I have actually used both a raspberry pi 2 and 3 as a media centre, both ran openelec (kodi under linux) absolutely fine without frame drop. The menus via mouse were a bit slow but a wireless keyboard sorted that.
What the RPi doesn't have is Android, it has various optimized linux distros and even Microsoft IOT if you want to create code no one will ever use. So whilst you do have half the memory then I would say that because the linux IS optimized means you do not miss it, this being as the OS has a lower overhead.
It is a shame about the pine, on paper it looks better with faster network (pi has only 100Mbit/sec), more space to run code and cache data (1GB on PI against optional 2GB) but I would say that by the time the software is optimized there will be something faster and cheaper plus actually availible.
Now the Odroid XU4 HERE beats both pine and rpi massively on the hardware side and seems to be moving in the correct direction on the software side, plus I havent heard anything about shipping problems but then again given that ODROID have been established for sometime they have the experience to know in advance what can go wrong with a big project.
On the Kodi side of things, I would say that the days of streaming ripped movies without being noticed are gone. Reading between the lines I would say the producers of kodi have become worried that their product will be marked as promoting piracy, their post on this subject IMHOsuggesting that they had a visit from the movie industry ambulance chasers. I would not be surprised if versions after the press release included additions to make tracking of people watching"pirate" content easier. This is just my opinion and I wont be saying I told you so.
What the RPi doesn't have is Android, it has various optimized linux distros and even Microsoft IOT if you want to create code no one will ever use. So whilst you do have half the memory then I would say that because the linux IS optimized means you do not miss it, this being as the OS has a lower overhead.
It is a shame about the pine, on paper it looks better with faster network (pi has only 100Mbit/sec), more space to run code and cache data (1GB on PI against optional 2GB) but I would say that by the time the software is optimized there will be something faster and cheaper plus actually availible.
Now the Odroid XU4 HERE beats both pine and rpi massively on the hardware side and seems to be moving in the correct direction on the software side, plus I havent heard anything about shipping problems but then again given that ODROID have been established for sometime they have the experience to know in advance what can go wrong with a big project.
On the Kodi side of things, I would say that the days of streaming ripped movies without being noticed are gone. Reading between the lines I would say the producers of kodi have become worried that their product will be marked as promoting piracy, their post on this subject IMHOsuggesting that they had a visit from the movie industry ambulance chasers. I would not be surprised if versions after the press release included additions to make tracking of people watching"pirate" content easier. This is just my opinion and I wont be saying I told you so.