[Asustor] Asustor dropping Kodi support as of March 20th

[RMerlin]

Really annoyed at today's announcement that starting March 20th, Asustor would be dropping support for Kodi:

https://forum.asustor.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9544

At the time, Kodi support was a major deciding factor when I picked up a NAS as it would have to also replace my Zotac HTPC as my media player.

Guess I'll have to look for alternatives now. I will probably go back to a mini HTPC as my media player (I know Raspberry Pi is popular for this, but I'm not sure I like the idea since use a Bluetooth keyboard as well as a Logitech Harmony paired with an old Windows Media Center IR receiver to control Kodi.)

 

[Jack Yaz]

Really annoyed at today's announcement that starting March 20th, Asustor would be dropping support for Kodi:

https://forum.asustor.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9544

At the time, Kodi support was a major deciding factor when I picked up a NAS as it would have to also replace my Zotac HTPC as my media player.

Guess I'll have to look for alternatives now. I will probably go back to a mini HTPC as my media player (I know Raspberry Pi is popular for this, but I'm not sure I like the idea since use a Bluetooth keyboard as well as a Logitech Harmony paired with an old Windows Media Center IR receiver to control Kodi.)

Look at OSMC or the purpose built Vero, it supports a wide range of peripherals so hopefully your current setup will continue to work.

 

[RMerlin]

I was looking at mini PCs similar to Intel NUC or Beelink's. The trick question is always whether or not they support a) Linux and b) audio passthrough. My Zotac worked reasonably well there, but it had a few quirks. Power management under Linux was pretty unreliable for instance, with sleep mode often failing to work.

Nvidia Shield TV is a tempting option there as it does support audio passthrough, but it's a bit expensive.

 

[Jack Yaz]

I was looking at mini PCs similar to Intel NUC or Beelink's. The trick question is always whether or not they support a) Linux and b) audio passthrough. My Zotac worked reasonably well there, but it had a few quirks. Power management under Linux was pretty unreliable for instance, with sleep mode often failing to work.

Nvidia Shield TV is a tempting option there as it does support audio passthrough, but it's a bit expensive.

https://osmc.tv/vero/#vero-order

Supports passthrough as far as I know, and runs Linux (Debian Stretch, if I recall, though tuned to maximise the Kodi experience)

 

[RMerlin]

Hm, ships from the UK. A bit far away from Canada...

 

[Jack Yaz]

Hm, ships from the UK. A bit far away from Canada...

I'll ask Sam what shipping times to Canada are like, they do ship internationally so I'm assuming it's quite reasonable.

 

[RMerlin]

I'll ask Sam what shipping times to Canada are like, they do ship internationally so I'm assuming it's quite reasonable.

Duties and such would inflate the pricing - going with a Minix or a Beelink from Amazon would be a better option.

Anyway, I ended up going for the Shield TV. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time troubleshooting audio streaming issues, and it happened to be discounted at Newegg. Plus I have the peace of mind of knowing that both nVidia and the Kodi devs would be supporting it for a long time.

 

[Jack Yaz]

Fair enough!

 

[Jack Yaz]

FWIW I'm told shipping time is 5-7 days and there are no additional customs fees.

Duties and such would inflate the pricing - going with a Minix or a Beelink from Amazon would be a better option.

Anyway, I ended up going for the Shield TV. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time troubleshooting audio streaming issues, and it happened to be discounted at Newegg. Plus I have the peace of mind of knowing that both nVidia and the Kodi devs would be supporting it for a long time.

 

[db9]

Really annoyed at today's announcement that starting March 20th, Asustor would be dropping support for Kodi:

https://forum.asustor.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9544

At the time, Kodi support was a major deciding factor when I picked up a NAS as it would have to also replace my Zotac HTPC as my media player.

Guess I'll have to look for alternatives now. I will probably go back to a mini HTPC as my media player (I know Raspberry Pi is popular for this, but I'm not sure I like the idea since use a Bluetooth keyboard as well as a Logitech Harmony paired with an old Windows Media Center IR receiver to control Kodi.)

I'm using a RPi, - I control the RPi and Kodi from a Harmony remote using a MSL Digital remote (on/off) PCB - but I use the iPad Kodi remote app as a keyboard typically

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

Anyway, I ended up going for the Shield TV.

Love my shield.

 

[RMerlin]

Love my shield.

Will take a while to get here, Newegg is shipping from the opposite end of the country. Ugh.

At least, I managed to get an extra discount - they dropped the price a second time between the time I first checked pricing during the morning, and the moment I was seriosuly considering ordering it during the afternoon. Ends up nearly 35$ cheaper than local Best Buy.

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

Will take a while to get here, Newegg is shipping from the opposite end of the country. Ugh.

At least, I managed to get an extra discount - they dropped the price a second time between the time I first checked pricing during the morning, and the moment I was seriosuly considering ordering it during the afternoon. Ends up nearly 35$ cheaper than local Best Buy.

Hopefully you didn't bother with the pro version? You can network it to a NAS, use a USB external drive (even a flash drive I have a 128G flash drive hanging out of mine), and if you have an NIVIDA GPU you can stream your games and movies straight from your computer, not that I do, but I could. I use mine for KODI and Terrarium TV. Personally I doubt that the shields graphics are better than my 1080ti...

 

[RMerlin]

Hopefully you didn't bother with the pro version?

That's correct. It's the 2017 regular version, without the game controller (saved an extra 30-40$ on price). I have a spare Patriot high performance USB stick I might use if 16 GB isn't enough, but it should be fine, as there won't be much installed on it beside Kodi, Youtube, etc... All my media are on the NAS. Will just need to validate that my stick works well enough to be adopted - nVidia's official compatibility list is ridiculously short, showing only two Sandisk models (and people have been complaining about overheating issues with at least one of these two)... Worst case scenario, an el cheapo SSD in a USB enclosure would do the trick.

 

[sfx2000]

At the time, Kodi support was a major deciding factor when I picked up a NAS as it would have to also replace my Zotac HTPC as my media player.

Guess I'll have to look for alternatives now. I will probably go back to a mini HTPC as my media player (I know Raspberry Pi is popular for this, but I'm not sure I like the idea since use a Bluetooth keyboard as well as a Logitech Harmony paired with an old Windows Media Center IR receiver to control Kodi.)

Have you considered the TinkerBoard?

Asus does have an Android image for it, and Kodi should run fine there...

Shield's are, how should we say, interesting under the hood...

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

That's correct. It's the 2017 regular version, without the game controller (saved an extra 30-40$ on price). I have a spare Patriot high performance USB stick I might use if 16 GB isn't enough, but it should be fine, as there won't be much installed on it beside Kodi, Youtube, etc... All my media are on the NAS. Will just need to validate that my stick works well enough to be adopted - nVidia's official compatibility list is ridiculously short, showing only two Sandisk models (and people have been complaining about overheating issues with at least one of these two)... Worst case scenario, an el cheapo SSD in a USB enclosure would do the trick.

I would also suggest a mini keyboard/mouse pad, I prefer this to the little stick remote that comes with the shield. I have another one of these but another brand that I use with my Raspberry-pi but this one is far superior.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GCPVZDW/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[RMerlin]

Have you considered the TinkerBoard?

Asus does have an Android image for it, and Kodi should run fine there...

Shield's are, how should we say, interesting under the hood...

"Fine" is a relative word.

nVIDIA has the benefit of having Dolby licences for the Shield TV, which means it can properly decode or passthrough various audio codecs. For every generic Android platforms I've researched this is often an issue, and you end up with 5.1 audio getting downmixed to PCM 2.0.

I don't want any of those low-powered solutions. They generally fail at bitstream passthrough, and have very limited hardware-based decoding, choking on anything but very specific h264 profiles. I'm not gonna reencode all my DVDs... And they would be a step back in performance from either my previous Atom HTPC of my current Celeron-based NAS.

 

[RMerlin]

would also suggest a mini keyboard/mouse pad,

I use a combination of a Logitech Harmony 650 hooked through a Windows MCE USB receiver (which mimics a USB keyboard, making it highly customizable for Kodi) and an old Logitech Bluetooth Mediaboard (their old PS3 product) for the occasions where I need a typing keyboard (which isn't often at all - for my Youtube and Spotify searches I generally use my Zenpad + Chromecast instead).

This is the receiver I use (combined with the Harmony 650): https://kodi.wiki/view/VRC-1100

Been using both of these since back I was using a Zotac as my HTPC (just before getting the NAS).

 

[sfx2000]

nVIDIA has the benefit of having Dolby licences for the Shield TV, which means it can properly decode or passthrough various audio codecs. For every generic Android platforms I've researched this is often an issue, and you end up with 5.1 audio getting downmixed to PCM 2.0.

True, true...

Any word on the Asustor community to support it indirectly?

QNAP also discontinued "official" support for Kodi within QTS, however the community has stepped in to maintain things there despite QNAP's official stamp of approval.

Seriously, under the hood, Asustor and QNAP are linux, and there's always a way...

 

[RMerlin]

Any word on the Asustor community to support it indirectly

Just the usual: people saying "someone should do it, but it won't be me"...

It will be tricky to support for a few reasons:

- They are tied to Asustor Portal (their X server/desktop environment). Every time Asustor changed one, they also had to update the other, as the two seem to be tied in some way.

- The IR remote code is in a separate package. No idea how Kodi will be able to interface with it since there's no source code for that package.

- Asustor's tooolchain/SDK is a mess, and isn't even up-to-date. Last time I checked, their GPL code was like a year out of date.

Anyone deciding to attempt it will be facing an uphill battle.

QNAP also discontinued "official" support for Kodi within QTS, however the community has stepped in to maintain things there despite QNAP's official stamp of approval.

From what I've been told, expect every major NAS maker to abandon Kodi support, due to that patent troll complaining at each of them. That's all I can say for now.

Seriously, under the hood, Asustor and QNAP are linux, and there's always a way...

Except that it's a semi-closed system. You have no access to the kernel, the X server environment, or the video and audio driver. That makes things more complicated, and you are at the mercy of the NAS manufacturer for these parts.