So I was hoping to get a new media center device that had just a bit more power than my raspberry pi and did not have a fan like my aging Acer Revo 3600. So I decided on the Odroid U3 from Hardkernel.
The device shipped from South Korea and I sadly ended up paying the same amount in taxes and fees that I had originally payed for the device itself. In my rush I had not learned that the U3 is NOT USB powered like the raspberry pi is, so I had not chosen to buy a power supply along with it. Big mistake.
The power plug size listed seemed fairly standard, it did however take me 3 weeks to track down the right size as the size listed in the specifications is not that standard around here.
I then threw Debian wheezy on a class 10 micro SD card, and that let me run a Xbmc build that could play back up to 720p without to much trouble. I did get some constant UI freezes that made the simple fact of using the device pretty horrible. I sprung for a micro SD card twice the price but still class 10, as I have before had problems with SD cards claiming to be high quality being.. Well anything but.
Same problem with UI freezing up and me having to wait anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds before the U3 became responsive again. I then tried out a Android jelly bean build that let me boot straight into a full screen, libstagefright supported xbmc version that could playback 1080p, with a bit of lag here and there. And what was worse. The same UI freezing persisted. When I asked around the hardkernel community, I was told that the devices could not really run OS from micro SD and that I should purchase a emmc memory module to use for the OS.
I have been running anything from servers to flawless xbmc versions from sd and flash memory so I was not about to purchase anything like that. My RPi runs without the UI freezing up from the very same micro SD. And the Odroid U3 sports a 1.7GHz Quad-Core processor and 2GB Ram so I am really surprised it was such a poor experience for me. I have no idea if it was a faulty device or something similar. But I sold it again.
And are now awaiting the arrival of a Cubox-i2eX that sports slightly lower specifications but has support for OPENELEC xbmc builds, that imo is the bees knees if you need a device for media playback only. My experience is that the stable builds are beyond rock solid and by far the most amazing builds out there.
