To me, the RPi is the choice only because every other single board I've used had so much less support than RPi does... I have a 3B+ running retropie and it's doing okay, but if this one can also do a decent job with h265 under kodi, I'll be very happy indeed.

Ordered a starter canakit with a couple extras, and looks like I won't see it until August. :-( ... I'll probably forget I ordered it by the time it comes.