Hi All,
Back story
The current system, attached to my projector, is a Liva Mini PC.
It's been running pretty well for a long time now, but it's starting to show its age and struggling with playback just a bit too often.
I originally had it running Xubuntu, with Kodi on top, but higher resolution videos took me into unsolvable driver issues, so I switched over to Window 10 with Kodi on top. That's been OK for a while, but poor playback is just happening too often.
My current projector can play 1080p and 3D video. I'll be keeping the projector until it dies, but I'd ideally like my next box to be able to play higher quality content on a more modern projector.
Sound is much less important. I just need a feed that can go through to a simple stereo amp. With a young family, we actually watch most films with head sets on, to keep the noise down.
I feed media, to the box attached to the projector, via a Jellyfin server. This is connected via LAN. I have no need for wifi and would like the ability to turn wifi off with any box that I buy.
Now
Last night I intended on buying a Roku to replace the Liva. However, I read a couple of things that made me concerned about it not being able to play all video formats. It also didn't feel right to be buying a system that's designed for streaming when my main use is to play content from my own Jellyfin server. I have no interest in Nexflix, Amazon etc. Although I do use iPlayer, and may use other free streaming services.
That all brought me back to Kodi and trying to find the most suitable for today and a few years into the future.
I found ...
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916
... which led me to a shortlist of:
- ODROID N2+ CoreELEC or
- Vero 4K+
Good choices?
My first question is, do you guys agree with that conclusion? And if you have much of an opinion between the two devices, please let me know.
VPN
In order to decide between the two devices, because I have never used CoreELEC or OSMC, I wanted to find out how I could use my VPN service (I use Private Internet Access).
With Xubuntu and Windows, it's easy. PIA has Ubuntu and Windows apps which work great. They also have automatic kill switches for if the VPN connection fails for any reason.
When Kodi kind of becomes part of the OS, how can you reliably set up the VPN? And how can you know that it's working? If it is working, how can you turn it off temporarily (iPlayer, for example, doesn't work well with most VPN's).
I've done a bit of googling, and both CoreELEC and OSMC seem to have the facility to use a VPN, but it looked tricky to set up and less than bulletproof.
This makes me wonder if I should still get one of the above devices, but then replace the OS with Ubuntu, set up PIA, and then use Kodi as an app.
Or, if I'm considering that route, maybe I should pay more and get a more powerful mini PC for this purpose? I'd rather keep the cost down with the simpler options if it's not too difficult.
What do you guys think?
Thanks,
Damian
