mine for a little over a week.. it's got a few bugs that are being ironed out, but most of those have been outside of Kodi.

[DarrenHill]

Just avoid any of the cheap Chinese "fully loaded" boxes, and if you're not so wedded to Netflix and would consider something non-Android, perhaps look at a Pi2 as well?

[dukester]

nexus players arent that bad on WIFI and for the money work great. i have 2 of them, both fairly far from my router in my house and they stream pretty good, ~15GB files stream fine via WIFI, i have Fire TV's also and they are decent but showing their age and i find that with the recent kodi updates and the loss of libstagefright they tend to need to work harder to decode higher bitrate stuff, the nexus is a plus because it runs the latest android OS and will get OS updates before most other android boxes for a while still yet imo, also you can just install KODI from the play store and your good to go.

[mastermindjapan]

Thanks for all the responses so far guys!

I would consider the Nexus, but wireless doesn't run very well with my router and even my computer suffers a bit from the connection (had to use ethernet connection for stability).

A couple of recommendations for the WeTek and I see that they have a fairly large following on this forum with quite a big forum thread.

On the subject of cheaper boxes, I know that WeTek is more budget friendly and there are also boxes like Minix, Tronsmart etc.

What about the boxes that I see mentioned all the time like M8S+, MXQ, MXIII?
Are these the "Fully-loaded" cheap chinese type boxes?

There are conflicting views where some people suggest they work quite well for their price range at £40-60.

Do they have much after-market support?

Thank you all for contributing once again

[sdsnyr94]

Just avoid any of the cheap Chinese "fully loaded" boxes, and if you're not so wedded to Netflix and would consider something non-Android, perhaps look at a Pi2 as well?

The nice thing about the Core is you can get the best of both worlds... Android if you want the apps... Openelec on SDCard if you just want a vanilla Kodi install.

[DarrenHill]

What about the boxes that I see mentioned all the time like M8S+, MXQ, MXIII?
Are these the "Fully-loaded" cheap chinese type boxes?

There are conflicting views where some people suggest they work quite well for their price range at £40-60.

Do they have much after-market support?

Thank you all for contributing once again

Generally they are found on eBay or Amazon or similar sites (usually with "fully loaded" in the title of the offer). The terms of service of the Kodi Foundation specifically precludes Kodi being supplied with add-ons pre-installed, especially add-ons which offer and facilitate piracy and access to illegal streams (add-ons which are on our banned add-ons (wiki) list, posts about which get binned on sight). Our forum rules (wiki) specifically state that we do not support them, and any box that is contaminated with them will get no help here if things go wrong.

And no, their suppliers usually don't offer any help either, as they either don't have a clue about what they are offering software-wise, or they do it know that they are breaking the rules but as they already have your money they don't care. As you can see from the trash forum, most of the enquiries concerning them (and their banned add-ons) relate to this and just get binned.

You get what you pay for - basically if the box is offering something that seems to be too good to be true, or to offer media for free that you would normally have to pay to get access to, then avoid it as that source will be illegal, short lived and usually extremely unreliable. Others in this thread have recommended several good options, I wanted to mention some of the ones to avoid to save you wasting your money and being disappointed.

[mastermindjapan]

Thanks for that comprehensive response Darren.

That's really helpful and certainly did assist to clear any doubts about the cheaper android boxes.

Many thanks for all the replies so far and I would love to hear more opinions and comments about which box you would recommend at the £100 range and the £50-60 range.

And also how good the after-market support is for brands like Tronsmart, Matricom, WeTek etc.

Cheers!

[wrxtasy]

Pure Kodi box for video streaming with no need for Android = OpenELEC or OSMC (RPi2), both OS's run Kodi well.

These slim mean and lean Kodi distributions are virtually Plug N Play and ideal for an Appliance like Kodi box.

Options and devices I personally run (in order of GUI speed slowest to fastest)
- RPi2
- ODROID C1+
- WeTek Core

All these work well for a pure Kodi media player. The last two also playback 1080p HEVC.

I release distributions for OpenELEC for the Core and the ODROID C1+
Both work nicely indeed.

---

Just a heads up, new Tronsmart S905 Android Hardware (S95) runs a GPL Violating custom version of XBMC from a company called VidOn. I would stay away from them if I were you. VidOn are basically breaching XBMC Copyright.
You will get no support whatsoever for this device on the Kodi forums. Its a pretty serious matter.

Read all about VidOn's terrible behaviour over here, and this is where veteran Kodi developers get involved who actually wrote the XBMC / Kodi code:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2206050

[mastermindjapan]

Thanks for the info wrxtasy!

I meant to ask you as I've seen a lot of your very helpful posts around the forum but might not have enough permissions to send Private Messages yet;

Would you recommend the WeTek core for a new user?

I've been quite certain that I want to go down the Android route (eliminating the RPi1/2) - simply because I have been using Android phones and am more familiar with that OS in general.

Is OpenELEC and OSMC another platform/OS?

[Soulbind]

OpenELEC is an OS designed around Kodi. It only serves as a minimal OS made specifically for Kodi , nothing more (doesn`t even have a GUI or anything,, Kodi is the GUI for it). It can run on generic x86 hardware (Intel or AMD CPUs), on on some devices like the Wetek CORE . You install it and then when you boot up, it goes directly into Kodi.

http://openelec.tv/