[noggin]

haha. Now I'm confused again. That's why I need you guys!
I was reading some specs but there is no mention about 4k video.
Also I have no clue about all these different processors, there are so many! So which one is better?
I prefer these last ones as there is not a lot of tinkering to get openelec installed.

I will be running openelec on the machine so no worries about windows and cloud storage.

http://www.lambda-tek.com/ASUS-UN42-M016...productTop this also doesn't seem to have ram or HDD, but it's not very clear.

Can confirm Haswell Chromebox with 2955U does H264 2160/24p (aka 4k) without breaking sweat in OpenElec as have tried myself on our 4K set. Think all current Haswells will do 4K H264 at 24p with hardware decoding - though all are limited to a max frame rate of 30p for 4K over HDMI due to limitations of HDMI 1.4. (The Displayport may support MST to let you run at higher frame rates - but movies are 24p usually)

HEVC (the new codec that is appearing) isn't supported in hardware and I doubt the Celeron will cope with software decoding of HEVC at 4K... But I suspect 4K HEVC stuff is going to be a challenge for most low cost solutions (apart from some forked Android boxes that have their own limitations)

[grumpygamer]

That's the barebones, so you supply the RAM & mSata SSD.

The same unit at a similar price @ http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-vivo-m...bone%20PCs

unfortunately I only have DDR2 lying around, I'll look at some ready to go systems.
Also once I add ram (32£ for 4gb) the price is approaching Chromebox (166£) which already has a 16gb ssd

[jjd-uk]

2GB of DDR3L will only cost £17 http://www.lambda-tek.com/Kingston-Techn...h/B1769079 so you'd still save on a full system with everything.

[Stereodude]

HEVC (the new codec that is appearing) isn't supported in hardware and I doubt the Celeron will cope with software decoding of HEVC at 4K... But I suspect 4K HEVC stuff is going to be a challenge for most low cost solutions (apart from some forked Android boxes that have their own limitations)

Plus, by the time HEVC becomes commonplace and you actually need to decode it, you'll be able to buy a Chromebox II, or a next gen NUC that can handle it just fine for similar prices to what you'd pay now for Chromebox/NUC. Buying now and buying again later will likely end up being a lot less expensive than paying the stiff premium for something that can do HEVC now.

[noggin]

HEVC (the new codec that is appearing) isn't supported in hardware and I doubt the Celeron will cope with software decoding of HEVC at 4K... But I suspect 4K HEVC stuff is going to be a challenge for most low cost solutions (apart from some forked Android boxes that have their own limitations)

Plus, by the time HEVC becomes commonplace and you actually need to decode it, you'll be able to buy a Chromebox II, or a next gen NUC that can handle it just fine for similar prices to what you'd pay now for Chromebox/NUC. Buying now and buying again later will likely end up being a lot less expensive than paying the stiff premium for something that can do HEVC now.

Exactly. I've got a few 2160/60p and 2160/50p HEVC off-air recordings from the BBC DVB-T2 tests, but I think that puts me in a very small minority. Don't see HEVC being an issue until many of us are thinking about upgrading our hardware next time, when hardware HEVC acceleration will be a mainstream option, along with HDMI 2.0

[grumpygamer]

the Asus's cpu is a Celeron ( based on Haswell) not a dumb atom (with respect, i own an old asus 330)
performance wise whould be double, at least

EDIT:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Celeron-29...l-Atom-230
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/493/Int...2955U.html

Passmark >>> 301(n230) 1587(celeron 2955u)

and btw with openelec it's the perfect appliance


BHH

Thanks for posting the cpu comparison.
Seems the gain for changing the cpu is not that much and it makes me doubt that it will be able to handle those weirdly encoded movies.
I am not sure what's wrong with them as they are encoded by a bunch of "experts" but still stutter in 1080p.
Maybe they have used some weird thing like B-Frames (this is just an ingnorant's word, because I'm not sure what I'm saying )

2GB of DDR3L will only cost £17 http://www.lambda-tek.com/Kingston-Techn...h/B1769079 so you'd still save on a full system with everything.

Thanks, missed that one.

[buzzqw]

Maybe they have used some weird thing like B-Frames (this is just an ingnorant's word, because I'm not sure what I'm saying )

b frames rarely are the culprit of bad decoding. It's much more intesive processing lots of ref frames.

Anyway, just stick (ahem.. search for) for movies with b frames < 6 AND ref-frames < 5 (and .. level 4.1) and you don't get problem

BHH

[Stereodude]

AFAIK, Intel's HW decoder in the Haswell based chips will decode pretty much anything up through Level 5.2, even very high bitrate stuff.

[natethomas]

What's kinda funny is I just upgraded my sister's system to the very box you're getting rid of. With an ssd and OpenELEC, I'm not seeing any slowdown at all.

edit: stupid mobile autocorrect.

[grumpygamer]

Ha. That IS funny.
I wonder what the problem is with mine then?
Maybe I have too many movies in the same playlist...?
I'm sure it lags even whilst moving around the wall view and it sure as hell doesn't feel snappy at all.
Also I have to wait for it to finish scanning the media before I can move around the UI with the remote, let alone start a movie whilst performing the scan.
Same goes for the news ticker at the bottom, it stutters while scanning for media and when that is done it stutters when I press any button on the remote.

I thought a hw upgrade would have done the trick.
Keep in mind my revo is the oldest possible version (ION 1)

[natethomas]

Oh man, always turn off the news ticker. On low power devices that can suck up a massive amount of resources.

[grumpygamer]

really? Wouldn't have imagined so, but thanks for the tip!

[grumpygamer]

I just want to revive this thread because I have discovered that the stutty videos are encoded with h254 HIGH 10 profile.
Both processors are at 100%, lots of dropped frames.

[noggin]

I don't think there is any platform that can decode Hi10 in hardware (though Broadwell will be offering 10bit H265 I don't know if it offers 10bit H264)

No consumer-available content (DVD, Blu-ray or broadcast TV) uses 10 bit though - it is only re-encodes that use it...

If you want Hi10p replay then you need a CPU that is powerful enough to decode this stuff (as it can't be offloaded to the GPU) which usually means spending a bit more. I don't have any Hi10 stuff to worry about though so it's never been an issue for me.

[speedwell68]

Coincidently at Christmas I bought myself a second hand Acer Revo R3600 (2GB Ram & 160GB HDD). I'm using mine as a DIY media server for my Kodi network (2 x Linux PCs, 3 x Raspberry PIs and 2 x Android tablets). I installed Lubuntu 14.04 LTS on it and added 2 x 1TB external HDDs and setup 3 NFS shares. One on the 1st HDD for Movies, one on the 2nd HDD for TV shows and a 3rd on the 160GB internal drive for music. It works really well I can stream 1080p video to two of the RPIs whilst streaming MP3s to a tablet and downloading/encoding videos from the BBC using the get_iplayer app. Add a MySQL database and it works very well, a great use for some otherwise defunct hardware.