2017-04-04, 17:55
Looking at the updated START HERE important thread you mentioned was updated, in every place the Vero 4K shows up, I see my Odroid C2 there as well.
I will totally agree that for some, the additional price of the Vero 4K may be worth it to get personalized support and that the inclusion of a working out of the box wireless remote is a very nice touch. Myself, I went with a C2 and the MINIX A2 Lite remote recommended in the C2 thread. I'd say total cost was about half that of a Vero 4K, but I did have to customize the Kodi remote file to get all of the buttons to do what I want and of course the labels on some of the buttons don't match their function (STOP as you mentioned).
All that said, I'm not sure exactly what the personalized support gets the average consumer. Yes, there are very quick acknowledgements of issues in the OSMC forums. In some cases there are quick fixes provided as well, but in others there are not. There are several owners of the original Vero that have waited 2 months for a fix to some stuttering issues on certain videos which occurred after an update to Krypton. The OSMC team can fix/address some issues themselves, and for others they need additional resources from Kodi developers, the hardware vendor or developers that work on a supporting a specific hardware platform like imx6.
Being based on the work of other projects and developers, there is only so much a specific Kodi/Linux distro can do to encourage issues to be resolved quickly. If some consumers think the device performance and level of support they get with a Vero 4K is worth the price, I have no problem with that. I don't understand or agree, but that's what free markets are all about.
*Edit: Since the C2 is based on S905 and the Vero 4K on the S905x, there are some slight differences in codec support.
*Edit2: Full disclosure, I've had a negative opinion of the Vero line of media players ever since the first Vero was released and responses to questions about what was under the hood, where it was made, and how it was any different than the Cubox-i2w were very cagey. It took an owner taking one apart and posting images of the guts to confirm that the device was made by SolidRun and was very similar to a Cubox.
I will totally agree that for some, the additional price of the Vero 4K may be worth it to get personalized support and that the inclusion of a working out of the box wireless remote is a very nice touch. Myself, I went with a C2 and the MINIX A2 Lite remote recommended in the C2 thread. I'd say total cost was about half that of a Vero 4K, but I did have to customize the Kodi remote file to get all of the buttons to do what I want and of course the labels on some of the buttons don't match their function (STOP as you mentioned).
All that said, I'm not sure exactly what the personalized support gets the average consumer. Yes, there are very quick acknowledgements of issues in the OSMC forums. In some cases there are quick fixes provided as well, but in others there are not. There are several owners of the original Vero that have waited 2 months for a fix to some stuttering issues on certain videos which occurred after an update to Krypton. The OSMC team can fix/address some issues themselves, and for others they need additional resources from Kodi developers, the hardware vendor or developers that work on a supporting a specific hardware platform like imx6.
Being based on the work of other projects and developers, there is only so much a specific Kodi/Linux distro can do to encourage issues to be resolved quickly. If some consumers think the device performance and level of support they get with a Vero 4K is worth the price, I have no problem with that. I don't understand or agree, but that's what free markets are all about.
*Edit: Since the C2 is based on S905 and the Vero 4K on the S905x, there are some slight differences in codec support.
*Edit2: Full disclosure, I've had a negative opinion of the Vero line of media players ever since the first Vero was released and responses to questions about what was under the hood, where it was made, and how it was any different than the Cubox-i2w were very cagey. It took an owner taking one apart and posting images of the guts to confirm that the device was made by SolidRun and was very similar to a Cubox.