Help! Can't tell which version, and can't upgrade/change.

[w12plai]

Okay, I am not exactly sure which version of the Q5 I have, or how to upgrade if I can.   I bought one that appears to be in Chinese, but it is titled the Maguuog Chinese version.   However when it arrived, the remote was in English, and I was able to set most of the menus to English.  The confusion is that the firmware is set to 1.09 HMD from 06-18-2015. The model # is Q5 then some Chinese characters, then 2000. Android 4.4.2.

Questions

1:) Can I upgrade this to a pure English firmware?  I've tried to no success.
2) Can I remove the Chinese overlay and the IMG TV  / Chinese TV channels I am getting?
3) I want to install a script to auto mount my SMB share, but I can't seem to use luoonns method to connect to the device. Says cannot connect or find device on ip address.   Is this because of the firmware and location?
4) I  can install Kodi and have good functionality, real goal is to simply mount my samba share to work with this.
5) Any other tips or pointers? What is the best way to root?

[futeko.com]

You describe the Chinese firmware, so from that I am sure it's the Chinese hardware version and you will not be able to install European/international firmware.

You can probably install Kodi. Although the Chinese firmware is superficially very different it's similar under the hood. I would have thought any version of Kodi will install and run normally and that the wrapper can be installed too.

[w12plai]

Yes, I've had it for awhile now, and Kodi works fine. Actually, all functionality works great. Playing movies, installing play store, etc.  No issues, and I can work with it.   The ONLY major issue I am having is using looun's method to mount a CIFS share from my FREENAS box at this point. Was wondering if I can't connect to the device using aad and his automount method is because of the firmware or hardware.  It does seem like this version of Android is more limited than English. 

Ive managed to get everything else to work as usual except that quirk.