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What’s your perfect XBMC streamer?


wappinghigh

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For just a kodi experience, there's no need for android boxes or expensive hardware.  Along with libreelec, osmc runs really well too on cheap hardware. They sell nice piece of equipment called the vero 4k. Specs are good but an rpi2 or 3 runs well on it too.  All depends on how cheap you went on the microsd card. Stay away from cheap knockoff microsd's and your box should run 24-7

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46 minutes ago, dcovach said:

For just a kodi experience, there's no need for android boxes or expensive hardware.  Along with libreelec, osmc runs really well too on cheap hardware. They sell nice piece of equipment called the vero 4k. Specs are good but an rpi2 or 3 runs well.  All depends on how cheap you went on the microsd card. Stay away from cheap knockoffs and your box should run 24-7

Nice. Great advice...Yep my TX5  4K player is toast simply because Amlogic isn't supported anymore (that is "properly") by the LibreELEC community.. its going into landfill which is a shame

Any issues with support of osmc?  

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I haven't had any issues to report, but there is a forum and the developer(s) does participate.  Osmc seems to keep getting better.  Its been running stable on rpi's ever since I started using it.

Unfortunately a lot of things end up in a landfill but rpi's are still very popular and can be re-used for many other projects when one day your favourite os is no longer available.  Don't expect kodi plugins to be reliable. Stick to streaming your own local library and you'll be happy. I've found that Apple airplay works well (music only) and casting youtube videos from a mobile.  There are other good plugins that are solid but I haven't tested that many. 

You could literally spend weeks playing around with kodi plugins, no matter which box you have.  There's too many. Osmc does a good job of being a media player without any plugins. Add the chowmain kodi lite, or kodi full, driver to your c4 system and you can have your media in the c4 database.  You can program to auto turn on a room when you airplay music or cast youtube videos to it.  It's one of my all time favourite drivers.  

 

 

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I'll second the suggestion for rpi's running osmc.  I used to run libreelec and/or openelec on some amlogic boxes as well.  I was specifically using the G-box's made by Matricom (G-Box 1, G-Box 2, and the MX3).  But it got hard finding specific libreelec and openelec builds for those boxes and they didn't update the builds to the latest version of Kodi very quickly.  I went several months on an outdated version of Kodi that didn't include SSL support.  Not only did I have those issues but it required re-flashing the boxes to remove the preloaded software from Matricom to begin with.  Re-flashing almost never went perfect on the first attempt.  I was constantly having to go through their support forums to catch up on the latest changes.  It seemed the process never seemed to remain consistent and god help you if you accidentally attempted to flash it with the wrong file meant for a different variant of the amlogic processor.

 

So I switched to Raspberry Pi 3 B+ with OSMC.  It's nice when something just works.  It required no tweaking and it just plain works.  Additionally, the overall cost for the RPI (board, case, power supply, micro-sd card) came out to about $20 less than what I had paid for the G-Box's anyway.  I've been super happy with the rpi's.  And what's also cool is that if I ever feel like playing around with one then I can just pull the micro-sd card out, set it aside, and install another one with a whole different software load on it.  Once I'm finished I'll just put the original micro-sd card back in and I've got my Kodi box back.

 

Also, why on earth are you still calling it XBMC?  That's sooo 2014. ;)

 

EDIT: I should also add that I've had no problems running Kodi plugins.

On the other hand, I have not been watching 4K anything yet so I can't comment on how well they'd perform with that content.

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There are a lot of plugins that work but tend to break suddenly.  Most people get confused into thinking there is either something wrong with the kodi box or the OS.  It's most likely the plugins break and are at the mercy of the developer updating a fix.

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3 minutes ago, dcovach said:

There are a lot of plugins that work but tend to break suddenly.  Most people get confused into thinking there is either something wrong with the kodi box or the OS.  It's most likely the plugins break and are at the mercy of the developer updating a fix.

Agreed.  At least that's been my experience with 3rd party addons.  It is important to keep in mind that the 3rd party addons are maintained by someone who is not affiliated with Kodi and can be very unreliable.  If you stick with the Kodi official addons then they're pretty stable.

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Just now, dutsnekcirf said:

Agreed.  At least that's been my experience with 3rd party addons.  It is important to keep in mind that the 3rd party addons are maintained by someone who is not affiliated with Kodi and can be very unreliable.  If you stick with the Kodi official addons then they're pretty stable.

Yes, true.  OSMC as a stock OS and with included plugins tend to run just fine.

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23 minutes ago, wappinghigh said:

Because if it’s not the device tends to stuff up the viewer experience.Partic if run into a switch or home receiver. Or it won’t work on a balun. Handshake issues etc etc

 

Cheers!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Honestly I haven't looked into the specifics on HDCP with the Raspberry Pi.  I connect one of my rpi's through an HDMI switch (Tendak 4K HDMI Switch with PIP 4x1 HDMI Switcher) and have never had a problem with it.  I also connect a second one through a home receiver (Pioneer Elite vsx-45) in another zone.  With this one I do occasionally experience a hiccup that could be a symptom of HDCP weirdness.  When this hiccup occurs; which isn't often, I'll hear audio but see no video.  The quick and dirty fix for me is to simply change sources to something else for a moment and then go back to Kodi.  Once I do that, it seems to complete the handshake properly to get video back.

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48 minutes ago, wappinghigh said:

Because if it’s not the device tends to stuff up the viewer experience.Partic if run into a switch or home receiver. Or it won’t work on a balun. Handshake issues etc etc

I'm sure you realize there are ways around it.

 

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