[Jepster]

Hi guys,

I just realized today that Gigabyte just launched their BRIX PRO, with some pretty serious specs, IRIS PRO Graphics for example

What are your thoughts on that one? I'm seriously considering it as a HTPC with the option for some light gaming as well.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product...id=4889#ov

Their AMD and i7 spec looks pretty nice as well.. the one I linked is retailing for around 500 bucks.

I think it's pretty good bang for the buck, as an alternative to NUC? I like the dual display feature, thats just what I need, as I will run a LED TV and a PC monitor at the same time.

let me know your thoughts.

[two515ty]

I wouldn't use one as a HTPC just because it's too expensive for HTPC purposes, and it doesn't even have an IR receiver because it's not really designed for HTPC use. I'd rather get the Haswell i3 NUC for HTPC purposes, but I have the Baytrail NUC and it's working quite well for me. For the base price of the Brix Pro and the extra cost of the components, I'd say it's only a great value if you need extra power in an ultra portable form factor. Otherwise, it's overkill for HTPC usage IMO. The only thing the Brix Pro has over the NUC is moar power, but I don't know how useful that would be except for gaming. The Haswell i3 and i5 NUC models will also do dual displays.

On another note, I wouldn't want that big red thing sitting in with the rest of my electronics, especially if I had a really nice and clean home theater setup. I'm barely accepting of the NUC's silver color, and I think it's quite aesthetically pleasing. The Brix Pro is good looking too, but more in the "gaming machine/power house" type of way, not in the "clean, sleek, HTPC equipment" kind of way.

[Jepster]

Thanks man.

Well, I would use it for gaming as well. More for streaming 3D and full HD videos for sure, but 25-30% of the time I would use it for gaming, on an external monitor. Therefore I like the 2 monitor outputs.

The Iris Pro 5200 should be pretty good compared to other onboard GPU's I believe?

[two515ty]

Yea, it should. Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2UVco1S6aI

I doubt you'd want to use that machine to seriously play BF4, but if gaming is an interest, I'd highly recommend it. To be honest, I want one for gaming too (to use Steam in Big Picture Mode with Xbox 360 controllers), but I'm not about to spend $500 on one lol. For $500 + parts, I'd rather just build a Mini ITX box that can be upgraded in the future, is more powerful, and is cheaper.

Think about it. You could build an actual PC for less than what that Brix will cost you, and it will serve you better in the long run. The only major advantage of that Brix Pro is that it's in a small box.

[Jepster]

I start to like the form factor though.. and again, building a 500 dollar setup with a low profile graphic card, might not give me a much more powerful machine as I see it.

I am traveling a lot, I can see myself bringing this one with me.

As I can see it, the Iris Pro is approx as powerful as a 7750 graphics card. How would you build a better setup, in a small HTPC case, for the same money?

[two515ty]

I start to like the form factor though.. and again, building a 500 dollar setup with a low profile graphic card, might not give me a much more powerful machine as I see it.

I am traveling a lot, I can see myself bringing this one with me.

As I can see it, the Iris Pro is approx as powerful as a 7750 graphics card. How would you build a better setup, in a small HTPC case, for the same money?

If you need the size and you travel, then the Brix Pro is an obvious winner. If it's going to sit on your desk or TV stand at home, then it might not be the most cost efficient choice. That wouldn't make it a bad choice, but it's just not one I would personally make if I was going to be spending several hundred dollars on a stationary machine.

Also, keep in mind that the Brix pro still requires RAM and storage, so it's not just $500. It's going to be closer to $700 or more when everything is said and done. That can go quite far when building a standalone PC. It just won't be as small and as portable as the Brix Pro.

[bluray]

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product...id=4889#ov

Their AMD and i7 spec looks pretty nice as well.. the one I linked is retailing for around 500 bucks.

$500 is cheap for an i7 box. The spec is very impressive, but it is an ugly color for HTPC though....

[ikecomp]

Found a decent well rounded review. It's a really nice machine. However, the price might be it's biggest negative. Plus, no IR. Not a huge concern but something to think about in the context of a htpc at this price.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apYfwFSvM_w

[Jepster]

Yea its not cheap, but well. its not a big deal if im spending 100-200 dollars more on something that I really like. IR isnt a big deal for me, im using a Logitech K 400 keyboard, which I like more than a remote actually.
Yes that red color isnt super sexy, but well They are launching an AMD version with discrete video card as well. maybe worth waiting a little for that one?

Also not sure if I should go for 8 or 16gb rams? will put in a Samsung EVO 840 SSD, 250gbs most likely.

---

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyt...25865.html

this one. looks pretty nice as well I think?

[vampyren]

I wouldn't use one as a HTPC just because it's too expensive for HTPC purposes, and it doesn't even have an IR receiver because it's not really designed for HTPC use. I'd rather get the Haswell i3 NUC for HTPC purposes, but I have the Baytrail NUC and it's working quite well for me. For the base price of the Brix Pro and the extra cost of the components, I'd say it's only a great value if you need extra power in an ultra portable form factor. Otherwise, it's overkill for HTPC usage IMO. The only thing the Brix Pro has over the NUC is moar power, but I don't know how useful that would be except for gaming. The Haswell i3 and i5 NUC models will also do dual displays.

On another note, I wouldn't want that big red thing sitting in with the rest of my electronics, especially if I had a really nice and clean home theater setup. I'm barely accepting of the NUC's silver color, and I think it's quite aesthetically pleasing. The Brix Pro is good looking too, but more in the "gaming machine/power house" type of way, not in the "clean, sleek, HTPC equipment" kind of way.

I wish that was the case, i got a NUC D54250WYK (i5 4250U) and it sucks using Plex, CPU is most of the times at 80-90% and many times it stops the playback. I'm even playing from local file and have a m2 SSD where it runs Plex from.
Kodi works much better but then again the sound is not as crisp.
Brix Pro is what i'm considering next thanks to the much faster CPU.

[noggin]

Kodi works much better but then again the sound is not as crisp.

There is zero reason why Kodi should alter the audio quality if correctly configured. If you are watching over HDMI and bitstreaming it can't touch the audio, if you are watching over HDMI and using PCM 2.0 then the down mix parameters might need a bit of tweaking to meet your personal preference when playing 5.1/7.1 content I guess?

I watch Blu-ray content with DTS HD MA or Dolby True HD lossless HD audio tracks bitstreamed to my amp in Kodi, and this is identical in quality to the original Blu-ray (because the same data is passing to the amp in both playback cases) I actually have an i5-4250U NUC and watch high quality content this way with zero issues. (It even plays 4:2:2 H264 and MPEG2 using software decode - niche, but quite a good test) I don't have any normal content in HEVC.

Curious why you think Kodi is poorer quality in sound terms?

(Obviously if you are using streaming sources to watch paid-for content for free illegally then the sources of these streams could be bad quality, but that is nothing to do with Kodi...)

[vampyren]

Kodi works much better but then again the sound is not as crisp.

There is zero reason why Kodi should alter the audio quality if correctly configured. If you are watching over HDMI and bitstreaming it can't touch the audio, if you are watching over HDMI and using PCM 2.0 then the down mix parameters might need a bit of tweaking to meet your personal preference when playing 5.1/7.1 content I guess?

I watch Blu-ray content with DTS HD MA or Dolby True HD lossless HD audio tracks bitstreamed to my amp in Kodi, and this is identical in quality to the original Blu-ray (because the same data is passing to the amp in both playback cases) I actually have an i5-4250U NUC and watch high quality content this way with zero issues. (It even plays 4:2:2 H264 and MPEG2 using software decode - niche, but quite a good test) I don't have any normal content in HEVC.

Curious why you think Kodi is poorer quality in sound terms?

(Obviously if you are using streaming sources to watch paid-for content for free illegally then the sources of these streams could be bad quality, but that is nothing to do with Kodi...)

Seems we have the same NUC then. Ok let me explain. I installed the latest version last week and went to the settings to make sure Audio, Video were setup correctly. I do use HDMI. Naturally i tried to use 5.1 audio but the voices suddenly disappeared or rather got very quiet to the point you could not hear them. After allot of search i found this thread
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=182350
So i set them to 2.0 as its suggested. Comparing the sound using say VLC i just felt the sound was more "crisp". Hard to explain it in words really.
Still Kodi is much much better for playing videos compared to Plex that does crazy stuff in the background. A regular 720p movie sometimes uses 100% of my CPU with Plex while Kodi uses 30%.

By the way my receiver does support PCM also: http://www.denon.co.uk/uk/product/hometh.../avrx4100w
But using it gives no sound. Maybe i must make sure the movie includes PCM beforehand? Or is it suppose to have a fallback machanisem if PCM sound is not available? It will be cumbersome if i need to move back and forth before every movie to try.
Any how the only way i could make the sound work was 2.0.

Could you please explain about your setup ?

Thanks!

[noggin]

Seems we have the same NUC then. Ok let me explain. I installed the latest version last week and went to the settings to make sure Audio, Video were setup correctly.

What OS, what Kodi version ?

What is your Audio and Video set-up. Are you bitstreaming (i.e. is passthrough enabled for) DD, DTS, True HD, DTS HD MA? What is your speaker set-up, 2.0, 2.1, 5.1, 7.1? If you aren't bitstreaming are you decoding to PCM 5.1/7.1 or just PCM 2.0?

What format content are you playing (DD, DTS, True HD, DTS HD MA, FLAC, PCM, AAC, MP3 etc.)? DVD ISO, DVD VIDEO_TS, Blu-ray ISOs, Blu-ray folders, Blu-rays remuxed, Blu-rays re-encoded, Live/Recorded TV etc.?

I do use HDMI. Naturally i tried to use 5.1 audio but the voices suddenly disappeared or rather got very quiet to the point you could not hear them.
After allot of search i found this thread
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=182350
So i set them to 2.0 as its suggested. Comparing the sound using say VLC i just felt the sound was more "crisp". Hard to explain it in words really.

If you are outputting in 2.0 then you will be decoding to PCM in Kodi. This means 5.1 audio will be down mixed (or should be - if you lose dialogue entirely it suggests that the centre channel has gone missing) but down mixing is not consistent (there is an option to boost the centre channel in some Kodi builds ISTR)

Still Kodi is much much better for playing videos compared to Plex that does crazy stuff in the background. A regular 720p movie sometimes uses 100% of my CPU with Plex while Kodi uses 30%.

Yes, Kodi plays the file natively. Plex will normally transcode unless configured not to. Playback in Kodi usually uses hardware acceleration (and thus very little CPU), transcoding in Plex will usually use a lot of CPU.

By the way my receiver does support PCM also: http://www.denon.co.uk/uk/product/hometh.../avrx4100w
But using it gives no sound. Maybe i must make sure the movie includes PCM beforehand?

No - PCM soundtracks are rare (early Blu-rays had PCM 5.1/7.1 tracks, and some high quality music DVDs had PCM 2.0 tracks) PCM is an output format over HDMI in this context. Some audio formats like DD/DTS/Dolby True HD/DTS HD MA/HRA can be sent over HDMI as a bitstream, other formats like MP3, FLAC, AAC etc. need to be decoded to PCM and sent as PCM over HDMI. You can, now, also chose to decode all audio to PCM if you prefer.

Or is it suppose to have a fallback machanisem if PCM sound is not available? It will be cumbersome if i need to move back and forth before every movie to try.
Any how the only way i could make the sound work was 2.0.

Could you please explain about your setup ?

Thanks!

My set-up is very simple.

Intel NUC HDMI output feeds into Onkyo Amp with 5.0 speaker set-up. Amp then feeds UHD TV. NUC is configured to bitstream (i.e. passthrough) DD, DTS, True HD and DTS HD audio to the amp, and is configured with 5.0 speaker set-up, so any other multichannel audio that can't be bitstreamed (like AAC, FLAC etc.) will be decoded to PCM5.1 (or possibly 5.0) and sent to my amp as multichannel PCM.

(PCM is uncompressed audio)

[vampyren]

@noggin
Thanks allot for the explanation.

As for version i used the latest Kodi v16.0 “Jarvis".

My setup is NUC using HDMI goes into my Denon avrx4100w and from there HDMI to my TV for picture while sound should be handled by the receiver. I use multichannel and sometimes a mix mode called "multichannel+Dolby Sorund" which i'm not sure exactly what it does but seems the same as multichannel more or less.

For media i play mostly H264 with various sound stream like AC3, DTS:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/29hcngxhdww9ol...8.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/alqarw30ruduey...6.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ipn2zpdi5o5p...w.jpg?dl=0

if you lose dialogue entirely it suggests that the centre channel has gone missing) but down mixing is not consistent (there is an option to boost the centre channel in some Kodi builds ISTR)

Its not 100% lost. I head something but its like they talk into a shoe box , i'm pretty sure there is nothing wrong with the center. Denon has its own test sound which i run. Also in Windows 10 i can click on individual speaker and i head a sound since i setup windows as 5.1. Not what else i can do really.

I think i want the exact setup as you

NUC is configured to bitstream (i.e. passthrough) DD, DTS, True HD and DTS HD audio to the amp

But the question is how i can achieve that? and why is there no proper sound when i go 5.1 in Kodi?
I think i used pretty much all combinations i could think of in the setting without any success


ps. As you say Kodi is great since it does not use only CPU. So my NUC is more then enough using Kodi. Plex as you say is 100% CPU and for good or worse it does take a much beefier system to handle the media playback. I have big issues with Plex since it uses 100% of my CPU most times (when i do a little fast forwarding or anything). Maybe that is a bug but still i think NUC is not optimal for Plex.

[noggin]

What are your audio settings in 'System->Settings->Audio' and have you enabled 'Expert' settings?

I have my audio device and my passthrough device as the WASAPI device with the name of my Amp, and have passthrough enabled for DD, DTS, DD+, True HD an DTS HD. I have my speaker config as 5.1.