Someone please explain no more amcodec support

Hello all. I have two Matricom devices which I used to normally play H.264 files for and worked flawlessly. I have Gbox Q and Q2 (S802, S812 platforms). I’ve recently installed MythTV for live TV over HDHomerun and was not able to get MPEG 1080i to work at all (freezing, slowing) using Kodi 17. I have since found a few references saying amlogic is no longer being supported but mediacodec is. I remember older versions of Kodi having amcodec in the list of hardware acceleration but now is only mediacodec.

Can someone explain differences between amcodec and mediacodec? It seems the most popular boxes like Minix U1 are also amcodec so I assume that works with new Kodi 17 mediacodec somehow. Is mediacodec some kind of standard framework to talk to hardware? If so why do some work and some don’t?

I’m also not really wanting to try going Libreelec. First off, can’t seem to get it to work (boot errors) and I also like to have access to Android apps available like Netflix etc.

Is there a list of Android boxes that work with mediacodec/Kodi 17 1080i MPEG2 on hardware acceleration right out of the box?

Sorry for all the questions, but this topic seems to be confusing and confused by many.