Is Open/CoreELEC OK?
Have a look at the DuneHD box. It's an unlocked android box, CoreELEC support, kann play HDR and 3D content.
That is the cheapest solution I know.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Dune HD?
Typo, thanks. Fixed it.
Yes, DuneHD . Pro Vision works well. I use it on a 3D Beamer. ShellyFin in house, plays everything, h264,h265 HDR and 3D content, everything hardware decoded. And this with CoreELEC on it.
I have never seen these. Thanks for mentioning them. I use a bunch of nvidia shield boxes and they are getting older by the day. Seeking alternatives and I like the looks of these. They do state they are not Netflix certified, but what does that mean? Will it work and they just don’t guarantee it? I’d say half the shield’s duty is Netflix and the other half is streaming from a nas. I use a separate pc w/FF for youtoob for the ad blocking. Would love to distill down to one box and this looks very nice. Thanks again!
Netflix needs some fucked up DRM. Without it Netflix will only work in 720p (maybe 1080?) without HDR.
But that is the usual Linux user experience...
As they have an unlocked bootloader, no Netflix certificate.
So, it will work, but with limits
haven't tried steam link but the raspberry pi still does all that for 150 or less
Less than $100 is tricky, but I've been meeting all your criteria with a Beelink EQ14. I also use it as my router.
The Le Potato AML-S905X-CC has h.264 and h.265 decoders up to 4k, emmc connector So you don't have to run off an SD card. I've used it as a media player and its pretty damn solid. I can't speak to streaming games because I don't do that, so I don't know if it's a different format. It does not have a powerful processor, so if the stream is encoded differently I wouldn't expect it to be very good.
Its pretty old, around rpi3 performance, but having the decoders in there make it better than the RPI 4 for playing those types of videos.
I have an Odroid c2 as server with a chromecast (with Google TV) as viewer with Kodi. For videos it is stable. It can play 1080p x264 and x265.
The odroid c2 server runs DietPi (based on Debian).
For games I have no idea.. If your interested in odroid, do not pick up the c2 but the successor the c4.
I have a C2 with LibreELEC but last time I checked there were zero os updates for years :( any suggestions?
Maybe a used minipc like the Lenovo Tiny series, although it might be slightly exceeding your budget.
Anything listed on Jellyfin is usable.
Anything that can run an encode/decode with ffmpeg works with something like dispatcharr.
Regarding games: No idea. I think moonlight was/is a thing?
Not sure if this counts as SBC, but maybe you should try to find a used GMKtec G5. It is tiny and these usually have N97 and 12gb of DDR5. New one goes for 139 where I am at, so maybe it is fair to try to find used one for cheaper.
Alternatives: minis with N5059, N95, N100, N150 are all priced similarly.
minis like the N100 when you are using it to do things has a lot more ability and uses a similar amount of watts (or can do a lot more for more for just a bit more watts). However when the box is just sitting there with the power on but otherwise doing nothing it uses more power than ARM based single board computers. So the real question is how much will they want to do when they are using it, and how often will that be. If they are watching movies/playing games for 16 hours a day the mini PC is the better answer and won't really cost more energy to run. If they are leaving this on, but only using it for a couple hours per month than a device that uses less watts will save money.
4W rpi5 versus 7W n100 on idle is not a big of a difference. I admit that rpi5 would be around half as cheaper to run but even with really high electricity price, difference is minuscule. Your average wifi router would utilize around the same amount of energy as N100 minipc.
The only SBC I can think of is the Raspberry pi (5)i.
But not the 8+ gb ram version.
I prefer the LS1
Back in the day I used a raspberry pi 3 for 1080p h.264 and steam link / moonlight. Problem was omxplayer plays up to 1080p60 beautifully, but anything else would struggle. Eventually 'upgraded' to an old laptop to easily YouTube/netflix in the browser too.
Same. Eventually upgraded to a Pi 4, which doesn't have any trouble with 1080p content. Pi 3's onboard wifi was also problematic, and I had to run it over wired networking. Kept that for the Pi 4, so I don't know if its wifi is any better.
Steam deck? Or an old laptop with bazzite?
Steam deck under $100? Also not a SBC
Sorry, I apparently don't know how to read. Thanks.