hi,

been a xbmc user for months now. think its time for me to cancel Astro and get a media player with XBMC installed. I know this question has been answered to death...What is the best player for XBMC out there?

Lots of players from HiMedia but got some issues?

Any tip will be grateful.

Any Maxis user subscribe to Android box to watch Netflix, Cloudtv, xmbc etc.... Any problem? Lag? Thanks

i tried spmc - it doesn't works as good, crashed twice when I tried it. maybe i missed some special settings. so i reverted to xbmc.
himedia q16ii... u mean q16 quadcore?
i have that model, xbmc 13.2 works fine, after turning off mediacodec acceleration.


himedia had issues with xbmc for older models and for old xbmc frodo versions.
current models, gotham versions work fine, but i do not know how well other brands/models work.
but why focus only on xbmc?
not interested in other apps like popcorn time, maybe chinese video apps?
english movies/tv series, xbmc hd videos have become less and less, popcorn time is good - lots of 1080/720!

some pointers 4 u...

.. what broadband speed u hv? ... 5mbps is probably the lowest to get good videos...
.. wud u be using astro-on-the-go?... newer androids 4.4 and above wont work, only 4.2 works - astro behind time...
.. better go for 16gb or 32gb emmc - big flash memories r required for newer and bigger apps. 4-8gb will be handicapped very quickly....

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Nov 3 2014, 11:31 PM

Get the FireTv or Ouya - I own a few of these and its perfect

i tried using popcorn 0.4.4 and 0.3.4 on my windows platform, it hang at downloading page.

anyone faces this problem?

u mean beta 3.4? there is already 4.4?
beta 3.4 works fine for me, on old windows vista.

one possible explanation:
the 1080p videos are about 2gb each
assuming 2 hrs play, it needs to stream at average 555KBps for the cache.
which means if <5mbps broadband, may run into hanging and lagging.
i have experienced this on both pc and android.
so, turn off all other devices, see if any diff...
720p will be much smoother as they r all <1gb in size.
another explanation is the link is bad, broken... try other links.

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Nov 4 2014, 10:54 AM

Great tips. I just got to know popcorn time few pages back. Looks good...will try it out. Chinese video apps? I set up an ipad with XBMC with azdrama for my dad. He's been glued to it since. problem is that I dont read chinese...I cant go beyond XBMC to chinese apps...unless they're in english too.

...I have unifi 5Mbps...planning on going to maxis 10mbps, since there's gonna be more streaming going on. (but i have friends with maxis and they hated it after switch with unifi...true story?)

...AOTG...if i cancel astro, this would be history....no?
...large Emmc...another good tip.


As Xnet suggested, i read up FireTV...seems like a win with this player. Good specs and price range within those himedi. Firetv is compatible with popcorn time also.

This post has been edited by WildChai: Nov 4 2014, 10:59 AM

popcorn is great, the best eng (with some chinese, indian blockbusters) movies/tv series imo. but for 1080p, u need at least a few gb memory available, which is why i suggested 16-32 gb emmc.

if no read chinese, then u dun need in-house/built in china apps which comes with some androids.

unifi->maxis... tricky... i thought of that but never did. if u read the threads on this, the prime concern is maxis throttles speed at certain times of the day or night. consider upgrade to unifi10 for rm169 or rm179 during promo, will be good for android streaming.

astro... if u hv relative or fren wiling to share id/pw, it's a bonus... stable but mobile video quality. can be useful say during worldcup or euro cup, pay ad hoc to watch some live matches.

get a good one, dun stinge to buy cheap. lastly, buy from responsible seller who gives continuous support, updates, upgrades. this is impt becos androids are software driven, not like dvd player/astro that are hardware driven pretty fixed.

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Nov 4 2014, 12:37 PM

Hi bro, how well do Fire tv performs? able to install XBMC? where do you buy it? amazon or ipmart?

I'm thinking of buying one media player. Before this I prefer Minix Neo 8-h but after reading some review and youtube videos on the Fire tv..I get excited to buy it. Care to share your experience on Fire tv?

XBMC is not my main concern because I usually download movies and put it in my Plex server. So I can watch it with Plex app. For Live TV I can use any IPTV app available.

I bought the FireTV and Ouya from BestBuy in the states.
In fact I have a few of them and to me FireTV is snappier than the Ouya.

As far as XBMC both performs flawless but I use SPMC which meets my requirements.

Plex on FireTV works superb and a few IPTV app that I installed runs fine too.

I still have 1 unit of the previous rootable version of FireTV you if you are interested - brand new and unopened.

Just tested PopcornT...but had to update my MBA to Yosemite to install. Anyways, the UI looks good but even with max 500+kbps speed...the 720p in movies is just only enough to keep up. Now i need to upgrade to Unifi 10mbps. Decided to take the new RM199 package along with the hypptv platinum. Don't know when till the next promo. still better than with astro, paying RM150 a mth for crappy shows.
will have 3 streaming devices, an xbox, a download server and loads of tablets to cater to. not sure 10mbps is even enough...lol

good idea on the aotg login. now might get the firetv from amazon directly. Too bad cant have both popcornT and xbmc installed on the same device and choose which to load. only a htpc is able right.

most popcorn shows come in a few selections - 720p, 1080p, and variations for both. sometimes 5 choices. usually 800mb to 2gb. if u know torrent, u know how it works. they r all mp4 rips, 2.0 audio. and when you check the no. seeds and peers for each choice, u get an idea which one will work best. default proposed one is always the one with highest no. of seeds.

popcorn, the speed goes from 50KBps to 1000KBps for my unifi10. more seeds, higher speed, provided no other device in use. if something else is in use, the bandwidth will be shared (also depends on whether you do settings on router or not). so, if u hv several devices in use most of the time, 5mbps (625KBps) will be shared, may not stream 1080p well. roughly, 1080p say 2gb, 2 hrs video => 555KBps required. so, do upgrade to twice the speed!

don't get shortchanged when u upgrade from unifi5 to 10. the best one i know is that rm179 with megapack (or sportspack). u can negotiate but i think that depends on area, competiiton, agents and promo periods.


why popcorn and xbmc can't be intsalled on same device, this one u r thinking of?

Popcorn is web based right? So any browser would do?

popcorn time has many versions, diff apps for windows, mac, linus, android...

i m using windows and android versions, both good.

Too bad it cannot be installed on my Dune player. too many players now.

Oh..my bad. Brain fart...forgot that XBMC and POPT are apps. just install and load them anytime. SO means they can both be installed in firetv player the same time?

hehe... too many players? i hv 2 dvd players given away, 2 bd players used sparingly, 1 media player given away, 2 acryans still in use... and 3 android boxes!

after all the spending and time mucking with them, i can only suggest u 2 prime things:

1. buy a good androidtv box that will last u >2yrs, i.e. with latest chipsets, >16gb emmc, usb3.0, 4k/uhd-able. i kinda expect the next popcorn or pretzel to demand >5gb flash memory to get 1080p + dd/dts 5.1.

2. upgrade to unifi10, maybe 20. the day i find a need to go unifi20, i will not hesitate. for rm229-249 pm that covers phone, hypptv, pc browsing, torrenting, ipads and androidtv, that is not too bad. beats the crap out of paying >RM1xx for just that axtro. we r living in a stagnant income but high living cost environment, so... need to max benefit out of every precious rm.

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Nov 5 2014, 07:42 PM

im just waiting best price from TM for vip20 currently happy user with vip10 rm179.

Lol...i have never bought or handled a movie disc for years. Always been downloading.

1. true...i never waste money on low end products...wont last...more pain that they're worth. and eventually, need to upgrade...waste double money. the Firetv looks good from all angles.

2. Yeah..will call up both unifi and astro in coming days. 20 will have to wait down the road. hope i can get tm support to get me a good deal on the 10mb package...since i have been a "loyal" customer for years. true that...astro is pointless and blardy expensive

given the crap performance of cheap abnxcess and maxis fiber throttling at times, unlikely unifi will cut price or give great promos any time soon as they know a monopoly need not do that.

still, if you can get vip20 for 179+30=209 no hypptv packs, might be worth it. i dunno if anyone has got that... yet.

guys.... im planing to upgrade to minix X8-H, my question is currently im using Himedia Q16 which is gigabit so far i stream movies from my local server without any lag (wired lan gigabit connection ), this minix is 100/10 connection. will the movie streaming local SMB will be slow or lag?