Mutant HD51 or Xtrend ET8500 or another box plugin developmen

[stingray13]

I am looking for a box for plugin development as i have just killed my trusty duo and subsequently need a new box. I am leaning towards teh ET8500 if the lcd screen can also show GUI etc can any one confirm this as it means i can mount it directly next to my pc no need to hook up to a tv or monitor I don't plan on using it to watch much tv only for testing and playing so a fast reboot speed for compiling and testing code would be good. The HD51 looks like a good quality box any advice?

I am open to other suggestions, must have good image support

[twol]

Well, the ET8500 can be used to display both TV or GUI and with a couple of tweaks and installation of the multiboot boot will give you 2 images to flip between... but you would need a few lines of extra code in ImageManager to flash either OS1 or OS2 (or you can do this from a USB flash)
The HD51 is an excellent receiver and with its inbuilt multiboot facility can offer excellent development opportunities. The Gigablue UE4K would also offer the same as the HD51 but has a colour LCD that can display TV or GUI (as can its big brother and ET8500 size LCD ... but more money)
If you are into plugin development then the multiboot facilities of these boxes - gives you great flexibility with a “live“ image and various “test“ images to flip between.
E.g. I can flip between ViX, ATV and Pli images on both the HD51 and Giga4K .. only taking a simple reboot(plus some additional code - from my image builds).

[stingray13]

Twol,

Thank you for your reply; I am leaning to the HD51 it looks like a good well-powered machine, I would also love the multiboot facilities, is there guide on what I would need to do to do this?
Is there a limit to the images, can i swap them out easy enough? Soes it hold them somewhere and run them not in flash so easy to upgrade / downgrade the image as required?

I haven't managed to get into image building yet but its on my list of things to try, I can just about modify and add functionality to plugins at the moment.

Thank you again

[twol]

The HD51 basically has 4 image “slots“ (eMMC partitions) and the Giga 4K‘s 3 “slots“, so you can for instance flash 4 images (same or different) on the HD51, and just by reboot change to a different image.
They are all held on the 4GB eMMC in the receiver (look at the receiver specs). Other Arm receivers such as the Vu+ boxes also have the same eMMC capability but don‘t have this facility.

I run my own builds for ViX, ATV and PLi with in some cases additional code (ViX, Pli) to allow me to flash the images and reboot as necessary.
Flashing, rebooting and installing backup settings is very fast (especially with ATV and Pli auto restore settings at boot time ).... but like all images it’s also in many cases easy to filezilla .py files over and reboot to test features.

[stingray13]

I clearly have a lot to learn then... any recommended reading especially regarding the building if i need a custom build to be able to store 4 images

Thanks again

[twol]

See https://github.com/openatv/enigma2 p:// bottom of page............
or OpenPli forums ....3rd party developments
or google open.pli howto Ubuntu ... excellent writeup still applicable.