Back in about 2008 I had a lot of spare time to get into flashing custom firmware onto Western Digital media players, and figuring out how to use a third party tool to scrape movie info and store it locally. This was witchcraft to my family at the time, having a library of movies and tv shows they could browse through and start playing in seconds. I was proud of it, but after a year or so I came to hate the back-end work required to scrape info, resize images, and manage the file system.
Then came my first Raspberry Pi Model B+ and OpenElec. After much more learning I got an effective replacement for my WD player working really well, and minus 90% of the back-end work! Over the years I gradually migrated through Pi models, and from OpenElec to LibreElec. Everything in 1080p I threw at it was perfect, it worked with my AV receiver and with my TV's remote. I found a better skin (Amber) and perfected my filesystem and on-screen setup.
While things like AppleTV, smart TVs and streaming services have stormed the market (and I use them all to some degree), having close to a thousand movies and a hundred TV shows on tap even if the internet is slow or out (and all in one place, not distributed across multiple streaming services) is still our go-to method of media consumption.
I want to keep this experience, but trying to enter the world of 4K and HDR with a Pi has been disappointing. I am basically hoping for the smooth-as-butter experience I currently have with 1080p to just be extended to cover 4K as well, but it feels like I'm back in 2008, tweaking and scripting and hacking to try and make things work well. Between the Pi 4 overheating, fan control and 4K playback issues, I'm kinda over it.
It seems like Allwinner and Rockchip SOCs have matured and have decent community support, so I'm wondering if I jump ship now... I am OK with putting a board into a case, installing LE, configuring network/skin/sources/add-ons, etc; but beyond that I just want to connect my USB drives, have it work with my Sony TV's remote, and throw H.265/HEVC files at it and have them play smoothly. Most demanding 4K file will probably be 60p HDR, 20GB in size (for a 90 min movie).
Looking forward to hearing your experiences and recommendations for boards or devices. Cheers