I've just about had it with my WDTV media player and am looking into replacement options. Between crashing and it's inability to find network shares half the time, I want to bin the damn thing. Musts are: Reliable streaming from a windows (SMB) share. Ideally the ability to map a network drive, or to manually specify the UNC (\\my-server\my-share). YouTube HEVC/x265 support Logitech harmony remote support Under $150 USD Nice to have: Netflix Low power consumption 4K ready Android based (and all the associated Apps) Under $100 USD I'm willing to consider: Raspberry pi or other bare board, if the price is right, ready to use software exists, and a pre-made case exists that looks decent in the AV stand. Don't want/need: Wi-Fi (hard to avoid, so not critical) Cheap chinese android boxes that will never be supported. Any ideas? tia
does the new rasbperry pi 3 support h.265 ? I use a NAS and pi 2 and it works a treat but all my media is h.264
You want something expressly with 4K support, even if you don't need 4K because HEVC is closely aligned with it in chipset spec. Something like the Amazon Fire TV has a MediaTek MT1876, which has an IMG GX6250 GPU capable of HEVC. Not sure if it has SMB though sorry and how flexible vs an Android box. There's also the Nvidia boxes that are pretty flexible and massively powerful.
Ended up going with a Minix NEO U1, and first impressions are pretty good. I got it and the A2 Air-mouse on sale for $180CAD (£105), so close to top of budget. XBMC seems pretty slick and everything else seems to work pretty good. Sorely tempted to take my old WDTV out to the range and put a deer slug through it, for all the grief its given me.
