I have a Pi 4 and a Rock64Pro, both with LibreElec (basically Kodi) installed.
The video playback performance and stability of the Pi 4 beat the Rock64 handily.
Using Kodi via LibreElec on a Pi3 (a B IIRC, not a B+) and x265 was a mixed bag. There is no hardware acceleration unlike on the Pi4 so it runs the general CPU cores hard. 720P was fine, but without extra cooling 1080P in summer months would eventually (60 to 90 minutes) cause it to thermal throttle and playback would fall apart. Given how warm it felt soon after starting playback, I was surprised it managed that long before throttling. You will likely get much better results with a cooling solution of some kind, particularly an active one.
> If it needs a fan, I wouldn't use it as a media player.
Same here.
You might get away with higher resolution x265 with passive cooling (a really good heatsink), especially if the device is in a reliably cool environment, but around the time I started using such encoded media the Pi4 was readily available which does 265 in hardware so no similar heat problem (the Pi3 is now used for other experiments). Unfortunately current supply issues might preclude you using that upgrade option!
