[JSLee]

Anyone else going to be installing their NUC into a fanless case?

[Sniffer77]

Anyone live in Vegas area know of a good shop to purchase the i5 nuc whilst on holiday?

[Roosvelt]

Hi all I've to change of ISP and the new one doesn't offer all possibilities like NAS AirPlay and the ability to play MKV with DTS like a breeze. That's why I must buy an HTPC. The nuc i5 starts to hit Europe but I'm just wondering if I don't have to wait skylake to be able to play HEVC.

Moreover I have a VP with a 117" screen so does the nuc would play H264 files smoothly with kodi through openelec or W7 with mpc-hc and quietly?

[majistik]

h264 runs fine with 4k 60fps.
even h265 runs fine.
everything up to 30fps is running. MPC-HC is good for h625.
it just should not be at 60fps right now. development it this regard is pretty quick and getting better.

[tfouto]

it also depends on bitrate.

http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=16...ostcount=1

"For 4K BluRay with a bitrate of 100Mbps and 10 bit resolution, expect CPU decoders and hybrid decoders to be useless (?)* even with Haswell-E or Xeon processors.

We are going to need definitely pure fixed-function HW decoders for 4K BluRay.

On the other hand, 4K BluRay will appear on winter holidays of 2015, so until then, CPU and hybrid decoders are just fine for low bandwidth and low fps clips that HEVC is the best codec to use.

I have already encoded 4K H.264 and 4K H.265 up to 600Mbps (!) and I can say for sure that 4K H.264 performance of Haswell QuickSync decoder is about 190fps for 4K H.264 100Mbps clip at 1280x720 display resolution.

Intel and Nvidia decided to offer a hybrid solution now, which is a useful choice for low fps, low bandwidth clips even at 4K resolution and by the time of 4K BluRay arrival, fixed-function decoders will be ready.

Hopefully AMD will follow.

* according to these results by cyberbeing http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...54#post1694854 an overclocked CPU - even without HT - and a real fast Nvidia card can handle even more difficult to decode 4K HEVC clips at greater speed than my results.

But still 4K BluRay will be out of their reach I think."

[tomhub]

Hello everybody,

I am just planning to buy the NUC as my HTPC. I have read this whole thread and tons of other review websites and now I am a little bit confused. I am deciding between NUC5i5RYH and NUC5i3RYH.

My requirements:
Playback of all possible video codecs and normally used bitrates including HEVC (H.265) in 4K
File and backup server for my home network (Samba, Bittorrent Sync - or any other cross platform cross devices sync)
Git repositories mirror (Gitolite)

From the above I have chosen Ubuntu with Kodi and USB 3.0 external RAID to be the best combination supporting my requirements, but any suggestions or comments will be apreciated. What I do not know is whether i3-5010u is sufficient for the playback of HEVC (H.265) in 4K. I have read one post here that the user experienced some shuttering with single-channel memory setup and that I was OK with dual-channel, but I was just a one video in one bitrate. Would i5-5250u do a big difference?

In my country the i5 NUC costs about $100 more than i3 NUC and I am not sure whether I will have any benefit form the i5 with my use cases - especially whether it will play movies smoother as other reqirements are not so demanding. As the NUC will be powered on 24/7 the lowest possible power consumption, especially idle one is required.

Thank you for any tips, suggestions or experience sharing.

Tom

[tfouto]

Hello everybody,

I am just planning to buy the NUC as my HTPC. I have read this whole thread and tons of other review websites and now I am a little bit confused. I am deciding between NUC5i5RYH and NUC5i3RYH.

My requirements:
Playback of all possible video codecs and normally used bitrates including HEVC (H.265) in 4K
File and backup server for my home network (Samba, Bittorrent Sync - or any other cross platform cross devices sync)
Git repositories mirror (Gitolite)

From the above I have chosen Ubuntu with Kodi and USB 3.0 external RAID to be the best combination supporting my requirements, but any suggestions or comments will be apreciated. What I do not know is whether i3-5010u is sufficient for the playback of HEVC (H.265) in 4K. I have read one post here that the user experienced some shuttering with single-channel memory setup and that I was OK with dual-channel, but I was just a one video in one bitrate. Would i5-5250u do a big difference?

In my country the i5 NUC costs about $100 more than i3 NUC and I am not sure whether I will have any benefit form the i5 with my use cases - especially whether it will play movies smoother as other reqirements are not so demanding. As the NUC will be powered on 24/7 the lowest possible power consumption, especially idle one is required.

Thank you for any tips, suggestions or experience sharing.

Tom

I am not sure if Broadwell will manage to handle normal bitrates HEVC in 4k. Like 16Mpbs... The drivers are getting better, but i am not sure it will handle well. If you want a future proof, then it's better wait to next NUC generation. If not the i3 should be perfectly fine.

There are lots of low bitrate 4k that the nuc handles it. Like:
http://www.libde265.org/downloads-videos/

3.8 Mbps. but those are really low bitrates...

Usually h264 1080p mkv's have around 10mpbs. For 4k in future, i guess that at least 10mpbs, since 4k need more pixels, and more bitrate even if it's more efficient.

[tomhub]

....

I am not sure if Broadwell will manage to handle normal bitrates HEVC in 4k. Like 16Mpbs... The drivers are getting better, but i am not sure it will handle well. If you want a future proof, then it's better wait to next NUC generation. If not the i3 should be perfectly fine.

There are lots of low bitrate 4k that the nuc handles it. Like:
http://www.libde265.org/downloads-videos/

3.8 Mbps. but those are really low bitrates...

Usually h264 1080p mkv's have around 10mpbs. For 4k in future, i guess that at least 10mpbs, since 4k need more pixels, and more bitrate even if it's more efficient.

Thanks. I know that Skylake will be much better because of the HW decoder of H.265, but the problem is that I expect Skylake NUCes to be available some time in the autumn which is quite a long time in the future. And who knows what will happen till then - 8K H.266 and the same situation? To be more specific I do not need 4K at the moment. I have a FullHD TV. So the 4K was also about the future (2+ Years). I do not know how fast will be the adoption of H.265 and 4K. I just wanted to avoid the situation where I will not be able to play the majority of movies. Like today the majority is FullHD and H.264. The exact combination H.265 and 4K can make problems as as far as I know 4K in H.264 and FullHD in H.265 are OK on the Broadwell i3.

[tfouto]

....

I am not sure if Broadwell will manage to handle normal bitrates HEVC in 4k. Like 16Mpbs... The drivers are getting better, but i am not sure it will handle well. If you want a future proof, then it's better wait to next NUC generation. If not the i3 should be perfectly fine.

There are lots of low bitrate 4k that the nuc handles it. Like:
http://www.libde265.org/downloads-videos/

3.8 Mbps. but those are really low bitrates...

Usually h264 1080p mkv's have around 10mpbs. For 4k in future, i guess that at least 10mpbs, since 4k need more pixels, and more bitrate even if it's more efficient.

Thanks. I know that Skylake will be much better because of the HW decoder of H.265, but the problem is that I expect Skylake NUCes to be available some time in the autumn which is quite a long time in the future. And who knows what will happen till then - 8K H.266 and the same situation? To be more specific I do not need 4K at the moment. I have a FullHD TV. So the 4K was also about the future (2+ Years). I do not know how fast will be the adoption of H.265 and 4K. I just wanted to avoid the situation where I will not be able to play the majority of movies. Like today the majority is FullHD and H.264. The exact combination H.265 and 4K can make problems as as far as I know 4K in H.264 and FullHD in H.265 are OK on the Broadwell i3.

True. The thing is now Full HD h.264 is better then H.265 in video quality to the same size for high bitrates. For low bitrates h265 is much better.

[Stereodude]

Intel and Nvidia decided to offer a hybrid solution now, which is a useful choice for low fps, low bandwidth clips even at 4K resolution and by the time of 4K BluRay arrival, fixed-function decoders will be ready.

...

But still 4K BluRay will be out of their reach I think."

You are aware that Nvidia has already released a video card with fixed-function HEVC decoder right? The GTX 960. It's quite fast even for high bitrate UHD clips.

[agender]

Is the NUC being offered in a more plain black like the Haswell variant or is what I am currently seeing on Amazon right now it? Is the gpu that much better to warrant the extra cost over a 4th gen model(all the tablet and cpu reviews I have seen said about a 2-5% increase in cpu performance). Does Broadwell now offer something extra to make it better as media center device(like how newer Haswell Celerons now offer quick-sync over the Celerons offered in Chromeboxes)

[Matt Devo]

probably easiest for you to read one of the many reviews of the Broadwell NUCs where they directly compare it to the Haswell NUCs than for someone to summarize it for you here. The Ars-technica one is pretty good.

[-DDD-]

Actually you have extra problems with broadwell like CIR not working under linux: https://communities.intel.com/message/280844
And sometimes non working BIOS on TV: https://communities.intel.com/thread/609...&ru=473365

[tfouto]

Yes of course i know.

[JNRW]

I am probably going to get a NUC5i5RYK and I wonder whether I would notice any difference in running Kodi through Windows 7 64 bit or Windows 8.1 64 bit. Personally I am used to W7 and have never used W8.1.

Does anyone know?

I have decided against OpenELEC.