Odroid N2 or RockPro 64?

xleox · August 19, 2019 at 6:38 PM

Hello there. This is my first post and I'd like a suggestion from you people if possible.

I'm about to buy a SBC and that's the usage I have in mind:

Basically I want it to be a media center, so I intend to install. The only services I intend to run apart from Kodi itself are Sonarr, Radarr, Bazarr and Transmission (maybe Jacket or another pkg if necessary, but it's mostly these ones). As for now my TV is 1080p but as I'll get a 4K TV asap I'd like my SBC to be 4k 60fps HDR ready and have HDMI-CEC support (so that I can use the TV remote). The origin of most of the videos I watch is my personal library (attached SATA disk and local 1GB network) and a Plex share from a friend (which I'd like to be able to direct play/stream instead of transcode).

Having that in mind I narrowed things down to two models. Hardkernel Odroid N2 and Pine 64 RockPro64. I spent most of the last weekend comparing their tech specs, accessories, development maturity of the available images, reading their forums, etc, and I must say that they seem to be mostly the same to me. Considering my needs, which one of these two would you indicate to me?

And more:

Considering my usage will the 2GB RAM model do, or I must prefer the 4GB? I'm also getting an eMMC card. Will 8GB be enough?

Thank you and I appreciate any help you may give me.

buzzmarshall · August 20, 2019 at 7:22 PM

Ive got both units and they are both good units but would say at this point in time i think the HK support pool of coders is a bit deeper then the Pine guys are... one's amlogic and the other is rockchips flagship product in the sbc market so theres a few dif's based on the development differences with the week point being a hardware accelerated gpu stack at this point in time... Open drivers are currently being worked on with some progress but still there is hurdles that need to be crossed..

for the cost differences i would buy the 4 gig ram versions as more ram is always a good thing... Ive had both units since they came out and spend most of my time developing on them more as a development board then just a media player so my expectations are probably somewhat different from your's but honestly i think both are easily capable of what your looking for and would suggest you look around and see which one's got the most active development guys in the area your looking to use the unit in... kwiboo would be one to ask about the rockpro as he's pretty active in that area and any of the N2 guys could better advise you on it...