Recommend an Android Box that runs XBMC - [No copyrighted material]

dahat wrote: »

That is the box, would be excellent if that Open Elec worked, will try it tomorrow to see maybe.

It should work. As far as I remember the MK808B Plus has the same board, they just removed some extras to produce the stick (Ethernet, Power button, USB etc).

mollser wrote: »

Interesting, I would actually recommend to anyone to just buy these from Amazon for this very reason, very little difference in the price once VAT/An Post handling charge added in vs the hassle of returning if something goes wrong.

In any event I got it working again (It seems I had the 2 pin china plug in the adaptor the wrong way around, I didn't know this was even possible??) so all is well for now thankfully, but was pi$$ed off all morning!

She died again tonight
No power,red light, nothing
will try again in the morning but I think it's terminal. Will try gearbest and see how we go. Grrr

colcatscar wrote: »

Hi all.
Thinking about getting an M8 or T8 from satbox.ie , droidbox.co.uk or hbdroid.com purely 'cos my last box from gearbest died and was a bit of a pain losing money on customs and return postage.
Seems to be better comeback and support from these crowds which is probably why the boxes are a bit more expensive, but probably easier to use as they are pre-loaded for those of us who haven't a clue what we are doing.
Opinions and advice welcome.

I wouldn't touch the M8. That was in the right place at the right time, and took off. Sorry, but even with openelec it freezes running scripts, it annoyed me no end after trying it again last week.
I wouldn't rush into the T8 either, but at a decent price (I haven't checked any prices in a while) maybe.
A lot of these boxes have been rushed out to meet demand. Facebook/Social Networking sites going mad about Quad Core/Octa Core etc..
The European end/American end aren't the only ones clambering over each other to make money from them. The Asian/Indian sites are lumping them, repacking them, renaming them and reselling them, even models that are known to be terrible are getting rehoused. Then the shells are being reused to house a 'newer' model. Different CPU etc.
Best for money is stability, and if you don't plan on playing HD games etc on it, and don't mind a slightly slower menu, then a dual core may equally meet your demands - 1080p, torrent streaming, IPTV subscription etc.

Decent storage (T8 has SATA) and H.265 would be a good advantage at the minute. Some HTPC barebones have dropped in price on Amazon too.

mollser wrote: »

Working again this morning

Why would this be happening - should I get a proper power supply rather than relying on this 2 pin plug + adaptor set up? Is it caused by overheating?? Or is the box just faulty??

Any tips welcome

The MXQ has power supply issues which are fixed by a new supply so this could be the case here as well.
Well worth trying IMO if nothing else but to rule it out as a cause.

dahat wrote: »

The MXQ has power supply issues which are fixed by a new supply so this could be the case here as well.
Well worth trying IMO if nothing else but to rule it out as a cause.

Will try that - any idea where to get a replacement power supply?

Perhaps this would work in power city, http://www.powercity.ie/?par=30-05-A1506B&brands=LLOYTRON although I think amps of 300 are too high... that might properly fry it!

Big Nelly wrote: »

The M8 is a piece of sh*t....my mate got one and I spent days trying to gte the crappy thing working...in end I got some standalone apps running on it and just about got the TV addons wizard but XBMC/Kodi would not run properly on the thing...if it was mine I would have thrown it out the window but not my problem now, sent it back to him...

The M8 needs Open Elec IMO. My one is going as well as the M8 can on it. The Just Me 1.5 is supposedly one of the better ROMs but the M8 is not one for the faint hearted, took me a while to sort mine out

Hi all,
I've been researching these android boxes for the last few days but the detail around some things still leaves me fairly confused. Can any knowledgable person help me with these questions?

I take it theres not much in the difference between the amlogic s802, s805 & s812 for playing 1080p x265 downloaded files?

Is there any major difference between the M8, MXIII, MXQ, Cyclone x4?
(The x4 being the box that got me interested in moving from my old atv2/xbmc set-up)

Does it really matter if you buy a clone? I've found M8's on alibaba from $25!

Regarding the off brand boxes, eg the XSbox on amazon. Can all of these be rooted the same as the brand name box that they're based on?
I ask because I've seen some places that XBMC/KODI needs root access to allow H/W acceleration to work properly.

Can any cheap old IR remote work with any android box?
People seem to use air mice, I have no interest in that as it seems so awkward. Surely up, down, left, right should get you everywhere you need to go, plus an info, sub, play/pause, FF/RW button for when in XBMC?

Sorry for all the questions but I have seriously tried to find the answers but all the results seem conflicting. I was hopeing to get everything sorted for under €70 but now thats looking unlikely...

Was looking at this. Any opinions?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00Q8DWZQK/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A261ILPMH9C3IR


Is it possible to install stock android on the amazon fire tv?

5500 wrote: »

Have a couple of MXQ's myself here Ii was setting up, they came with 109k4 pre installed, running kodi here with a full setup I installed and no problems at all, compares well to the 1gb mxiii that I used before,. I see an openelec build popped up for it a couple of days ago so I may tinker around a bit with one of them, I notice a mediaman rom on 109k4 just up aswell too

My 109k has 13.4 installed with the ROM. Didn't go ahead with Kodi though as wasn't sure if box would be ok on it. Working away fine here with Andy's build bit likely to remove that before selling I'd say as no doubt it will offend someone along the line!

Did you install 14.0? I have just packed it away and bloody tempted to try Open Elec now as well as Kodi!

Big Nelly wrote: »

14 works perfect on it....

Damn. Back to playing around with it now, just when I was prepared to sell.

Another question, is the Aeon skin to heavy for a 1gb ram box?

I know some of us has Dropbox, as mentioned on B alerts, if you download the "Mailbox" app from play store, when you link it to your Dropbox account, you will get an extra 1GB storage for free, you van delete the Mailbox app after if you want. The "Carousel" app gives you an extra 3GB storage for photos on Dropbox.

5500 wrote: »

As above no probs to report over the past day or so on 14.0, Im using CCM Helix at the moment and its fluid, but I notice the mediaman android rom is using SBMC instead with his rom. Im tempted to have a play with openelec on it here too

Another thing I noticed is the wifi seems pretty ok to me on it, my 2gb mxiii had problems in a mates house buffering and giving errors, but the mxq was flying along

Is the Gearbest one a Beelink MXQ though? He reports possible problems with non beelink MXQ.

5500 wrote: »

Its the gearbest MXQ with the red on it, just flashed now and installed and booted fine, but the remote isn't recognized. Im only seeing its an issue on the thread now on freaktab but hopefully its ironed out soon

Open Elec ROM, yeah? There is a remote fix but I didn't get that far to install it.

EvanKelly6 wrote: »

Hi guys, sorry if it's only a few pages back but I was just wondering if someone could recommend the best Android TV box at the moment? I almost bought an Amlogic M8 a few months back as it seemed the best at the time, but I'm sure there's probably newer ones out now?

I would also be curious about this. Seems to be so many it's hard to know!

From reading a bit of this thread that the most commonly discussed ones are the MX3 and MXQ? Would they be the ones to go for?

Big Nelly wrote: »

The MXQ as a couple of us are finding are a great price(should be still circa 37 euro from Gearbest) but the power supplies are dodgy

The MXIII is a good option and seems stable....

Depends on budget and also how far router is from where you will have box

Cool cheers. I'm kind of just exploring the idea at the minute. Looking to move to a new place currently so don't know what the situation with router would be but ideally would be looking to have it plugged in rather than over wifi at any rate.