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codo27 posted:Oh yes thats precisely what I'm expecting, at best. I know the fine folks over at TICTID are not working tirelessly to deliver the latest and greatest firmware for this beast. Just wondering if someone might know of a place not of ill repute I may be able to find something. The usual place for these kind of boxes is Freaktab forums, when you there you should look under whatever SoC your box came with and see if any of the OpenElec/Finless/CM unofficial ports are available for your box.
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Jun 30, 2016 18:00
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Why not just use a Fire TV Stick? It took me about 30 minutes to get Kodi installed on it and it works great, I'm doing it for a friend next week.
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Jun 30, 2016 18:15
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codo27 posted:I went and tried out one of those cheapo android boxes from Amazon for $38 CAN. Works right out of the box, Kodi already on it with the addons installed. The thing came with Kitkat installed and also an older version of Kodi, 15.2 (with what looks to be arab writing on the logo when I run it?). I guess these things are pretty generic. It has the same launcher as the one my buddy has. What I'm wondering is if there is some kind of stock android I can get to put on this, hopefully Lollipop, I know Marshmallow for the likes of this would be especially ambitious. There is an icon for the app store on the home screen but I dont really feel confident in entering my google account info on this thing. You probably don't want to mess with the firmware, because it is typically custom modified to support the various chipsets, remote, etc. If you're lucky, the manufacturer will release 1 or 2 new firmwares before they abandon the product. I have a similar model, and I just created a new Goog account to access the Play Store. I, like you, didn't want to potentially give my primary email account login info to some Chinese spyware. I was able to uninstall the bloated 15.2 version of Kodi they had on there and put on 16.1 from Play. If you do this, make sure you do a Titanium backup of the Kodi apk in the event they did a custom compile of it and a clean version is broken. Other than those minor issues, it works awesome as a Kodi/Netflix/Spotify/Pandora box...for $30. Way better choice for me than the Shield, since I don't game and don't have a 4K TV.
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Jun 30, 2016 20:55
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I've bought a few from Amazon for family and just do a clean Kodi install with my own custom build. What amazes me about these cheap android boxes are that people are buying "fully loaded" boxes for over $150. It's like it's this magical thing that they're afraid to mess with. A quick YouTube search will find many tutorials on setting it up and such.
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Jun 30, 2016 21:35
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iLikeMidgets posted:What amazes me about these cheap android boxes are that people are buying "fully loaded" boxes for over $150. It's like it's this magical thing that they're afraid to mess with. A quick YouTube search will find many tutorials on setting it up and such. Its big business around here too and I'm trying to wisen up as many people to it as I can. Besides with the quality and reliability of Kodi's addons, its not worth more than $40 to me. I got it just to fool with mainly, I'll end up giving it to my parents. I bought them a chromecast a while back and found out a way you can make Kodi stream from your phone to it, which is a handy thing to know if you own one.
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Jun 30, 2016 21:42
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iLikeMidgets posted:I've bought a few from Amazon for family and just do a clean Kodi install with my own custom build. You ever work in IT and deal with users? Its the same thing. People just want it to work, they DO NOT want to mess with any aspect of setup/configuration.
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Jun 30, 2016 21:57
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So yesterday my FTV1 loaded Kodi decided that it doesn't want to open. When I click the icon it just shows a blank screen for a second then goes back to my apps list. Tried force closing/reopening and rebooting the FTV to no avail. Is it time to reinstall? Running 16.1 e: did an adb install -r and that seems to have worked e2: happened again. After running it a few times, the last time I opened it I noticed the background had disappeared. Next time I opened it it started backing out again. This is getting a bit weird. speedtek fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jul 2, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 23:29
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So the cheapo box I mentioned above. I was shocked and appalled today to find its not working. When it came the other day, I just booted it up, tried Kodi, then hit the power button on the remote. I went to turn it on today to play something off my NAS seeing there is something wrong with ARC either on my TV or my receiver and it doesn't get sound from the built in player on the TV sometimes, but doesn't have the issue with stuff plugged in to any of the inputs on the receiver itself. Black screen. No buttons on the box, remote not doing anything so I unplugged it and plugged it back in, and started to get something, but it kept flicking on and off, almost like it thought it was a touch screen device and kept turning off the screen. It would quickly fade off, not just go black instantly. Tried other HDMI cables, inputs, even tried the RCA cable that came with it, they worked even less, got nothing from those. Amazon is refunding me and I think this is the end of my brief experiment with Android TV. Yes, yes I know. These cheap things probably have a 30% fail rate anyway. But I'm just gonna hold out til I can build the 4K PC I've been dreaming of and let my current rig be my HTPC
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Jul 2, 2016 21:52
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codo27 posted:So the cheapo box I mentioned above. I was shocked and appalled today to find its not working. When it came the other day, I just booted it up, tried Kodi, then hit the power button on the remote. I went to turn it on today to play something off my NAS seeing there is something wrong with ARC either on my TV or my receiver and it doesn't get sound from the built in player on the TV sometimes, but doesn't have the issue with stuff plugged in to any of the inputs on the receiver itself. Black screen. No buttons on the box, remote not doing anything so I unplugged it and plugged it back in, and started to get something, but it kept flicking on and off, almost like it thought it was a touch screen device and kept turning off the screen. It would quickly fade off, not just go black instantly. Tried other HDMI cables, inputs, even tried the RCA cable that came with it, they worked even less, got nothing from those. As most will agree with me, a ShieldTV "just works" and would cost the same as any PC you would build.
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Jul 2, 2016 21:55
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codo27 posted:Amazon is refunding me and I think this is the end of my brief experiment with Android TV. But you didn't buy an Android TV device...
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Jul 2, 2016 22:02
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wolfbiker posted:But you didn't buy an Android TV device... Yeah, I wouldn't call some sub 40 dollar Chinese box a proper Android box. Buy one from real manufacturer like Amazon or Nvidia and it should be way more reliable.
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Jul 2, 2016 22:06
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Seriously, buy a Shield TV and stop worrying about this poo poo. I cannot fathom why people keep experimenting with these piece of poo poo no-name boxes tossed over the Pacific ocean when credible alternatives exist. If you are that broke then buy a FireTV stick instead. If you want a serious Android TV device buy the Shield, it is still far cheaper than any HTPC and performs just as well if not better. Both Shield and Android TV updates improving both keep arriving. The newest Shield update fixed issues with 23.96 FPS playback and added new colorspace support which makes a major difference in image quality. And it works like a charm. Or buy in to Amazon's system. Anything else is a waste of time and money.
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Jul 2, 2016 22:13
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wolfbiker posted:But you didn't buy an Android TV device... Call Me Charlie posted:Yeah, I wouldn't call some sub 40 dollar Chinese box a proper Android box. Buy one from real manufacturer like Amazon or Nvidia and it should be way more reliable. No, It's not an Android TV box at all. Android TV is the name of the Android platform Google developed for use on a TV. All of these other Android set top boxes just the normal standard Android UI (except for the Fire Tv boxes which use their own.) Google controls which devices are allowed to use the Android TV platform. Right now the only systems you can find that run it are the Nvidia Shield, the Razer Forge TV, and some TVs from Sony, Sharp, and Philips. It doesn't look like anyone is selling the Nexus Player anymore.
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Jul 2, 2016 22:42
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codo27 posted:Amazon is refunding me and I think this is the end of my brief experiment with Android TV. Yes, yes I know. These cheap things probably have a 30% fail rate anyway. But I'm just gonna hold out til I can build the 4K PC I've been dreaming of and let my current rig be my HTPC Android is an absolute joke of an OS. Just splurge a bit extra for a recent Intel NUC, throw LibreELEC on there and you've got a low-power "4K PC" for the living room. I'm sure the SHIELD is usable too but when you see people saying poo poo like "the newest Shield update fixed issues with 23.96 FPS playback and added new colorspace support" it's not sounding very promising tbh, these are standard loving features that every PC running Kodi has been able to do for over a decade. Reminds me of the Apple TV2 days really. People in this thread were hyping them up like the second loving coming out Christ and swore those little things could easily replace the bulky PCs many of us had powering the living room, then when you order the little box and give it a spin it turns out it runs Kodi like absolute poo poo and randomly crashes all the time. Then the same happened with the RPi and its successor. Then the same with the Fire TV, Nexus Player, etc. I hope Atom SoCs become the next shilling target because that at least is a platform with promise unlike Android which will always be poo poo regardless of form it comes in.
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Jul 3, 2016 00:09
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Keito posted:People in this thread were hyping them up like the second loving coming out Christ and swore those little things could easily replace the bulky PCs many of us had powering the living room, then when you order the little box and give it a spin it turns out it runs Kodi like absolute poo poo and randomly crashes all the time. Then the same happened with the RPi and its successor. Then the same with the Fire TV, Nexus Player, etc. Eh, that's bullshit. Kodi runs fine on Fire TV, Nexus Player, Shield, etc. It's kinda crazy how in 2016, people are still pretending like HTPCs are the king of the mountain when it comes to the living room experience. There's no perfect remote solution and you have to jump through a million hoops to try to integrate Netflix and other online services (where with android, you can just link the actual apps in Kodi and open them that way)
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Jul 3, 2016 00:39
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Keito posted:Android is an absolute joke of an OS. Just splurge a bit extra for a recent Intel NUC, throw LibreELEC on there and you've got a low-power "4K PC" for the living room. I'm sure the SHIELD is usable too but when you see people saying poo poo like "the newest Shield update fixed issues with 23.96 FPS playback and added new colorspace support" it's not sounding very promising tbh, these are standard loving features that every PC running Kodi has been able to do for over a decade. Does LibreELEC allow you to playback Amazon Prime content with 5.1? How about Vudu or Netflix with 5.1? No? Oh okay, thanks angry rant. I'm sure it helps the 3 people who only consume content on the TV via Kodi.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:00
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I've been running kodi since the original pi came out and have had zero problems with it. Only recently upgraded to a NUC due to having the need to stream from a browser for my wife's work and every distributor using a completely different platform, with the majority of them not working right on a mobile browser.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:19
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Call Me Charlie posted:Eh, that's bullshit. Kodi runs fine on Fire TV, Nexus Player, Shield, etc. It's not like I haven't tried the Android port, which is a decent piece of work for what it is, and nowhere near as unstable as the ATV2 was – but then again the main problem there was the system's lack of RAM. Kodi on Android does however still suffer from random crashes, and unavoidably getting bogged down from the garbage collector going haywire in the background whenever it feels like it, thanks to Android's great design. Call Me Charlie posted:It's kinda crazy how in 2016, people are still pretending like HTPCs are the king of the mountain when it comes to the living room experience. Call Me Charlie posted:There's no perfect remote solution Call Me Charlie posted:and you have to jump through a million hoops to try to integrate Netflix and other online services (where with android, you can just link the actual apps in Kodi and open them that way) Internet Explorer posted:Does LibreELEC allow you to playback Amazon Prime content with 5.1? How about Vudu or Netflix with 5.1? No? Oh okay, thanks angry rant. I'm sure it helps the 3 people who only consume content on the TV via Kodi. Puddin posted:I've been running kodi since the original pi came out and have had zero problems with it.
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Jul 3, 2016 02:08
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Keito posted:Is that why the Android users ITT keep jumping ship to SPMC, a one-man fork? It's not a good situation for either Kodi or the users, really. You realize that's from one of the main Android Kodi developers and he forked because there was drama regarding android boxes (most of the Kodi Foundation don't like being associated with pirate boxes) and the update schedule, right? Keito posted:It's not like I haven't tried the Android port, it's a decent piece of work for what it is, and nowhere near as unstable as the ATV2 was – but then again the main problem there was the system's lack of RAM. Kodi on Android does however still suffer from random crashes, and unavoidably getting bogged down from the garbage collector going haywire in the background whenever it feels like it, thanks to Android's great design. Fire TV/Nexus has 2 GB of RAM and Shield has 3. Mine rarely crashes with Kodi (usually with pirate add-ons) and has never gotten bogged down. I'm not sure why you think it's a bunch of underpowered hardware. My Fire TV can emulate Dreamcast games, which is a pretty big achievement for a $100 fanless box. Keito posted:News to me. I tried setting it up awhile back and there's no real solution. Remotes work great with Kodi but, when you need to bounce into a browser for not-Kodi stuff, you have to jump over to K&M or use a controller with mouse emulation software. It's just not as user friendly as Kodi with Android apps. And most people want a complete hub for all their services. Maybe if Microsoft gets their head out of their rear end with Windows 10 apps, that will change. But it's currently rough. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 02:34
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Kodi never crashes on my Fire stick or nvidia shield TV, so I don't know what you are on about. Runs better on my Shield than it does on older atom htpc.
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Jul 3, 2016 03:12
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I still can't get smb from my firetv to connect to Windows 10 properly. Besides that if you only use an HTPC for Kodi I've found the firestick to be a way better solution because I can just exit out of it and use Netflix, Hbo Now, etc. And holy poo poo people weren't lying when they talk about the amount of drama in open source communities. I went to the kodi thread for the skin I use and they were five pages of whining because the skin uses separate codenames for it's Jarvis and Krypton releases instead of being named Skin Name (Jarvis) and Skin Name (Krypton).
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Jul 3, 2016 05:10
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Keito posted:Android is an absolute joke of an OS. Just splurge a bit extra for a recent Intel NUC, throw LibreELEC on there and you've got a low-power "4K PC" for the living room. I'm sure the SHIELD is usable too but when you see people saying poo poo like "the newest Shield update fixed issues with 23.96 FPS playback and added new colorspace support" it's not sounding very promising tbh, these are standard loving features that every PC running Kodi has been able to do for over a decade. You have no idea what you are talking about. You're not even having the same conversation.
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Jul 3, 2016 05:18
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Keito posted:Android is an absolute joke of an OS. Just splurge a bit extra for a recent Intel NUC, throw LibreELEC on there and you've got a low-power "4K PC" for the living room. I'm sure the SHIELD is usable too but when you see people saying poo poo like "the newest Shield update fixed issues with 23.96 FPS playback and added new colorspace support" it's not sounding very promising tbh, these are standard loving features that every PC running Kodi has been able to do for over a decade. Android being a "poo poo OS" is neither here nor there. All operating systems are poo poo in their own way, what matters is how it handles your use case, and the main recommended solution (Shield TV) runs Kodi great. It's like you've never heard of video card drivers messing up refresh rate switching, color space issues, all sorts of other video-related stuff. You should just stop posting.
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Jul 3, 2016 16:32
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The Shield boots fast and I had it set up with Netflix, Kodi, and Retroarch within 5 minutes.
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Jul 3, 2016 22:50
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I've been running XBMC 13.2 side loaded on to my 1st gen Fire TV for like, 2+ years now with absolutely zero issues. Oh ok there was a network issue, because the default network caching is set to something insane like 20mb, which for a 20GB file just isn't enough over wifi. So then I set the cache to 1GB (the fire has 4gb after all) and the problem went away permanently. I don't know how you guys can fight over $100+ devices when the Fire TV is usually about $90, comes with a great remote and does everything just great on a version from two years ago.
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Jul 3, 2016 22:51
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Shield also works like a Chromecast so that freed up an HDMI port for me.
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Jul 3, 2016 22:51
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Seriously, the only thing the Shield TV is missing to be perfect is Amazon prime support.
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Jul 3, 2016 23:02
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FWIW, I tried to switch from an AppleTV+HTPC to a Shield, and I ended up switching back. There were just enough annoying piddly poo poo problems with Android TV that I decided I was more comfortable with the annoying piddly poo poo problems that I have with tvOS and my HTPC.Lowen SoDium posted:Seriously, the only thing the Shield TV is missing to be perfect is Amazon prime support. I have used a lot of entertainment software in my time, and at this rate we're a good 70-80 years away from anything being close to perfect. It's all garbage.
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Jul 3, 2016 23:06
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tk posted:FWIW, I tried to switch from an AppleTV+HTPC to a Shield, and I ended up switching back. There were just enough annoying piddly poo poo problems with Android TV that I decided I was more comfortable with the annoying piddly poo poo problems that I have with tvOS and my HTPC. Garbage that you use every day, probably. Hyperbole: Look it up.
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Jul 4, 2016 02:50
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I've had zero problems with my Shield. All of the streaming apps I care about, Kodi/SPMC work flawlessly and fast, it emulates everything up to the Dreamcast, streams from my desktop PC for other games if I give a poo poo and has voice search. It even has google cast functionality built in so our Chromecast is kinda useless. My HTPCs haven't been booted up for awhile now and I'll probably sell them soon. If you're willing to use a wireless KB/M in the living room then I'm sure an HTPC is fine but I have to use a remote for others in the household and it needs to be bullet proof. The Shield is a great "everything just works" box and I do zero tech support which is worth the extra cash to me. I'm sure the day will come when its outdated and I regret not being able to upgrade it but until then its pretty cool. The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Jul 4, 2016 |
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Jul 4, 2016 14:04
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The Gunslinger posted:If you're willing to use a wireless KB/M in the living room then I'm sure an HTPC is fine but I have to use a remote for others in the household and it needs to be bullet proof. The Shield is a great "everything just works" box and I do zero tech support which is worth the extra cash to me. I'm sure the day will come when its outdated and I regret not being able to upgrade it but until then its pretty cool. You do realize you can use tons of different remotes on PCs right (wifi, IR, whatever floats your boat)? Or use one of the million apps to remotely control Kodi/the entire PC.
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Jul 4, 2016 16:35
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37th Chamber posted:You do realize you can use tons of different remotes on PCs right (wifi, IR, whatever floats your boat)? Or use one of the million apps to remotely control Kodi/the entire PC. I spent a ton of time and money on traditional HTPCs so yeah I realize it. I had everything driven with EventGhost stuff and Harmonys, etc. It took forever to setup and it was never as easy to use as a Shield or FireTV. Even when I got it acceptable for me the missus would always find some way to bust it. About the closest I got was OpenELEC but zero streaming apps with that.
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Jul 4, 2016 16:49
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The Gunslinger posted:I spent a ton of time and money on traditional HTPCs so yeah I realize it. I had everything driven with EventGhost stuff and Harmonys, etc. It took forever to setup and it was never as easy to use as a Shield or FireTV. Even when I got it acceptable for me the missus would always find some way to bust it. About the closest I got was OpenELEC but zero streaming apps with that. Agree. I'd done HTPC's for years, over a decade actually, even did Live TV capture from my cable box at one point for an "integrated" solution, and got plenty of IR remotes to work with them (FLIRC remains my favorite solution) --but when it comes to "zero family tech support" nothing beats the Shield TV/Android TV. poo poo just works, and works well. Little hassles here and there (like HBO Go not having 5.1 support for Android TV yet, Amazon holding Prime video back from everything Android TV except on Sony TVs, prior issues with image quality that they just fixed in 3.2, etc.) in no way annoy me as much as HTPC's have over the years, even when they were working well. It's easy to forget just *how much* we all dick around with them all the time. Until you get a device where you don't have to.
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Jul 4, 2016 19:21
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I have a sorta traditional HTPC, but it's just a media box using this crazy case: http://pcpartpicker.com/product/bpZQzy/silverstone-case-ds380b Going to shove it full of hard drives until it's so heavy it collapses my TV stand. Front end is an Amazon Fire TV and it works perfectly.
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Jul 4, 2016 22:45
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I'm running the latest OpenELEC on my RPi - is it worth installing LibreELEC? My OpenELEC install seems fine but am I missing out on anything by not swapping over? 
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Jul 5, 2016 04:51
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Just download LibreELEC, copy the files to the update folder of your OpenELEC install, then reboot. Not much effort.
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Jul 5, 2016 07:25
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Oh cool so I can keep the same config/plugins/etc?
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Jul 5, 2016 09:13
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Yes, nothing changes. It's just the same as if you were manually updating OpenELEC. I made the switch a couple days ago.
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Jul 5, 2016 12:37
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I have a version of Amazon Prime Video working on my shield. It's not great to navigate and it took installing two apps, but it works. I still end up using the PS4 app to browse/buy stuff, but if it's already in my library and I'm feeling lazy, the app works. I didn't save the link but I'm sure you can google around and find it. I've been using HTPCs for like, 15 years now. The Shield is the easiest thing I've setup and used. Way easier than Windows + Kodi + Event Ghost + activity base remotes. Having official apps for streaming stuff is way, way better than any add-on I've ever used in Kodi. My wife can pick up the remote and get to basically anything, which is a nice bonus. I'm sure FireTVs and the like are similar, too, but the Shield works for me and I've never been happier.
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Jul 5, 2016 14:51
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Is it possible to migrate to SPMC on a shield without having to set everything back up again? I'm using the Titan skin.
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Jul 5, 2016 15:06
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