Moving from RPI 3B+ to Amlogic

Perhaps a question that is often asked and met with a lot of scruteny but thought I’d ask anyway.
I currently use a RPI3B+ as a HTPC (with Kodi on LibreELEC), while this works fine most of the time I’m not too happy about the speed and stability of the RPI.

Especially the several SD Card crashes I’ve had over the last few years (thank god for backups) made me look towards a fixed disk solution.
Initially my research took me towards a NUC but I don’t feel like spending NUC money just on a device to play media.

Luckily I came across the Amlogic SBC’s and I’m actually looking for advice on how to proceed.

First I’m trying to decide between a VIM3 board or a Odroid N2 (the N2 currently has the upper hand).
Also, instead of working with an SD Card again I would like to install the OS to the eMMC module.
Does this make sense, is it a stupid plan,…?
Are those modules actually more stable than an sdcard?

So any suggestions you guys might have regarding device choice and setup are most welcome.
Currently I’m leaning towards an Odroid N2 with the eMMC module and just flashing that thing with CoreELEC.

Any advice is much appreciated!

Your logic is right:
-the N2 has the edge, the VIM3 will need some extras and a bit of work to get it into a living room stable setup.
-emmc is the way to go with these boards. On my VIM2 the speed boost on certain operations is significant.
-runn CE and you are good to go.

Shoog

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I will not try to sway your decision by saying which board I think is better however I will say that we currently only support the N2, KVIM3 support will be added if we ever receive samples of it.

Well that’s not swaying me :slight_smile: That’s just providing me with more information so I can make an informed decision!
Guess I’ll start looking for an N2 board! :wink:

You can boot a RP from a hard drive if that is your only problem.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

However, I would go for the N2 just for the better 4k video support. Turn your RP into a NAS for your LAN or keep it as a media center on another tv to stream cartoons if you have kids. There are a lot of cool pi projects to consider, depending on your needs.

When I switched to Odroids, I relegated my Rpi3B to a Tvheadend server (since also been replaced by a “retired” Odroid C2). Deluge (torrents), Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, SickBeard, etc. servers are also options if one is so inclined. My Pi3 now solely runs cronjobs for my other machines (downloading XMLTV Files, cleanup, etc.).

they say “CoreElec Team will get samples”

" tsangyoujun: Yes, we will send them a sample when the v11 small production run is completed."

dont know what they mean with “v11 smal production”

N2 has lots of processing power to handle whatever you want to do. I plan to run TVHeadend on mine at some point and have no concern about the processing load. It barely registers any load just playing videos from my network library. The interface is real snappy too.

The removable eMMC with the N2 is nice since you can use whatever size you need and makes it handy for writing images from PC with a USB writer. The VIM3 has a non-removable eMMC.

The VIM3 isn’t supported yet. I’m sure it will get support at some point, but it’s not there right now and may never if they don’t send samples to the devs.

The N2 is nice in that it has four SuperSpeed USB ports. So there’s no issue with USB storage and the number of ports available. Though I’m not sure if the N2 can boot from USB so if you want to use an external SSD for everything that may or may not work. I use the eMMC which should be as reliable as an SSD, but I don’t know that for a fact.

I just switched yesterday and have to say I’m very impressed by the speed of the N2.
Upgrade went without a hich and the menu’s/video loadtimes over the network are much much better!

Even noticed it turns itself off and on together with my TV which is a lovely added bonus!

I’m sure to find a fun project for my RPI :slight_smile:
maybe I’ll use it as an irc bouncer or a vpn server or something… the NAS handles most of the other workload anyway