[eetaylog]

Ive basically copied this thread over from Mediaportal, which i still use but am thinking of switching all our streaming clients over to Kodi so thought id see what people on here think..

There now seems to be a whole host of windows 10 based mini pc's to choose from and its time for me to buy another one for my sons bedroom.

We already own the older Atom z3735 Justop G which has worked perfectly up until now, but it looks like theres a fair amount of choice with the newer Cherry Trail Z8300 models, most of which seem to run the newer Gen8 Intel graphics, so was just wondering if anybody has any experience with any of the following.

Theyre all very similar spec (z8300 Cherry Trail atom CPU, Gen8 Intel graphics GPU, 2Gb DDR3 RAM, win10), with the odd exceptions of the new JustopG claiming to have hdmi 2.0 compared to all the others running hdmi 1.4, and the Beelink models having 1000Mb/s ethernet compared to the rest having 10/100 ports. The wired ethernet connection speed is pretty important to me as i have cat5e wired all over the house, so dont want to be bottle necked by any 10/100 connections, however i am a bit dubious about the build quality of Beelink...

Sumvision Cyclone Mini PC 2 - £116

Beelink Z83 - £97 (1000Mb/s ethernet)

Beelink BT3 - £119 (1000Mb/s ethernet & 60Gb SSD)

Justop G i10 - £95 (hdmi 2.0)

Guleek w8 Pro - £90

Tronsmort Ara X5 - £108


Opinions anyone?

[noggin]

If you are only worried about media playback - 100Mbs is not a bottleneck. It's only an issue if you need faster than realtime file transfers over your network. There is no mainstream content that the X8300 can decode that is higher bitrate than 100Mbs networking can handle.

[eetaylog]

If you are only worried about media playback - 100Mbs is not a bottleneck. It's only an issue if you need faster than realtime file transfers over your network. There is no mainstream content that the X8300 can decode that is higher bitrate than 100Mbs networking can handle.

Thanks. What about future proofing? Will 4k content run at bit rates that might become affected?

[gpmc]

Extremely happy with the "chinese" Vorke V1.
For 149€ it's definitely a bargain.
1080P H.264 and 3D ISO Bluray are supported as well without any lag but no HD audio passthrough at all (but for a second machine it's not a problem at all).

[BORIStheBLADE]

Curious if any of these would do HD Audio Passthrough of True-HD, DTS-MA and ATMOS.

[feathers]

Any evidence that the justop device is actually HDMI 2.0? Doubt it

[noggin]

Curious if any of these would do HD Audio Passthrough of True-HD, DTS-MA and ATMOS.

Don't think any of them do in Windows. Baytrail and Cherrytrail are limited to PCM 7.1 and DD/DTS/DD+ bitstreaming. This means you can do lossless decode of True HD and DTS-HD MA/HRA to PCM within Kodi, but you can't get Dolby Atmos or DTS:x.

[BORIStheBLADE]

Curious if any of these would do HD Audio Passthrough of True-HD, DTS-MA and ATMOS.

Don't think any of them do in Windows. Baytrail and Cherrytrail are limited to PCM 7.1 and DD/DTS/DD+ bitstreaming. This means you can do lossless decode of True HD and DTS-HD MA/HRA to PCM within Kodi, but you can't get Dolby Atmos or DTS:x.

Yeah I unfortunately thought that was the case.

[SilverBlade]

Curious if any of these would do HD Audio Passthrough of True-HD, DTS-MA and ATMOS.

Don't think any of them do in Windows. Baytrail and Cherrytrail are limited to PCM 7.1 and DD/DTS/DD+ bitstreaming. This means you can do lossless decode of True HD and DTS-HD MA/HRA to PCM within Kodi, but you can't get Dolby Atmos or DTS:x.

Which makes exactly 0 of them real candidates for HTPC use..

[noggin]

Curious if any of these would do HD Audio Passthrough of True-HD, DTS-MA and ATMOS.

Don't think any of them do in Windows. Baytrail and Cherrytrail are limited to PCM 7.1 and DD/DTS/DD+ bitstreaming. This means you can do lossless decode of True HD and DTS-HD MA/HRA to PCM within Kodi, but you can't get Dolby Atmos or DTS:x.

Which makes exactly 0 of them real candidates for HTPC use..

I think there are plenty of us with HTPC requirements that don't include Atmos and DTS:x... Just like some people need 3D and others don't, and some people want UHD and HEVC, and others don't.

[eetaylog]

Any evidence that the justop device is actually HDMI 2.0? Doubt it

None other than the specs list on the Amazon link, which is why i said it 'claims' to have hdmi 2.0. Id be surprised if it did tbh.