Question Pi4/5 vs Android vs Odroid vs ...??? - what's good for a media player ?

[THRobinson]

So... small history... I use to run Core2Duo mini desktops for my media players, and when it came time to upgrade it was suggested to use an Android box because they had chips dedicated to video playback/decoding and despite the size would work way better than the old PCs. I grabbed a pair of Beelink GT1 Ultimates (s912 Octacore, 3GB DDR4) for about $85CAD each and absolutely loved them, installed with CoreElec (smaller version of LibreElec). 30GB HDR 4K video, no problem, not a single stutter. Well, one died... I bought an HK1 (s905x4 4GB DDR3) and it sucks. Playback stutters if resuming from pause, 80% of the time it hangs during shutdown, etc... not sure if software or hardware but after 3 months... fed up with it. Rather buy a used Beelink.

I bought those Beelinks 5yrs ago. It seems now there is no "in between" option... it's either a junky Android box around $75CAD... or miniPC's for about $250CAD and up. The miniPC's for me are overkill because I have no desire to install apps/games on it. My box turns on and boots direct to KODI and I stream off my NAS and that's all I want it for.

So... 5yrs later... what's good for a Media Player? At the time I think it was the Pi2 and it wasn't good for videos, especially 4K. How is the Pi4/5 for media now? Android boxes still beat the Pi? I've seen odroid mentioned but quite a few versions and high prices...

What's around $100 that will work as well or better than my old Beelink? or should I just buy a used one? It was small, simple, $85CAD and worked amazing.

Or... drop CoreElec and go LibreElec? does it work on Android boxes the same?

 

[JWNoctis]

If memory serves Pi4/5 are supposed to do 4Kp60 x265 just fine, though my own testing was inconclusive on my own Pi 4 (and 400), probably due to my own misconfiguration of the encoder for the test video.

Now I might get into trouble for saying this here, but I think you can get the full hardware decoding (and encoding) capabilities of a modern desktop GPU with an Intel N100-based mini-PC, for somewhat less than $250CAD. It might fit your use case better.

 

[THRobinson]

If memory serves Pi4/5 are supposed to do 4Kp60 x265 just fine, though my own testing was inconclusive on my own Pi 4 (and 400), probably due to my own misconfiguration of the encoder for the test video.

Now I might get into trouble for saying this here, but I think you can get the full hardware decoding (and encoding) capabilities of a modern desktop GPU with an Intel N100-based mini-PC, for somewhat less than $250CAD. It might fit your use case better.

Shame Beelink still didn't make the Amlogic stuff anymore... worked great, cost less. Every time I see stuff about the mini-PC's they go on and on about games and makes me feel like I'm paying extra for something I'll never use.

I wonder if another board will work too... RaspberryPi is the one I know, but I see other brands mentioned often too, OrangePi, LibreBoard, oDroid N2+