Have Android TV box. What to do next?

[mvallevand]

Because you have an Amlogic you probably could run NextPVR on that Android box with CoreElec.

Arguably an old Pentium could transcode for the web server better than some modern ARM boxes (event an RPi 4 or 5) it's not the CPU its the GPU.

Martin

[bgowland]

The P4 I got was quite capable but I did push it to the limits with 4 dvb-t and 3 analogue capture cards, Recording drive was SATA 1 (not sure 2 was even available then). Standard IDE system drive and basic RAM. On the whole (on a good day) it all worked but depending on timing I'd have various post-processing jobs running and things would slow down.

I've looked at CoreELEC but it's a bit of work to get it installed soI'll give uidroid a chance first.

Cheers,
Brian

[mvallevand]

There are definite pros and cons ti UI clients vs Kodi. Live TV channel changing in UI clients is broken so if that is something you use use Kodi.

CE is going to be better then Kodi in Android for Amlogic SoC's. The benefit is that it autostarts Kodi.

Martin

[bgowland]

Live TV isn't likely to be an issue. We had a Freeview STB plugged into the TV with the old setup and never used Live TV through npvr and the PCH. Our current setup (without npvr) is Virgin Media cable with the cable plugged into a TiVo and TiVo to TV - we use that for recordings and live tv though it's limited to 3 tuners.

Ditching VM and going to Freeview means losing 1 or 2 channels we rarely watch and can live without. Drilling through from my study upstairs to the living room means I can split the cable from the loft aerial to feed the npvr server in my study and run a cable down to the TV aerial socket for watching live TV.

As long as an Android box (the one I've got or another I might try) works similar to the PCH (TV Guide, scheduling / watching / deleting recordings) then I think we'll be pretty happy.

Cheers,
Brian