Choosing a SBC , "media box" , or building for Kodi / HTPC-style use - Khadas, Odroid, Pine etc

[RanceJustice]

Hello eveyone . Over the past several years I've had a patchwork assembly of "media boxes" around my home (and those I've configured for relatives, managing for them remotely or when I come by). These are usually ARM powered and often running some version of Android, though I often would use LibreELEC (a very slim Linux distro sufficient to launch Kodi) instead, as the Android builds and support were quickly outdated. Unfortunately, I've found that my WeTek Core is no longer supported by LibreELEC (yet its chipset isn't new enough for the CoreELEC fork ) and this has prompted my search for new hardware. Many of these "media boxes" tend to be equipped with an ARM chipset, but the features supported in the hardware (ie my old Core running the Amlogic S812, could not decode 10-bit H264 / H265 for instance) and the support of the chipset / firmware / device itself could be tenuous . Thus, I'm trying to figure out a solid replacement.

Ideally I'm looking for something that is powerful enough to handle most HTPC-related viewing tasks (ie Streaming from Kodi, Plex / Emby / Jellyfin etc) and widely supported (ideally open) hardware that I don't have to worry about being outdated / no longer supported for update. My choices seem to be either A) Buy another "media box" , B) Buy a SBC and accessories to "make" my own or C) just bite the bullet and build a conventional x86 system and be finished with this.

A) WeTek seems to have stopped making off the shelf hardware, and its really hard to find other well supported boxes. Vero4K+ is one of the only promising leads I've found, which is the flagship device for the OSMC project which seems to be a "Debian + Kodi" device and is at least supported for a long time. Not sure about the hardware though or chipset. The Beelink GT King Pro seems to have CoreELEC support and a recent chipset, so maybe it could be worth it as well?

B) There seem to be quite a few decent SBC chipsets these days, most of which are ARM powered. The RaspberryPi 4 model B (4gb) is of course the benchmark, but it may b On the high end, there seems to either be AmLogic (A311D or S922X seem to be the newest/most powerful, with lots of 905 / 912 slightly older devices?) or Rockchip RK3399 (seems to be the latest and most powerful). A few reviews I've read suggest that the Amlogic S922X is the newest and most powerful chipset and equals or beats the Rockchip RK3399 in some comparisons. For actual SBC manufacturers that offer these chipsets, I've been looking at Khadas, Odroid, Libre Computer Project, and Pine. I'm unsure which of these to pick in particular, but i'll have to look into a deeper comparison between them.

I should also mention that Odroid seems to offer the unique "H2" model which uses an Intel J4105 (Gemini Lake) CPU + UHD 600 GPU . I'm not sure how these low power x86 'stack up' to the latest ARM, but some reports suggest they're more powerful though I'd want to be sure the GPUs can handle the media requirements. Some suggest that the cost and additional investments to get the H2 running (have to buy RAM for instance etc) are significant enough that it may just be better to buy/build a "real" system for a bit more.

C) The most expensive option is to buy a "NUC" style or build a compact Intel / AMD system. Compatibility here would of course be the easiest and any modern Intel / AMD CPU or APU would likely be able to handle things without any issue. I'm unsure of the overall value just for media related tasks, but perhaps the piece of mind , compatibility and control could be worth it in the long run.

Does anyone have experience with recent open SBC / media box tech? How about low power x86 like the Odroid-H2?