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What's the benefit to having a dedicated HTPC versus using a media box such as Roku, Apple TV, NVidia Shield, etc? I've been using XBMC (now Kodi) since the original X-Box days. I originally replaced my X-Box with a dedicated HTPC (running XMBC/Kodi) because of HD playback, startup time, and other factors. I'm still using a dedicated HTPC (with Kodi) but I'm beginning to wonder why I don't switch to a media box. Previous media boxes were slow, didn't support 24 Hz playback or DTS-HD/AC3 passthrough, but it seems like a lot of them are now supporting everything. (especially the NVidia Shield I think?) A lot of them also support other things aren't even available in a dedicated HTPC like Hulu, Netflix, etc. So ... is it really worth using a dedicated box?
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Oct 27, 2015 17:11
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 11:01 |
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It depends on what your usage is. If you just watch video then you're fine with one of the newer Android boxes like the FTV, Shield, etc. If you like to play newer games then obviously you need an HTPC. If you want to watch 4k high bit rate stuff thats not hardware accelerated or some weird anime standard then you probably need an HTPC. It's really just a question of what you want to do with it. If you just want to run Kodi, some streaming apps and only care about playing silly old emulators or whatever then I would look at the Fire TV, the Nexus Player and the Shield.
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Oct 27, 2015 17:52
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The benefit in the past has been proper DVR support, and proper video output support for linux isos.
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Oct 27, 2015 17:55
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What are my options for streaming videos and their accompanying SRT/rear end files? It seems Plex is necessary to accomplish this with Roku/Fire TV stuff, but I don't want to deal with Plex. I'd much rather just dump some files into a NAS, use DLNA to present the files, and then watch them without having to worry about transcoding just for subtitle support.
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Apr 6, 2016 02:03
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