Answered Are cheap android boxes worth it?

raven219

Prominent Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2001
Messages
583
Reaction score
23
Points
281
Location
East Anglia (well someone has to live there!)
..... If all I want to do is stream files from my NAS (various codecs). And by cheap I mean in the £30 to £50 region.

Thanks.
 
Nope, if that's all you want to do and spend buy a raspberry Pi
 
If you buy a cheap Android box cross your fingers and hope.

Little if any support, no updates if something doesn't work when you get it or borks 6 months down the line then doubtful it will ever be fixed.
As above or spend a bit more and buy a properly supported box.
 
I would recommend you spend a bit more and buy the WETEK Hub at 75£
 
The wetek products are great but for what the OP wants there is no need to spend the extra money
 
I was hoping to get something that supported 4K/HEVC and I don't think the Raspberry Pi can do that.

Thanks bubblegum57. Great link.
 
I was hoping to get something that supported 4K/HEVC and I don't think the Raspberry Pi can do that.

Thanks bubblegum57. Great link.
If you want 4K HEVC and HD Audio go for WETEK Hub. AFAIK, RP3 doesn't support 4k HEVC and no cheap android device supports HD Audio.
 
I echo everyone else in saying don't buy cheap when you buy Android unless it's something with good development support from independents for Open/LibreELEC. The OP needs to be more specific on requirements, however.
 
Thanks for the advice so far.

Mark - with respect to requirements they are fairly simple. I have a NAS that is UPnP or uses Samba. I have been archiving discs to it mainly in X264 but to save space I was thinking of switching to x265/HEVC but current smart TV doesn't support the latter codec. Hence the need for a intermediate stage in the process.
 
I don't echo the sentiments of some of you. If you buy a cheap device, it might not have any support, but as Technology changes, why spend a lot when it will be replaced in a couple of years?

I have a Beelink Mini, on the LibreELEC forums, a guy has just created an image for S905 chips.

LibreELEC 7.0 images for Amlogic S905 | LibreELEC
 
If you get a 'good' cheap box it should be fine. Do your research first and get feedback from others. Let Google be your friend and check out reviews. Then you can make an 'informed decision'. But as is said above, there just won't be the support if something goes wrong.
 
I bought a Beelink Mini III from gearbest, Beelink MiniMXIII TV Box 1000M LAN & have used the LibreELEC s905. It works well. The good thing is, that you don't touch the Android part, LibreELEC is on a sd card.
Amlogic | LibreELEC

I had no problems installing this image. POP
 
My 'main' box is a Minix Neo X8-H Plus but I also bought a Sunvell T95M 4K HD TV Box for under AUD$50 delivered. Since I bought this model I see there are even more recent boxes from Sunvell
around at a similar price.

I only had it for 24 hours before my neighbour borrowed it and I haven't seen it since. He is just delighted with it, it hasn't skipped a beat and seems to work fine as a basic android TV box.

It seems to play 10 bit HEVC files OK which is more than my Minix can do!
 
Thanks for that. Have ordered a Sunvell T95M for £30. Will give that a try.
 
I bought a Beelink Mini III from gearbest, Beelink MiniMXIII TV Box 1000M LAN & have used the LibreELEC s905. It works well. The good thing is, that you don't touch the Android part, LibreELEC is on a sd card.
Amlogic | LibreELEC

I had no problems installing this image. POP
Going to get one of these and try it out for live tv, every other aml box i have had has been excellent for deinterlacing.

Which exact LE image do you use? Is it Kczak's 7.002? The thread on the LE forums is massive and a bit confusing...
 
Going to get one of these and try it out for live tv, every other aml box i have had has been excellent for deinterlacing.

Which exact LE image do you use? Is it Kczak's 7.002? The thread on the LE forums is massive and a bit confusing...
Its the amlogic s905. I used rufus to create the image on the micosd card
 
So it has arrived. I went for the 2GB version.

Installation was easy, plug it in and off we go. Lovely boot up video! Picked up the network (I used Ethernet) so straight into the version of Kodi that was installed. Said "Yes" to installing the add ons and configured SMB shared to my NAS. Starting playing movies and the picture looks great (I don't have a 4k TV....yet!). Sound wasn't right. After much investigation found that my TV doesn't pass through Dolby/DTS via HDMI so I switched to the optical SPDIF. Again only getting 2 channel sound. Kept playing with Kodi settings but turned out there is something wrong with amp configuration. I switched to another optical input and voila! We now have 5.1 sound.

I have also tried some of the add-ons and they seem to work well. No issues with streaming. Dug out some HEVC encoded files and they play well. One had some stuttering but I am not sure if that is because it is streaming from the NAS or a bad encode. I am going to put it on an SD card and re-try.

Overall I am very happy with it. Don't intend to use for much other than streaming from my NAS. The only minor gripe is that turns on subtitles by default. Need to find the global setting in Kodi to turn that off.
 
Thanks for that. Might give one a go myself. I seldom watch a movie without subs these days - even the ones where they speak american :)
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is Home Theater DEAD in 2024?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom