Pre sales questions for admins and existing users!

[arrbee]

Hi,
I'm looking for a little guidance before purchasing.

Background:
I'm technically compentent and have been using media players to stream off my SMB shares since XBMC on an original XBOX.  Currently I use a crappy 1080i player with slow and buggy performance as I can't yet justify the cost of dedicating a PC and all other products seem to have been lacking something until recently.  I've been dieing to get back to the XBMC interface!

A bit of searching has be deciding between a Q5 and an H8.
I'm leaning torward an H8 even though I understand it is early days and has some bugs in firmware??  I figure, as long as it does the basics right (at least as well as my current player) and there is a commitment to improve the product then I can live with that.

The reason I am currently favouring the H8 is:
-HDMI 2.0
-More grunt
-more internal storage (not that this is critical)
-design
-seems to have better native Kodi support??

The question I have is this.
How is the current functional performance in the following areas especially when compared to a Q5:
-playback of music and 1080p video from file or iso from a samba share?
-can I output optical and analog audio simultaneously? what about HDMI? (all three)
-noise?  is it fanless/silent?  how about the heat?
-remote.... does it map intuitively to the Kodi UI? (is it wife proof?)
-other controls... Could I plug in a USB game controller and use it like the old XBMC mapping? (always found this the best for cuing up music playlists on the fly)
-add ons... Havent done much in this area in the past but know there are many.  Are there any issues with loading kodi add ons, or android apps?

At this stage I think if I could play content from my network and from the internet reliably and accurately and the control was good, it would be enough.


Sorry for the long post.

Cheers,
RB

[futeko.com]

Your summary of H8 is just about right. H8 is newer, more powerful, and has a lot of development work going into it right now to get the firmware right.

H8 is taking a different route in Kodi to Q5. Q5 loads external player (via wrapper) whilst Himedia (and others) are developing custom Kodi specifically for H8. The advantage of the H8 approach is that it will work better with add-ons and Kodi menus. Eventually this Kodi work should be rolled into standard Kodi so future Kodi will have inbuilt good support for H8.

playback of music and 1080p video from file or iso from a samba share? No difference between the two. Kodi probably won't even need wrapper for 1080p content in Q5 and H8 Kodi will handle this easily. Differences occur with high bitrate files, 7.1 audio and 3D. All of which Q5 with wrapper is currently better, but probably won't be in a few months time. Samba shares cannot be password protected (there is a way around this but it's complicated), this is an Android limitation.

-can I output optical and analog audio simultaneously? what about HDMI? (all three) No. Output is via one audio output at a time for both H8 and Q5.

-noise?  is it fanless/silent?  how about the heat? Neither have a fan and both are silent. Q5 runs quite warm but we've been selling it for a year and it hasn't caused problems. The casing is metal so is designed to get hot / dissipate heat. H8 runs quite cool regardless of what you throw at it. Again casing is metal, which is best for dealing with any heat.

-remote.... does it map intuitively to the Kodi UI? (is it wife proof?) Yes. In both cases. Everything works as expected with the one exception of the remote home button exiting Kodi and returning to Android home not Kodi home. You do get used to this.! If you're mostly interested in Kodi then I'd recommend setting it to auto-boot to Kodi (instructions in forum FAQ), this will have the nice side-effect of auto re-loading Kodi if you do accidentally hit the home button. Auto loading to Kodi will also make it significantly more wife-proof!

-other controls... Could I plug in a USB game controller and use it like the old XBMC mapping? (always found this the best for cuing up music playlists on the fly)  Yes for both Q5 and H8, but it's not straightforward. See here: http://www.futeko.com/newforum/index.php?topic=322.msg2232#msg2232. Not sure about XBMC mapping. If you have a smartphone I'd recommend a Kodi remote app. Or for Q5 there's anAndroid app called Hicontrol which mirrors Q5 output and gives touch output on phone/tablet. It's very good. At the moment it doesn't support H8 but should do in future.

-add ons... Havent done much in this area in the past but know there are many.  Are there any issues with loading kodi add ons, or android apps? I haven't found any issues on either box, but read the forum for more info. In some cases people seem have a problem with H8 where add-ons don't appear, but we can't replicate it and it's fixed by a reinstall. Most add-ons work well in Android Kodi after version 14.2. Earlier versions had problems but with Android Kodi being very popular the problems have been fixed by Kodi devs. All Android apps should run on both boxes. Some might require a mouse. Some streaming apps may block content based on IP or other methods.

[arrbee]

Thanks very much for the comprehensive and open answers.
The limitation of 1 audio out is a shame.

Previously I had analog for music and optical for video each with separate settings on the amp.
it worked well.


To me it sounds like the advanced features that need a little extra work won't concern me in the short term but make for a good future proofing exercise.


Cheers,
RB

PS.  any owners out there, feel free to add your 2c.

[arrbee]

I just noticed that the h8 appears to be usb2 and 100Mb NIC while the q5 is usb3 with GB NIC.
Is that correct? What gives?

[futeko.com]

I just noticed that the h8 appears to be usb2 and 100Mb NIC while the q5 is usb3 with GB NIC.
Is that correct? What gives?

That is correct. H8 is also cheaper.

I would add that USB 3 is unnecessary for playback of any conceivable video file, so the advantage would only be felt when copying files. Similar with Gigabit LAN, it's extremely unlikely that you'll find real world files that go beyond the max throughput of LAN on the H8 (~ 70Mbps with current firmware).