any reason not to go generic if you don’t use prime?
Hello. So i've browsed through these forums because I am looking at getting myself a device to play my media. I had a WD HD live for years and that thing worked like a beast. Unlike the things like roku/amazon fire/chrome ect. It could play any and all video types including those with optional subs. No other device I looked at at the time could do that. Reading the forums I see that the generic android kodi boxes on amazon are widely despised here, so maybe i'll catch heat for asking this but why wouldn't I buy one?
My current needs / uses are that I have a very large collection of tv shows and movies i've ripped from dvd into digitial and created a massive library on an external hard drive. This is what I am needing the device for. I do watch netflix and hulu every once in a while, but honestly they suck compared to my personal library. So my needs are playing many file types, including those with subs so i'm looking for essentially the VLC of media boxes, which the big brand names are not. They're meant almost exclusively for streaming with watching your own files being what seems a poorly implemented after-thought. I would like the option of either connecting the external drive directly to the box, or having it connected to my pc and streaming from there to the box.
The only reason I can find here not to buy one of those cheap generic boxes (mxiii, m8s ect) are because 'they can't do amazon prime' I don't have prime and have no desire to have prime. So in my thinking why buy a fire tv, to sideload kodi that it won't directly boot into making an extra step every time i want to watch my own media? But having rooted and thrown roms on dozens of phones over the years I value flexability and open sourceness (is that a word?) I am also not afraid of a little tweaking.
second to prime is 'poor remote intigration' yet I've read that kodi works fine with remotes it's just the android side itself that doesn't. If i understand properly, running kodi and watching my own files this shouldn't be an issue as I won't be screwing around in the android OS itself much if any.
So considering the massive bias toward the amazon fire here, and you all knowing far more about the current techonlogy than me, what am I missing here? If I couldn't care less about amazon prime, and i don't want to use a pi, what's up?
*I also realize there will be no calling support, for a $50 device i wasn't really expecting or needing a tech support or return policy.