2013-11-06, 01:48
What boxes can output 1080p at about $100 price point?
2013-11-06, 16:18
I have used the Pi but for the extra few bucks I prefer the ATV1 with additional Crystal HD card, probably $200 at most total.
2013-11-06, 16:28
2013-11-06, 19:49
(2013-11-06, 16:28)calev Wrote: 200$ is way to much to spend on a ATV1. There are better options in that price range.
Yeah but with the ATV1 it is silent, low power consumption, built in IR, small form so each to his own.
2013-11-06, 19:53
Not all 1080P is the same. Native BD rips that have high bit-rate H264 as well as VC1, MPEG-2, etc, is the problem. If you are playing downloaded torrent files or willing to potentially convert all of your media to a lower bit-rate version than the budget boxes work fine. They just don't cut it for full bit-rate native BD rips... at least that's been my experience.
2013-11-06, 22:01
Best entry level box these days is a celeron nuc, running OE/xbmc off a decent flash drive.
Need box, ram, a remote/ir receiver and flash drive, but its the best "entry level" device. (oh and power cable, stupid intel)
All these new boxes are starting to scare me, way too many of them and they are all slightly different. So hard to truly know how good they are, but at least the cost of "1080p" hardware seems to be coming down.
Need box, ram, a remote/ir receiver and flash drive, but its the best "entry level" device. (oh and power cable, stupid intel)
All these new boxes are starting to scare me, way too many of them and they are all slightly different. So hard to truly know how good they are, but at least the cost of "1080p" hardware seems to be coming down.
2013-11-06, 22:05
for the price a pi with decent oc and a bootable flash with small fast read and writes on the random 4k(like above 1.5 Mbs). I can't tell the difference between the my atv 1 and pi anymore. I feel the home of the meta data better be quick if you want the thumbs to pop up fast or scrape/write meta data. I feel its a very overlooked aspect of the pi for performance. An htpc uses ssd or mechanical mostly with alot of memory available, an atv keeps it on an ide drive. Even the old xbox on an ide drive both mechanical drives are much faster on the 4k than most flash. the atv 2 uses its 8gb of nan which i believe is top quality from apple. the ouya too.
But what would happen if you swapped userdata locations to a usb drive with slow random 4k? and most flash even usb 3.0 (atleast cheap ones) are below 1 Mb/s. Some I tried and tested were .3 for writes. It would be interesting to test, I have noticed a usb vs hard drive install on the atv had the hard drive install running a much smoother menu. I even believe the xios uses the sd card now for user data and recommends a quick one as well.
But what would happen if you swapped userdata locations to a usb drive with slow random 4k? and most flash even usb 3.0 (atleast cheap ones) are below 1 Mb/s. Some I tried and tested were .3 for writes. It would be interesting to test, I have noticed a usb vs hard drive install on the atv had the hard drive install running a much smoother menu. I even believe the xios uses the sd card now for user data and recommends a quick one as well.
