[clarkss12]

I have an older mini PC that has 3 USB 3 ports.  I installed LibreELEC and connected 3 external powered hard drives.  I only use it as a "file server".   Works like a charm and keeps on ticking (ummm a watch commercial?).  I sometimes forget it is even there.

Edit: I forgot to mention, it also servers as my Tvheadend server.  I use a different, more powerful miniPC to run my PLEX and EMBY servers.

what model miniPC do you have?
price?

I have several of the mini PCs. 
My current one that is the most powerful and runs my Emby and Plex servers under Windows 11, is a Beelink GTR6 With the Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU.

The one I have in the basement that is my file server running LibreELEC is a Beelink SEi Series Comet Lake MiniPC.  I have three external powered hard drives connected to it.

Not sure on prices, they are at least a year or more old.  This market changes almost daily.

[izprtxqkft]

The one I have in the basement that is my file server running LibreELEC is a Beelink SEi Series Comet Lake MiniPC.

i considered turning this one into a miniNas, how does the processor handle remuxing large videos?
that's about the only thing i have reservations about

[madmax2]

I have an older mini PC that has 3 USB 3 ports.  I installed LibreELEC and connected 3 external powered hard drives.  I only use it as a "file server".   Works like a charm and keeps on ticking (ummm a watch commercial?).  I sometimes forget it is even there.

Edit: I forgot to mention, it also servers as my Tvheadend server.  I use a different, more powerful miniPC to run my PLEX and EMBY servers.

what model miniPC do you have?
price?

I have several of the mini PCs. 
My current one that is the most powerful and runs my Emby and Plex servers under Windows 11, is a Beelink GTR6 With the Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU.

The one I have in the basement that is my file server running LibreELEC is a Beelink SEi Series Comet Lake MiniPC.  I have three external powered hard drives connected to it.

Not sure on prices, they are at least a year or more old.  This market changes almost daily.

how is bluetooth audio support (any lag when using blue headphone/earbuds)?

do these support hdmi-cec?

[clarkss12]

The one I have in the basement that is my file server running LibreELEC is a Beelink SEi Series Comet Lake MiniPC.

i considered turning this one into a miniNas, how does the processor handle remuxing large videos?
that's about the only thing i have reservations about

I have not tested it for that in a long time. It's been my file server for at least a year or more.

[clarkss12]

what model miniPC do you have?
price?

I have several of the mini PCs. 
My current one that is the most powerful and runs my Emby and Plex servers under Windows 11, is a Beelink GTR6 With the Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU.

The one I have in the basement that is my file server running LibreELEC is a Beelink SEi Series Comet Lake MiniPC.  I have three external powered hard drives connected to it.

Not sure on prices, they are at least a year or more old.  This market changes almost daily.

how is bluetooth audio support (any lag when using blue headphone/earbuds)?

do these support hdmi-cec?

I never tested for Bluetooth support. And I don't use CEC.

[cool0007]

I've been using it for 4 months now https://www.amazon.com/MOREFINE-M9-Windo...CT3S3?th=1
Great server came out! I recommend!
PS.Energy consumption for a month of continuous operation 24/7 was 10 kW

[Allstar007]

"4K RGB L 12b HDR"

What exactly is that? Can you explain it in more detail?

[MoreCowbell]

this device has been migrated to "the shelf"

just not my kind of device as i am used to features on android instead of an htpc

not that i found anything specifically wrong with it, just doesn't suite my use

Can you briefly summarize the features this device doesn't have that contributes to it being a deal breaker?

I've gone through 6 or 7 Kodi boxes in the last 15 years or so. For a few years, my primary Kodi rig was a beast of a machine; high end (at the time) dev & gaming workstation with multiple tv tuners, discrete gpu, 8 HDs, etc etc.  It also used like 200w idle.  I retired it years ago, offloaded storage to a qnap nas (works perfectly) and carved ota tv out to a standalone solution.  Since then I've been hunting for that same smooth, slick Kodi experience I remember and I can't find it.

I've tried Easytone T95Z+, a couple raspi3 attempts, qnap VM kodi instance, Intel Compute Stick CS325, and most recently a Vero 4K.

They were all 'ok' ... the Compute Stick was closest but can't really drive 4k.  The Vero 4K runs content fine but the interface is sluggish, and it struggles to keep up when scrolling through my large video catalog. Worse, we use Kodi to view & playback family vacation pictures; when you navigate to a folder with more than a couple hundred pictures it starts choking.

I've decided Kodi is important enough to warrant just about any budget, to get me back to where I was when I was running that workstation. The problem is, I've always hated the power draw; I'm super green, and run a pretty carbon-neutral life (lots of solar, EV) and don't want to waste power consumption unnecessarily.

Any help for a power user with a huge library and tens of thousands of pictures that get accessed often?

[izprtxqkft]

What exactly is that? Can you explain it in more detail?

https://www.google.com/search?q=rgb+vs+yuv
 

Can you briefly summarize the features this device doesn't have that contributes to it being a deal breaker?

the experience i am used to from android for doesn't match the experience i get from libreelec
admittedly i already spent a year completely tearing down kodi it's skins and it's addons to make kodi the best experience possible "for me" while using android so doing it all over again to get the same thing wasn't on my to do list with libreelec

HDMI-CEC
with coreelec/android cec just works out of the box but i couldn't get it to work on this pc

Addons vs Apps
with android i can have my other apps where in kodi i have to rely on it's addons, the comparison in function between the two is like running an emulator vs the real thing (or if you're savvy the difference in running wine on linux to just running windows)
with that i do consume quite a bit of youtube, i have channels i subscribe to, i do watch youtube recommendations where this is not available on kodi, that addon just doesn't work for me and if you manage to get it to login the recommendations are all wrong and i don't think subscriptions work at all
best i can do is use matt's youtube addon for trailers so i can at least use trailer functionality but in kodi there is a long delay to starting the content, conversely on android i wrote an addon to invoke the installed youtube app which is instant

Available L1 content
limited quality of widevine content (hulu, disney+, peacock) with a PC, no available addon for prime video but i am a subscriber to all of these services and i actively use them to sample and choose new titles to purchase for my own library
where in android these are things i take for granted and get full quality HDR/Dolby Vision *(when available)

Bluetooth universal remote
largely an annoyance was input lag from my universal remote (which is bluetooth) where i often have to question whether i clicked something only for it to happen late
no issues with this on coreelec or android, again "just works"

then the whole having libreelec as the operating system where it really is "just kodi" so doing anything else means switching to another device

these are all personal reasons, potentially fixable on some of it for those willing to and for most people they are completely non-issue, they have no impact on the actual device's capabilities which are quite good


i've been after a certain experience, if it's a "dedicated" media player for local content then i expect it to perform as well as a blu-ray player in terms of playback and responsiveness
i accept a degree of lag or slowness (or lack of feature) from a multi-function player like android because it does a lot more and staying within the same device to consume content is actually faster overall


i did purchase a device to act as a dedicated player after this which delivers that responsive behavior, it is a Zidoo Z9X Pro but Kodi does not run well on it so it's not really a device to discuss on this forum, worth a google/youtube search if you're into trying out new devices though

[calev]

this device has been migrated to "the shelf"

just not my kind of device as i am used to features on android instead of an htpc

not that i found anything specifically wrong with it, just doesn't suite my use

I've tried Easytone T95Z+, a couple raspi3 attempts, qnap VM kodi instance, Intel Compute Stick CS325, and most recently a Vero 4K.

Sounds like a n100 PC would be fine for you.

The n100 is gonna do everything the vero V can do except maybe 3d for about the same price but faster and can run more OSs.

You can keep your pi3 around to play old 3d videos if you still have a 3d TV.

[jbinkley60]

There seems to be a lot more mini pcs coming onto the market with the newest N100 CPU with Intel UHD Graphics so I decided to test one for Kodi use.
Here's a broad stroke with as much detail as I could think to gather, note that this was all done in under a 2 hour testing window and does not reflect long time usage.
Thanks to @calev who initially brought up the subject of these little PCs (not this one in particular)

Overall specs from Intel are here https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/...0-ghz.html

Testing Hardware
MinisForum UN100C
N100/8GB LPDDR5
Samsung Pro 970 512GB

OS/Kodi Version
Kodi (21.0-BETA2 (20.90.821) Git:87d2d6f84799224f5fe63a6bba3e973e84e18fef). Platform: Linux x86 64-bit
LibreELEC (community): nightly-20231218-865d980 12.0, kernel: Linux x86 64-bit version 6.6.7

So I picked up a Beelink N100 and loaded LibreElec.  I ran into an issue where the current 11.0.6 version wouldn't recognize the internal wireless adapter.  I loaded the nightly version you tested with and it worked.  Overall performance is pretty good.  I decided to create a Wiki page of tested endpoint devices for Mezzmo.  

I have 2 basic performance stats, the time to render a 150 item playlist and the time to do a full Kodi library sync of 21K+ items.  These are fine for comparison purposes since they test the network, CPU, memory and disk I/O.  Playback is obviously separate.

Jeff

[izprtxqkft]

right on

performance on these is rather good

i ran geekbench and compared it to my current media server with twice the cores and twice the ram, it performed quite well

existing server
Intel Core i7-9700T, 1 Processor 8 Cores score was 1543 single and 6219 multi
minipc
N100 1 Processor 4 Cores score was 1273 single and 3359 multi

being over 50% the multi-core of an i7 while having half the cores was impressive

(or perhaps bad for the i7 depending on how you look at it)

[crawfish]

What's the fan noise like on a Beelink N100?

[izprtxqkft]

The one I have in the basement that is my file server

thanks for this suggestion
after testing it out for player capabilities i went ahead and set this up as a mini file server with debian
seems to work very well for media and dual lan ports means i can bridge and connect the primary media player directly to it eliminating hops through the router

[clarkss12]

The one I have in the basement that is my file server

thanks for this suggestion
after testing it out for player capabilities i went ahead and set this up as a mini file server with debian
seems to work very well for media and dual lan ports means i can bridge and connect the primary media player directly to it eliminating hops through the router

Those low powered, low cost mini PCs with multiple USB 3 ports, make great servers.  I used LibreELEC because I am not great with Linux, so I could NOT get the SAMBA server to work correctly using Linux.

I have one of these powerful Beelink GTR6 mini PCs connected directly to my "entertainment" center, but only use it as an Emby and Plex server.  To me the days of having a 10 year old $10k PC connected to a big CRT TV are gone and will never resurface again for me..  *** Of course I do have a 11" CRT connected to my "entertainment" center for nostalgia effect***.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0kX4tS3...kil4AaABAg