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Need advice on which unit to buy

R

rtuite

Newbie
I've been running my media center on a Rasberry Pi B+ via RasbMC/KODI for a bit over a year now, and it works great streaming from my media server. One thing it doesn't do well is streaming from the web since it lacks the appropriate interface and has trouble with the addons for stuff like YouTube and Netflix, so I'd like to go to an Android box. I have a Samsung Smart TV with YouTube and Netflix apps, but the Samsung Smart Hub is terrible, so are the apps Samsung has.

From what I've been reading, the M8 boxes with the Amlogic S812 chipset seem to be the most common and get decent reviews. But, from the reviews I've read they have issues with some of the GPlay apps. And the few screenshots I've seen are, frankly, hideous. Like Windows 8 meets Teletubbies. I'd like something with more of a normal Android tablet feel and more uniform GPlay app compatibility. Does such a thing exist?

My "plan B" is to get an Raspberry Pi 2 and load Windows 10 on it. Or possibly Android X86...
 
I would be very cautions about using an M8 box from China(unless you're actually in China like me). Devices like this with Genesis, Showbox, and other illegal pirate stuff on them. Things like Youtube are OK though.
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Pic from Alibaba.

Could potentially land you in very serious trouble with the feds.
http://androidforums.com/threads/isp-notification-from-fox-and-universal-studios.994111/
 
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You thought about an Amazon Fire stick? The youtube and Netflix apps are pretty good and you can use something like Plex to access anything on your media centre.

There are also instructions available for installing Kodi on it if you want to do that too.
 
I'm not too concerned about they "Grayware" that comes on the M8 boxes, of course that may explain why the GPlay store restricts those devices. I have my own media server, and I recently removed Plex because I don't like the interface or the way it scrapes files. I would rather just point Kodi at the server and let it build it's own library database from my media.

I've considered the Fire stick, but I've heard you can't remove a lot of apps from it, though I admittedly haven't dug into that claim either. Either way, for the price I'd rather just grab a Pi3 just for the flexibility.
 
Ive been using the Vizio Co-star for years, and just acquired the voice controlled Nexus Player, $50, using that with a bluetooth keyboard, Kodi, and the SideloadLauncher. I think I made the right choice on both players. Now trying to go through the many many options to find certain LiveTV channels, will likely have to sideload some of that too.
 
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