Which one of these android box things arent shit?

Amazon Fire Stick with Kodi
>but muh botnet
Eat shit and die freetards

Build your own

An android box is literally throwing money into a garbage bin. They're shitty devices marked up by a lot by random Chinese corps, sold mostly to unwitting boomers (used to deal with these) trying to "stick it to cable". Just connect a spare computer to your TV or a laptop.

I've got that exact one.
It's great for a kodi-box, nothing more.
Handles x265 fine, too.

Depends what you are going to use it for?

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 connected to a TV. Not even kidding.

Nvidia Shield

For a really cheap option, a Mi Box.

How the hell do you do it?
Are you using WiFi? Because that sucks besides making your phone boil.
Is there any hdmi cable to connect the redmeme to a TV?

perf is shit for almost anything though

Make a budget A8 setup using the flood of forgotten FM2 parts hitting eBay, the limitations of shitty SoC HTPC's will eventually start to bug you, and the emulation options alone give you everything up to the Wii with REAL emulators if you want more than movies somewhere down the line

Why aren't there any Boxes that support custom roms? Then again, why aren't there an Lineage/AOSP roms for Android boxes?

how badly can i cheap out for h265 playback? I'd assume the $100 celerons aren't gucci.

Save some money and get an x86 box with Windows or even GNU+Linux.
Whatever preinstalled Android you get on those shits will be full of shitware.

Chrome, HP, AMAZON.

7th gen eg 3965u has h265 in hardware. The others will suck bigtime.

You can remove amazon shit on the stick anyway if it's low enough firmware. Nice cheap device.

I think you can install LibreElec on those. Anyone confirm? Would be a pretty good device with it, no?

The Nvidia Shield is the only non-shit option sadly

I use a $65 Celeron-embedded board for my HTPC and it plays h265 and 10bit anime just fine.

I assume hardware would handle just about anything in the codec just fine? e.g. my.mixtape.moe/bwdsmu.mkv this 30mb/s monster

Are there any trustworthy streaming boxes that I can load my own mkv files onto from an external HDD?

a NUC

Fire TV

odriod ----> hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

many libraries these days have a 3d printer and there are many sites where you can download cases and they will print them for like $2

ir sensor and remote also like $2

get woke

old i3-i5 dell slim optiplexes go for like 100-200 usd
no better htpc

these.
get an ShieldTV or get crap.
Your choice.

been using an a10 5800k as htpc/dvr for a while now. its completely competent for the cost. can even do some reasonable gaming (emulators up to ps3, l4d2, evo pro soccer, etc), but it cant both record tv and let me play at the same time.

First off, forget about the brand, the real important thing about all these boxes is their chipset. If you're going to run Android, you're likely going to be underwhelmed by their performance. But if you only plan to run Kodi (and perhaps play games on Retroarch), Libreelec may be fine for your needs, like this person suggested I bought a budget Amlogic S905x (which after some research I found to be the best) two weeks ago and installed Libreelec on it, so far everything runs smoothly, and from what I read it should play 4K HDR fine as well, except I haven't had the chance to test it. Only thing the SD upscaling is not that good but acceptable nonetheless, because of Amlogic not releasing the code of their drivers.

i JUST WENT INTO A RABBIT HOLE ON AMAZON BECAUSE OF YOUR POST
I7 3770 AND 4 TB FOR A FEW HUNDRED

good hunting user
some stuff you can find so cheap it feels more like scavenging

Why is the 905x the best? Any link to the model you bought? I've been eyeing some X96 on Ali but I'm not sure what to buy.

not that guy but that chipset is generally well supported by pre made tv box distros like libreelec

if you buy something cheaper you risk memeing yourself with stuff that only has buggy, slow drivers that you need mod yourself before flashing

I see, so the S905W is no good?

I cant be the only one in this thread that has a jailbreaked Apple TV right?