Recommend a cheap Libreelec Compatible box with H265 HW Decoder

1st Official Post

    Hi,

    you basically have two options:

    1. Get the cheapest "android tv box" with an Amlogic S905 or S905X SoC off ebay and hope for the best.

    Pro: price, those cost as little as 33€ incl. shipping from within the country here on ebay.de. Even cheaper if sent from the far east.

    Con:
    - no support, neither for the hardware (good luck when there is any defect) nor the software (the included Android is usually buggy as hell and there are often no updates)
    - rather dubious hardware quality (board components, hdmi socket, power plug, wifi reception, emmc speed,...)
    - the same brands, model numbers and labels are used by several makers or vendors for very different hardware, so any tests or reviews are mostly useless. You never now what "clone" you get
    - your money is supporting "fully loaded kodi" advertisers, making life for the kodi project harder in the process

    2. get an officially supported device with an Amlogic S905

    Pro:
    - proper vendors, with support for hard- and software
    - officially supported by the libreelec project, with a larger user base
    - well-defined hardware quality (all devices are the same, no different hardware sold under the same label)
    - your money is supporting vendors that actually contribute to open source, kodi and libreelec

    Con:
    - price. The wetek hub is 99€ incl. shipping here. The odroic C2 is cheaper (50€), but you may need extra parts (case, power plug, remote)
    - to my knowledge, there is no such device with a S905X SoC. This means no hardware support for VP9 codec and HDR displays

    My view, technology is changing all the time, there is no point spending a load of dosh. I bought a Beelink MiniMXIII with S905, only a few months ago, now there are S912's out.

    I looked at the Odroid C2, I'm not sure if it's important to you, but there doesn't seem to be wifi. Obviously you can get a dongle.

    If you buy from someone like Gearbest (I did) don't expect any help if it goes wrong. Saying that I have Libreelec which works fine.

    With my experience now, for what it's worth, I would look for a fairly cheap Android box S905, but with a remote that has play pause stop buttons on it, rather than relying on the kodi onscreen menu to stop videos.

    So, I am looking at this, note there are several Q-Boxes, this one has a remote with play stop pause buttons, whether these will work if you install Libreelec I don't know. Not particularly cheap.

    ** URL REMOVED **

    Edited once, last by chewitt (November 2, 2016 at 6:41 AM).

    • Official Post

    I guess it needs mentioning as well that, that the S912 seems to have limited extra powers over the S905 (support for VP9 & HDR, Android 6.0). Plus the fact AFAIK that no one of the main developers of the LibreELEC team already has such a S912 device, so creating or testing official LibreELEC builds is not going to happen anytime soon.

    As long as you run LE from a SD card you shouldn't have to worry about screwing any hardware up. In fact K's S905 LE builds are built to run from SD at this point unless you want to install to Nand which I think may be possible but is not recommended. Most of us use OE or LE (yes and of course there's many others) because of the 23.967 fps problem, you get a major judder every 40secs which happens when you run Kodi on an Android based system. The OE and LE project have resolved this (codesnakes work I believe) as well as many other improvements, sound sync issues being a major one as well as improved playback and file compatibility.

    As far as I'm aware the S905/x boxes are not that simple to set up with LE as you need to mess around copying device tress etc which may be easier than it sounds but as I don't have a S905 I couldn't say. The S805 running LE plays back H265 fine although it can't do 10bit files and never will.

    So if you want to play then a cheap box may be the way to go but check who's had success by reading through the main S905 threads. Some members here have even created specific builds for certain boxes but as said these 'specific' boxes may still vary spec wise. Worth noting the amount of RAM and Flash memory as there are often two versions of the same box.

    If money isn't a problem then just buy a Wetek Hub, I would if I had the money!

    Edited once, last by PatrickJB (November 2, 2016 at 1:11 PM).

    I would recommend a generic (ie. low cost) TV box with S905(optionally X) SoC that has 2 G ram and 16 or more G rom. The extra ram is cheap. It should have at least 2 external USB ports as you may want to use one for a wifi remote (I like the mini format, backlit type that come with a full keyboard and touchpad), audio out port (preferably SPDIF), sd card slot, gigabit ethernet port and optionally, wifi capability. These can be had for around $US 50. at amazon.