Overspec'd Android Box for Users Like Us?

[castlev]

Title basically says it all, I have 2 firestick 4k max's, they frequently run out of space and I've decided to abandon these big box store inexpensive devices.

 

I'm not interested in low spec Android boxes from China, and I thought about building an HTPC but I want something Android and ARM based.

 

Is there such a thing as an Android TV box that we can buy or build, with more RAM, Storage, and Processor specs than ever needed where its wasteful? Like 16GB ram, 2TB Storage, Quad Core ARM CPU, WiFi 6, etc... specs can be flexible, even 256GB storage, 12GB ram. Something that runs vanilla Android TV / Google TV and will receive security patches.

 

Essentially I want an Android based TV set top box on steroids, something that would satisfy and appeal to someone like you or I who builds their own PC's, larger than a dongle, smaller than a VCR.

 

The NVIDIA shield seemed appealing, but the newest revision is almost 5 years old, with no news about an updated device on the horizon. Does anything like this exist?

[jaslion]

Just get a used mini pc? They do what android boxes do but better.

 

Like an hp mini g6 or something is about 150$ and fast.

 

Your wanted android box is called an nvidia shield as thats the best one to exist right now but also is kinda mediocre af.

[manikyath]

the problem with what you want is that there's literally douzens of you wanting to pay more than the price of an entry level pc, for something less powerful than an entry level pc. so it's simply not worth designing the device and providing support for it (something you'd expect with a $600 TV box, but could live without on a cheapo android stick)

[seanondemand]

What kind of tasks could a tv box possibly do that would need that kind of specs?

 

That's the funny thing with the Shield - until 8k becomes a thing, there isn't a whole lot of reasons to do an update, because the hardware is easily good enough to handle anything anyone would want to do with a tv box with the current technology in streaming and TVs.

[TheGreatestGazoo]

I ditched Firesticks a while back and went with AppleTV and they are surprisingly good, but our family is Apple oriented rather than Android. Only downside for us is that it doesn't natively passthrough DTS for my music concerts from my Plex server. It even does some light gaming through the Arcade app and paired with a game controller.

 

I did play around with Kodi on some Rasp Pi 3's back in the day and they were underpowered for the most part, with video transcoding running pretty ragged at times only on 1080P. It worked good enough for a while. Not sure how the newer Pi's stack up but might be something to look into. I would say that the Pi's I had were better than the Firesticks.

[ender23]

13 hours ago, TheGreatestGazoo said:

I ditched Firesticks a while back and went with AppleTV and they are surprisingly good, but our family is Apple oriented rather than Android. Only downside for us is that it doesn't natively passthrough DTS for my music concerts from my Plex server. It even does some light gaming through the Arcade app and paired with a game controller.

 

I did play around with Kodi on some Rasp Pi 3's back in the day and they were underpowered for the most part, with video transcoding running pretty ragged at times only on 1080P. It worked good enough for a while. Not sure how the newer Pi's stack up but might be something to look into. I would say that the Pi's I had were better than the Firesticks.

I agree. The AppleTV is snappy, has a great UI/UX, there aren't tiles filed with ads like some boxes, and has access to all the apps you could want. That said, while I think the ATV is near the top of the pile for streaming boxes, just about anything you choose is going to be a far better experience than the built in smartTV.

[TheGreatestGazoo]

I've tried so many media players and streamers over the years. My first dedicated player was the DVICO TViX HD M-6500A. I use my ATV (we have 4 of them in our house now) for most things but for those concerts and a few other movies, I use my OPPO BDP-103D to play and get DTS sound but it's limited to 1080P. I wish I had picked up the OPPO UDP-205 but missed out on getting one of those - they didn't sell them for a long period of time and it slipped away from me.

[ItsKoop]

I just stick to the Nvidia Shield TV Pro running 8.2.3

 

So far I've simply not needed anything more powerful and I like the AI upscaling for streamed 1080P content (pretty much exclusively Cruncyroll).

[TheGreatestGazoo]

I just discovered ZIDOO that seems to make a series of different Android boxes and some of them appear to be high end. I am seriously looking at the Z2000 PRO to replace my AppleTV since it does support DTS as well as just about every format for sound and video - I just don't really need a built in HDD, but it can grab files off of my server without needing PLEX as it has its own GUI. The higher end players are not cheap, but the entry level models seem to be priced well.

[aggie113]

I run a Zidoo (z9x pro and another clone) for streaming boxes.  Don't care about storage or audio processing as I have a NAS and a receiver to handle such things so no reason to overspend on the appliance.