2019-09-09, 19:49
MOD: Edit to make the previous wall of text human readable !
Got this box about 2 weeks ago from Walmart to replace my ageing proprietary WD TV Live player, almost returned it, but thankfully I kept it.
I am an Apple iOS/Mac OSX user primarily except for using Windows modestly at work and Android for my Kids Amazon Fire Tablets.
My knowledge of Android is nearly non existent and historically I struggle to figure out how it works most of the time as I am used to the iOS interface. After a few days of tinkering with it, I finally started understanding how it works but it was a very bumpy road for someone like me who might except things to be ready to go out of the box.
I do not need the fast streaming capabilities that people seem to be very interested in. I literally want only a TV media box that I can attach 2 USB hard drives to, will organize all of my media files cleanly/neatly via metadata from the internet, will stream to iOS devices using DLNA within my own LAN network, and will not constantly complain about the internet being down or non existent.
For my situation, this media device is for a vacation home where hardline unlimited internet is unfortunately not an option and personal hotspotting my iPhone is only a temporary viable option to avoid my data from getting throttled. After a lot of frustration and time/effort, I got everything working as it needs to be.
Biggest annoyances are that you have to dig around on user forums to figure out what apps to use for your particular situation even for something as basic as what I was looking for. I wanted to do Plex originally but that requires a computer/server to be powered on and managed all of the time so I was able to come up with using the Kodi app as a solution.
This is a wonderful device and the Kodi app rocks, however, both Android and Kodi still have a LONG road ahead of them if they ever want to start making things appeal to non tech savy people.
This box and Kodi itself are great for experienced tech savy people but if you fall outside of any level of experience or tech savyness with both Android and Kodi you are in for a long ride of experimenting with settings galore and digging around on the internet researching issues to find a sea of almost endless answers/possible solutions.
Overall, I would recommend this device and Kodi but beware you WILL spend a lot of time getting it to work.
Got this box about 2 weeks ago from Walmart to replace my ageing proprietary WD TV Live player, almost returned it, but thankfully I kept it.
I am an Apple iOS/Mac OSX user primarily except for using Windows modestly at work and Android for my Kids Amazon Fire Tablets.
My knowledge of Android is nearly non existent and historically I struggle to figure out how it works most of the time as I am used to the iOS interface. After a few days of tinkering with it, I finally started understanding how it works but it was a very bumpy road for someone like me who might except things to be ready to go out of the box.
I do not need the fast streaming capabilities that people seem to be very interested in. I literally want only a TV media box that I can attach 2 USB hard drives to, will organize all of my media files cleanly/neatly via metadata from the internet, will stream to iOS devices using DLNA within my own LAN network, and will not constantly complain about the internet being down or non existent.
For my situation, this media device is for a vacation home where hardline unlimited internet is unfortunately not an option and personal hotspotting my iPhone is only a temporary viable option to avoid my data from getting throttled. After a lot of frustration and time/effort, I got everything working as it needs to be.
Biggest annoyances are that you have to dig around on user forums to figure out what apps to use for your particular situation even for something as basic as what I was looking for. I wanted to do Plex originally but that requires a computer/server to be powered on and managed all of the time so I was able to come up with using the Kodi app as a solution.
This is a wonderful device and the Kodi app rocks, however, both Android and Kodi still have a LONG road ahead of them if they ever want to start making things appeal to non tech savy people.
This box and Kodi itself are great for experienced tech savy people but if you fall outside of any level of experience or tech savyness with both Android and Kodi you are in for a long ride of experimenting with settings galore and digging around on the internet researching issues to find a sea of almost endless answers/possible solutions.
Overall, I would recommend this device and Kodi but beware you WILL spend a lot of time getting it to work.
