[wrxtasy]

cheap: 25€ board only

Where can you buy a RPi 3B+ for 25€ ?

• perfect auto display refresh rate 
  
• perfect playback for interlaced 50Hz content (and tvheadend server channels)
  
• pretty good upscaler for SD content (better than shield tv). if you have a huge DVD or DVD musicals collection
  
• chapters skip/reward working, without sound or image distorsions
  
• stability
  
• perfect x264 1080p playback (on ethernet)
  
• perfect VC-1 playback, if you buy the licence (1€20!)
  
• easy installation and software updates with libreelec or osmc
  
• CEC, if you don't have a dedicaced remote
  

I tried many solutions (shield tv, htpc, odroid c1+, c2, ...) and the raspberry was the only one to check all.

Having no issues with any of those on a USD $46 ODROID C2.

[noggin]

cheap: 25€ board only

Where can you buy a RPi 3B+ for 25€ inc. tax ?     

OP wasn't specific about a Pi 3B+ - just 'A Raspberry', but I suspect it was a typo for €35 - which is the target price point for a Pi B+-type SBC (B, B+, 2B, 3B and 3B+ have all been at roughly that price point, with the A/A+ cheaper, and the Zero and Zero W cheaper still)

For a very low cost solution in certain situations - the £10 Zero W with an IR receiving TSOP soldered to a GPIO pin is a very neat media player for low-ish bitrate WiFi streaming. Obviously not as snappy as a 3B+ - but incredibly good value if the limitations work for your requirements.  

If you just want a media player, playing content from a uSD card, for digital signage type solutions, the £5 Zero is great. (Put your media file on the uSD card and it 'just works').

[wrxtasy]

OP wasn't specific about a Pi 3B+ - just 'A Raspberry',

Huh ?

This is what the OP wanted ?

What I need is to watch any popular video containers/codecs, so H.264, HEVC, VP9 and also VC-1 because many movies were encoded with VC-1...

Tell me how a any RPi is going to decode any VP9, let alone decent bitrate 10bit HEVC reliably, out of the box without buying a heatsink ?
And even then I have my doubts about decoding reliability due to no Hardware decoding of HEVC.

[mika91]

cheap: 25€ board only

Where can you buy a RPi 3B+ for 25€ ? 

Gearbest. RPI 3B, 24€ free delivery in France.
Not the base price, but there are discounts on rpi at least one week per month.


Sure the OC2 is better, but double the price in France and chapter skipping doesn't worked well when I tested.

[noggin]

OP wasn't specific about a Pi 3B+ - just 'A Raspberry',

Huh ?

This is what the OP wanted ?

What I need is to watch any popular video containers/codecs, so H.264, HEVC, VP9 and also VC-1 because many movies were encoded with VC-1...

Tell me how a any RPi is going to decode any VP9, let alone decent bitrate 10bit HEVC reliably, out of the box without buying a heatsink ?
And even then I have my doubts about decoding reliability due to no Hardware decoding of HEVC.  

I meant the OP for the €24 Euro comment, not the thread OP.

My earlier comments stand - if you don't need HEVC (I still have no SD or HD HEVC content - as I don't live in Germany, and don't re-compress my content using HEVC, nor do I download content illegally. I suspect there are others like me - who just watch Live/Recorded MPEG2/H264 SD/HD TV and watch their own DVD MPEG2 content and Blu-ray VC-1/H.264 and MPEG2 content stored on a server). The Pi works very well for those.

I'd suggest a Flirc case rather than a heatsink if HEVC is an issue - but an S905/S905X/S912 solution will be better for H.265/HEVC and obviously for 4K. However - the AMLogic stuff is still just not as reliable or usable IME. You still get funnies. Live TV was really odd for a while because of nasty noise reduction, and I still get far more random crashes with AMLogic stuff. My no-name AMLogic S905X box is also very laggy - worse than a Pi 3B+ - when navigating a large file directory in LibreElec. The Vero 4K is a lot better - but still does random stuff I'm not expecting. The C2 is a great little board - but for some reason I always end up back using a Pi or a Chromebox for non UHD/HEVC stuff.

Sure the Pi 3B+ has limitations (no Atmos/DTS:x, no 4K, no VP9 hardware acceleration, HD HEVC with limitations) - but if those limitations don't impact you - I have no problems recommending it. The level of support and reliability are great - and just basic stuff just works on it.

If the original poster in the thread wants VP9 - then they need to look elsewhere. I have zero content in VP9 and don't watch YouTube on my Kodi boxes. I realise others have different requirements.

[wrxtasy]

Sure the OC2 is better, but double the price in France and chapter skipping doesn't worked well when I tested.

Yes that is a known problem which was fixed in the @kszaq community releases of AML LE which were always superior to official LE anyways on most S9xx devices.

I would happily pay double the price for a faster device with Gigabit ethernet, eMMC, HDMI 2.0, Hardware decoding of everything and HD Audio passthrough inc Atmos and DTS:X

In the end we can all agree hardware choices are really based on users wants and actual needs.

My no-name AMLogic S905X box is also very laggy - worse than a Pi 3B+ - when navigating a large file directory in LibreElec.

C'mon surely someone as experienced as yourself has done the No Risk - no-brainer copying of LE Data partition to faster S905X internal eMMC storage, for a definitely snappier LE device these days ?

[HOWTO] Boot from SD card, use internal memory for data (click)

[mika91]

Sure the OC2 is better, but double the price in France and chapter skipping doesn't worked well when I tested.

Yes that is a known problem which was fixed in the @kszaq community releases of AML LE which were always superior to official LE anyways on most S9xx devices.

I would happily pay double the price for a faster device with Gigabit ethernet, eMMC, HDMI 2.0, Hardware decoding of everything and HD Audio passthrough inc Atmos and DTS:X

In the end we can all agree hardware choices are really based on users wants and actual needs.  

Sure,

When I tested the C2 (on kzaq build, or yours I don't remember), you answered me

 

• chapter skip in Kodi has always been a bit hit and miss with LE on the C2. advancedsetings.xml won't help, an updated Kernel will and that will come sometime in the future.
  

 

So if it's fixed now, I'll happy to switch from RPI to Odroid as soon as I'll change my old 1080p tv and need hevc or hdr content.

To close the off-topic, I'll say that Odroid C2 checks all OP requirements, and RPI is an alternative if you accept to only get h264 and Vc-1 files.

[crea]

The reason I requested HEVC and VP9 is streaming providers started using it to increase quality and to save bandwidth, even for 1080p - especially in countries with slow internet connections, getting a good picture with as little as 3mbps is great. Users don't want to think about codecs they just want to use their TV. That's why IMHO it's not acceptable not to support HEVC and VP9 in 2018

[mika91]

I get your point.
I have such a small ADSL connection (400KB/s), but even with hevc, I found the image quality not great on 1080p.
So I abandoned streaming, and only use rip or downloaded files, that's why stay with h264 is an acceptable compromise for me.

[crea]

C'mon surely someone as experienced as yourself has done the No Risk - no-brainer copying of LE Data partition to faster S905X internal eMMC storage, for a definitely snappier LE device these days ?

[HOWTO] Boot from SD card, use internal memory for data (click)

 Don't forget noname boxes often have cheapest crappy eMMC module, not much better than a good SD card. "noname s905" now falls in $30 category and like I admitted already it can cause trouble. $50-70 will give you a "branded" chinese box with acceptable quality parts.

[noggin]

My no-name AMLogic S905X box is also very laggy - worse than a Pi 3B+ - when navigating a large file directory in LibreElec.

C'mon surely someone as experienced as yourself has done the No Risk - no-brainer copying of LE Data partition to faster S905X internal eMMC storage, for a definitely snappier LE device these days ?

[HOWTO] Boot from SD card, use internal memory for data (click) 

I was comparing like-with-like. The Pi 3B+ doesn't have eMMC storage...