I can confirm what @Shoog has written, you can take this as an official statement on behalf of the whole team.
CoreELEC was created specifically to cater for Amlogic devices and we will stay faithful to this.
We are the only project dedicated solely to Amlogic devices and we will remain that way.
We will not abandon them like others have just because there is a new RPi out.
I would not blame the lack of heatsink on the RP4 on anyone other than the Pi foundation. The decision was obviously made that the Pi has a price sweet spot of Ā£35 and that doesnāt allow for engineering niceties such as a heatsink which would cost as much as the chip it was mounted on. Its a legitimate philosophy and wont be a major problem as for a small price there will be multiple cooling solutions offered appropriate to different use scenarios.
However the lack of adequate cooling on a box such as the Beelink King is unacceptable cost cutting as to add a heatsink will not be trivial for the many people who discover that their experience is compromised. This penny pinching is endemic to Chinese manufacturers.
Shoog
Take a look at the benchmarks on the CNX review, the thermal issue is clear to see and on a few tests means that the RP4 is in fact slower than the RP3.
Shoog
We all agree that people buy RPi not because they are the best hardware in the market, itās because the community support behind RPi.
Lack of heatsink is trivial because mostly people that are good at electronics buy such devices and they know how to improve cooling easily.
Seeing CoreELEC would have been nice on RPi4, but this is not a deal breaker for me since I got @anon88919003 's point.
The only thing I care about is the HEVC 10bit decoding.
The only thing I care about is the HEVC 10bit decoding.
If you want that then I sincerely think that the RP4 will be very marginal for HEVC 10bits. It certainly canāt reliably do that yet. The HK N2 is a much safer bet at only a bit more money.
Iāve stayed out of this conversation as Iām biased but the RPi4 looks really poor to be honest.
This post shows how bad it really is when the guy got a professional thermal camera on the device, it stutters, the colours are washed out and it overheats.
Even with a heatsink it is no better, link.
As popular as the RPi is, the RPi4 does really not seem like a suitable product for HTPCās by the looks of initial reviews and comments made about it.
Thats really the truthā¦ The Raspberryās are like one step above the Arduino which has been kicking around for years in the hobbiest market as a cheap development tool. It grew a lot when the eductation system here in North America started using them in schools for teaching. Raspberry is a upscale of that low end cheap market as its a natural step up and when things like Kodi were made to work on it people started to get the idea in their heads that it was now a media box. As like the earlier version i canāt see this version being all that much better as the Broadcom core is the issue. Any one thats really done any serious programming on it should be familiar with the pitfalls of working at this low (small) end of the development spectrum. The new board is just the foundation trying to keep up with the joneās as the market evolves moving up with better technology.
Its not like its a bad board its just not going to as applicable in the media market as the newer bigger boards. They should just go back to trying to bump the Arduinoās out of the cheaper 3D Printer market as they have tried to do in the last few years without any real success.
To further just be blunt and hit the nail on the head. How many ACTUALLY believe a $35 dollar board is really going to be up to the more expensive boards where even cost cutting on them has not allolwed them to be that cheap. ya ya i am sure someone will eventually make Kodi work on it but that doās not make them a real competitor to products like the N2 or even in the box market like the GT-King.
I really hope coders here donāt waste what little time and resources on what will always be behind the newer more capable boards over the release of such a niche class board. Seems LE is more tied to this then here so let them worry about it.
I donāt know what we could offer to the Raspberry Pi. It has good support in LibreELEC through Popcornmix and Milhouse.
Purely from a user point of view and media player use, the R-Pi has never been able to compete with the cheap devices such as AMLogic.
Those device come cased with operating system, power supply, wifi, ethernet, USB and display for very close to what the R-Pi cost for a bare board.
By the time the R-Pi was brought to a comparable standard it cost at least twice as much and did not work as well.
It has its place, but even for simple media work (1080p max) it cannot compete.
I have not got a R-Pi 4 and wonāt for media purposes.
I will take my chance on cheap far eastern products or spend extra and get a much better device like that being worked on by CE presently.
Several operating system available for the PI and it has wifi (the last few at least), ethernet, USB on the board.
Yes, you need to buy an sd card, a power supply and a case to get a fully functional media box. These are all cheap.
The raspi 3 is still better than a cheap amlogic box in CEC and 3D handling, but unfortunately itās limited to 1080p and lacks of processor power to make smooth GUI experience.
The 4k capable PI 4 came out too early to get the usual (good) software support which is a huge mistake from the foundation.
I wish they took out wifi+BT in order to keep the price around $35, instead of picking up cheaper cpu+gpu 
Wifi+BT could easily be fixed by users according to their needsā¦
This is something I donāt understand why Users still think a cheap AML box is better.
Not a RPi fan myself, but I think $35 for this feature rich Pi4 is pretty damn good.
I think only a N2 can beat the Pi4 currently. And the price difference it probably a reason for users to buy Pi4.
RPi costs 35$? Not even a close! You need also at least power supply, mSD card and HDMI cable. Thats at least 30$ more. So itās not 35$ itās 65$, minimum! (Not going to say that you need case also.)
Donāt get me wrong, I like RPi and have RPi 3 but my, twice cheaper, Beelink Mini MX (S905) blows it away when it comes to multimedia. I even believe that can beat this new RPi 4 also.
It really isnāt, unless youāre actively trying to throw money away. When I get a pi4 Iād expect to add Ā£2 for a case, Ā£7.50 (max) for a power supply (though Iāll try stuff I have lying around first), Ā£5 for a card (in reality use an existing one) and Ā£1 for a microhdmi adapter (actually I have a cable from a tablet kicking about).
I have the same Beelinks and agree theyāre a better (quicker and equally reliable) ELEC device than the Pi3 though.
RPi is not AML rival, it has never been.
RPi for hobbyists. What we(at least me) wish is that it could be used as htpc as well.
It has everything except proper video decoding.
I still use a rp2 on my crt bedroom TV and it works fine.
I have said it many times before for most users 4k and other uhd is many years in the future unless they are early adopters so the pi4 will be more than adequate.
I have spoken in general, for people who start from 0. So, no microhdmi adapter, you must buy a cable. Also no cheapest 5$ micro sd card. If you want some decent performance you need some class 10 card.
My calculations is:
Like i said, I have RPi and love it, but people must be aware that āonly 35$ deviceā is just a marketing.
Given you said you werenāt including the case youāre already down from āat least 30$ moreā to $25 for someone who starts āfrom 0ā (ie not most of us).
I can find a 16GB class 10 sandisk card for $5.79 on Amazon us (spent 20 seconds searching).
Of course if you want to spend $30+ itās not difficult.
Edit: Iām honestly not trying to be argumentative here - I have 4 piās of various ages and at no point have I spent an extra $30 or anywhere near that on accessories.
I think it is unfair to add some accessories to blowup the price. Also performance wise the Pi4 will be faster than a S905X. Even faster than the new S905X3.
Itās not unreasonable to say you need extras when you buy a naked board like the pi (which you may or may not already have). How can you ignore that?
If youāre building a pc do you only look at the price of the motherboard?
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