Android TV boxes - replace RPI/Kodi - hevc x265

[ched]

I currently use Raspberry Pi';s to stream recordings from my 2 Humax FoxSat HDRs. So no matter which Humax I record on I can watch it on the RPIs running Kodi. Plus I have my DVD';s ripped onto on a NAS.

I noticed there are a lot of Android tv boxes that run Kodi. They seem to start at £25 and go up. Does anyone know anything about them? Is it better to get more RAM, is there much difference in Android versions, what is the difference in processors or are they a waste of space?

Also is hevc x265 a better format to rip my dvds to with the smaller size or is quality poor?

Any info would be helpful. Thanks.

[atomiclama]

I run a couple of Pi Kodi boxes as front ends for all my dvd  music and pictures stored on and old PC tucked away in a cupboard no problems at all.

My colleague at work tried one of these android boxes and has nothing but trouble.

I';m sticking with the Pi   

No help what so ever I know  ::)

[ched]

Good to know. Cheers

[jar]

i found my pi2 just a bit slow using kodi

For the TV upstairs I bought an android box the one i got i bought specifically as it had space for an internal hdd as we mainly use it when away in the caravan with videos ftp';d to the hdd before we go. At home i have a different profile in kodi to pick up the stuff from a NAS box rather than the hdd.

The box we had is fast, plays everything, streams netflix, amazon etc without a glitch and is twice as fast as my rpi (but it was more expensive). it has a vpn on it so in france if we have wifi we can watch iplayer netflix etc if we wanted to.

The cheaper android boxes can be rubbish (although with local media on a flash or external USB hdd they are generally OK)

The benefit to android is that its just so easy and if you like staying in Kodi you can fire up your other android apps from inside Kodi to make it really easy to use.

John

[pheasant_plucker]

Complete overkill on mine

I use an I7 mini PC mounted behind the TV on the wall and it';s all controlled using a FLIRC and a logitech touch
Intel i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 2*HDMI, 2*NICs, SPDIF, 4*USB3.0, Wi-Fi, Metal Case
To this I have added a 2tb HD for storage and a wireless keyboard/mouse.

It runs 24/7 always on and is always at room temperature, It never gets warm.
Response to the remote is instant.

Gerry

[ched]

Cheers John. That';s very helpful. An android box with an internal hd sounds a good idea to be able to take stuff away with us. Good to know your box is faster than the rpi.
What model of box do you have?
Cheers

[ched]

Complete overkill on mine

I use an I7 mini PC mounted behind the TV on the wall and it';s all controlled using a FLIRC and a logitech touch
Intel i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 2*HDMI, 2*NICs, SPDIF, 4*USB3.0, Wi-Fi, Metal Case
To this I have added a 2tb HD for storage and a wireless keyboard/mouse.

It runs 24/7 always on and is always at room temperature, It never gets warm.
Response to the remote is instant.

Gerry

Nice, very nice but a bit above my budget 

[jar]

The box I bought is the T8 s plus from droidbox https://droidbox.co.uk/choose-your-droidbox.html

They seem to be ok - i have bought a couple of devices from them as has a friend and no problems so far. I am looking at replacing the launcer as the one they supply I am not that keen on, but you can set it to go to Kodi or even take android out of the picture with libreelec. I use Android Kodi as I have other android apps set up inside Kodi as sub menu items. so in the TV shows section i have shortcuts to iplayer, ity player netflix etc.

I persevered with the rpi but for me it wasnt the real deal especially if you want to plug in an external hdd or even some memory sticks as you get power issues and need a powered hub which kind of defeats the simplicity of an rpi whichat the moment is looking to get repurposed as a 4g access point for when we are on hols. it will just about runa  wifi adaptor and uisb dongle at the same time.

John

[Fletch]

An old PC in the back room, it runs Plex, couchpotato, nzbget, sonarr and headphones

I run the Plex app and NZB 360 on my android phone and cheap Chromecast';s round the house.

Costs me a few quid a month for a newsgroup provider ...

I can stream to anywhere in any quality (aslong as your connection can handle it)

All the downloading is done using SSL encryption so your ISP is none the wiser!

[ched]

After a fun few hrs, I realised that my 2 PIs were actually model 1 Bs and as such were slow. I remembered I had a RPI3 that I setup as a sort of wifi bridge that I was only using as a backup.
So new microSd card and Openelec 7 (Kodi 16) installed. WOW what an improvement, menus are snappy and content loads quickly. Audio pass through working and only about 10% processing power on each cpu.
Then I started looking what Kodi can do these days.
I realised that I had a freeview usb tuner that was compatible with RPi. So installed that and tvheadend and bingo live freeview, radio plus recordings.

I can even get freeview on my phone :)

I have decided I have no need for the Android box at all as RPI3 is nice and snappy and does everything I need.

Cheers for all the posts.

[atomiclama]

i found my pi2 just a bit slow using kodi

Yeah it is a slow to respond at times and displaying the pictures for movies can be laggy.

But as for playback I can';t fault it.

Just moving over to a mySQL backend, so all the pis should have the same content.

Just one thing I have noted is that recent versions of openelec seam to be a bit more fussy about the power being pulled from under them. Used to be very robust, but have had a couple of SD cards go funny recently.

[ched]

Yeah it is a slow to respond at times and displaying the pictures for movies can be laggy.

But as for playback I can';t fault it.

Just moving over to a mySQL backend, so all the pis should have the same content.

Just one thing I have noted is that recent versions of openelec seam to be a bit more fussy about the power being pulled from under them. Used to be very robust, but have had a couple of SD cards go funny recently.

Been running MySQL backend for a few year now, much better as all RPi know what is watched etc.

OpenElec is dying. The developers split, only original dev left on OpenElec. The rest have created Libreelec. Early days yet but they have a more planned development strategy. Anyway currently using same dir structure as Openelec so can just copy correct tar file to normal update dir and bingo running Libreelec. Not that I have done it yet :)
I don';t think there is much difference yet but sounds like Kodi 17 will be coming to LibreElec quicker than OpenElec which is handy if you run Kodi on android as Google Play version is Kodi 17! Not that I like it, too much change. But can go back to Confluence skin :)

Amazing number of addons available for kodi 16!!! I had been running 15.

[atomiclama]

Yeah thinking about moving over to LibreElec once it comes out of beta.

Want something hopefully stable for she that must be obeyed to use.

Need to get the TV though this as well, but that';s another job  ::)

[ched]

I think it has been out of beta for a long time (June?) Last Kodi 16 release was LibreELEC (Jarvis) v7.0.3 MR. Beta is currently 7.95.3. They are working on Kodi 17 so no more 16 releases.

As for tv I have setup tvheadend and configured with usb tuner. Then used TVHeadend htsp client for front end. All seems to work fine on RPI3 and Android phone. Not sure about RPiB yet.

[atomiclama]

Ah ok I just went to the front page and saw

LibreELEC (Krypton) v7.95.3 BETA

Didn';t dig any deeper.

[atomiclama]

Been running MySQL backend for a few year now, much better as all RPi know what is watched etc.

You might be able to help with a question then, save me searching for the answer.

When using MySQL where are the cover art and movie posters etc stored? In the database or somewhere on the file system? If the file system where and what is the normal way to make this accessible to all the remote boxes?

[ched]

I think by default they are actually stored on the rpi in the userdata/Thumbnails dir, but I am not sure.
There is an addon for storing them in a db I think:  http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Artwork_Downloader
Instructions seem a bit complex with scripts to run depending on kodi version etc. I havent noticed the thumbnails taking up much space (2 of my RPi only have 4Gb cards!)
Hope that helps?

[atomiclama]

It';s not the space. But if I sort the artwork out on one box how do I sync this with the other box and make sure they are all the same. I';m going to end up with 3 maybe 4 boxes soon. Don';t want to have to go round them all each time I add a film.

[ched]

Good point. Sounds like something lots of people would do so there must be an addon sort of thing to do it.
I will see what I can find.

[atomiclama]

Section 1 of

http://kodi.wiki/view/Artwork/Cache

Explains it well, bit different to how I was expecting it. And explains why it stalls when I go through the movies and it lands on one that';s not cached. Internet delay 

[ched]

It looks like the artwork downloader might do the job but I can';t seem to see how you specify a Kodi install to use remote artwork. The downloader only runs on 1 machine. But it looks like it';s an auto downloader for a central NAS.

Have you tried just saving your artwork in the same network folder as the movie/tv show with the name poster.jpg or fanart.jpg and seeing if by default the Kodi installs show the shared images?
It could be that simple?????

[atomiclama]

Have you tried just saving your artwork in the same network folder as the movie/tv show with the name poster.jpg or fanart.jpg and seeing if by default the Kodi installs show the shared images?
It could be that simple?????

Just found that and was looking into it. Think that will do me. 
Just need to try it.

[jar]

I use Ember media Manager to get the artwork all straight for Kodi I then set the folders to the right type (TV, Movies etc but set them to local only (.nfo) for the info and artwork. I currently run kodi on a sony Android TV and a droidbox t8s plus, pulling the files from a NAS box, and they pull up all the artwork well, with little or no lag (The artwork is all in the movies/TVShows own folders).

I dont know if the boxes cache them locally as well through, never even throught about that.

I tried to run a sql backend (on the NAS) but never got it to work. I just have trakt loaded which i think syncs the watched show "ticks". (havent used the second box for a while)

[Fletch]

Ember is very good

[atomiclama]

I';ll have a look at Ember thanks