Hello,
I recently made a post asking for advice on a NAS, and I'm happy to say that after an overwhelming response I went with a commenters advice and brought myself a HP Microserver (N54L) while it was on the cashback offer...
It finally arrived today, and I've not got around to setting it up yet but that's another story...
My main question is, a friend of mine uses a Raspberry Pi as an XBMC device, and I must say it works really well (most of the time) ....the built in CEC is a great perk...
The only reason I don't order one right now is the fact it's just a little too laggy ... not in media playback which is fine ... but in the option navigation and media library display .. when he turns on the stats for the Pi the CPU is constantly maxing out when navigating menus
I've looked at other devices like the Zotac box as well as trying to build my own one with either a NUC or a mITX board but they all work out to 10x the price of the Pi... And none of them have CEC ability
I wondered if there were any devices similar to a Pi ... but with an increased CPU? - I don't need it to play games, it would be purely TV/Film/Radio/Youtube
If any one could suggest alternatives I'd be greatful
Thanks
PS. If any one would like to shed some light on why CEC is so non-existent in hardware I'd be really interested to know - Some sort of intellectual property issue?
Thanks
The Pi is in its own category when it comes to price/performance.
Any option above that is going to cost you at least 3x as much. The void left by a jailbreak-able Apple TV is kind of huge.
Celeron NUC + 2 GB Ram + USB drive is probably as close as it gets, but that will still cost you $180-200.
Don't know if it's CEC doable but the OUYA is coming out toward end of the month. It's a gaming system, but OUYA suppose to be able to work with XBMC and won't be laggy at all. ONLY $99!
Do you know if your friend had overclocked his Pi? You can overclock the Pi quite easily, mine is overclocked to 1000Mhz from the stock 700Mhz (plus core frequency and sdram frequency both increased from 250MHz to 500Mhz) and it makes a very noticeable difference when browsing around the XBMC menu. Using USB in place of SD card for storage (or using a good quality and higher speed SD card) can also help improve performance.
Accessing the library views can still be a little on the slow side (~7 seconds for 600 movies) but other than that the performance is entirely acceptable, particularly as it only cost £25.
In terms of the CPU stats you observed, the CPU information screen in XBMC is thoroughly misleading as the Pi is made to update the XBMC display at 60fps (or higher) so the CPU is shown as being maxed out simply due to the excessive screen updates. If you want to see how heavily loaded the Pi is at any given moment you need to use "top" over an ssh connection - the Summary Information screen is useless for determining CPU load. Navigating menus in XBMC doesn't use more than 25% CPU on my OpenELEC-based Pi, though there are
bugs in XBMC that cause the CPU to max out at 100%.
As for why CEC is not widely supported, my guess is that most of the GPUs being used with x86 kit are designed for use with computer monitors, not television sets, so no need to build in CEC support.
Thanks for the replies, I'd not considered the OUYA I'd heard about it but never considered it for XBMC
I'll look again at the celeron NUC's, I was previously only looking at the atom ones
As for my friend, he's overclocked it slightly to 800Mhz but hasn't gone further, he's currently having issues with the SD card corrupting
He was using a Class 10 SD card as he had the USB for power but I might convince him to give it a go
~7 seconds for 600 movies sounds a little too slow for my liking ... He only had around 200 and I found it a tiny bit frustrating ... from that estimate I can see it taking 20+ seconds to load the 1800 in my collection :/
The stats comment is useful, I'll let him know so he can see how its performing in future
I understand your comment about the GPU's but it still puzzles me that the NUC boards with onboard graphics which are often linked with HTPC's don't have CEC either ... they have a header for an add-on card but thats all? - I would have thought it was a 'must have' feature on one? Maybe that's just me....
PS. My friend is running RasBMC although was considering trying the OpenELEC version....
He had some limited success with using a SQL database on his NAS to reduce load times - which did make the loading the library quicker - but it still took several seconds for it to then fill in the artwork which is one of my favourite parts of XBMC
(2013-06-08, 02:10)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]PS. My friend is running RasBMC although was considering trying the OpenELEC version....
He had some limited success with using a SQL database on his NAS to reduce load times - which did make the loading the library quicker - but it still took several seconds for it to then fill in the artwork which is one of my favourite parts of XBMC
You have to remember, the Pi only costs £25. Future improvements in XBMC processing could, in theory, eliminate these delays (lazy loading of the library etc.).
I'm not saying you're wrong to be wary of the delays, but if you're considering a Pi in the first place (ie. looking to spend not very much) then I'm wondering why you think paying 4 times the price is worth it just for a few seconds delay?
Also, if your friend is scraping his library using a more powerful system (eg. an x86 client), the artwork delays on the Pi could be due to caching - there's an
easy solution for that.
Thanks again for the replies, and I accept that I'm looking for something that probably doesn't exist for the price I want to pay
But I have to disagree with the comment about "4 times the price" ... if I could find something that was only ~£100 I'd snap it up, sadly, when you add up all the components they work out to ~£300 for a NUC style HTPC
Unless I've been grossly overlooking some set-ups?
Thanks for the caching link, I'll forward it to him and have a look over it, hopefully it'll be useful
(2013-06-08, 18:56)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks again for the replies, and I accept that I'm looking for something that probably doesn't exist for the price I want to pay
But I have to disagree with the comment about "4 times the price" ... if I could find something that was only ~£100 I'd snap it up, sadly, when you add up all the components they work out to ~£300 for a NUC style HTPC
Unless I've been grossly overlooking some set-ups?
Thanks for the caching link, I'll forward it to him and have a look over it, hopefully it'll be useful
£200 all in for my Celeron NUC with 4GB ram and 32GB SSD.
Spent a little extra for simerec.com though
(2013-06-08, 18:56)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks again for the replies, and I accept that I'm looking for something that probably doesn't exist for the price I want to pay
But I have to disagree with the comment about "4 times the price" ... if I could find something that was only ~£100 I'd snap it up, sadly, when you add up all the components they work out to ~£300 for a NUC style HTPC
Unless I've been grossly overlooking some set-ups?
Thanks for the caching link, I'll forward it to him and have a look over it, hopefully it'll be useful
I've just bought the celeron nuc including a 32gb m-sata and 4gb of ram which brought the price up to £204, if you buy it from dabs.com and enter the code PAYPAL20 it gives you £20 off.
Pretty good little machine for £180!!
(2013-06-09, 19:09)jammyb Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-06-08, 18:56)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks again for the replies, and I accept that I'm looking for something that probably doesn't exist for the price I want to pay
But I have to disagree with the comment about "4 times the price" ... if I could find something that was only ~£100 I'd snap it up, sadly, when you add up all the components they work out to ~£300 for a NUC style HTPC
Unless I've been grossly overlooking some set-ups?
Thanks for the caching link, I'll forward it to him and have a look over it, hopefully it'll be useful
£200 all in for my Celeron NUC with 4GB ram and 32GB SSD.
Spent a little extra for simerec.com though
How's it run? Anything it can't handle? That include power and stuff?
(2013-06-09, 20:38)FlammableD Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-06-09, 19:09)jammyb Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-06-08, 18:56)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks again for the replies, and I accept that I'm looking for something that probably doesn't exist for the price I want to pay
But I have to disagree with the comment about "4 times the price" ... if I could find something that was only ~£100 I'd snap it up, sadly, when you add up all the components they work out to ~£300 for a NUC style HTPC
Unless I've been grossly overlooking some set-ups?
Thanks for the caching link, I'll forward it to him and have a look over it, hopefully it'll be useful
£200 all in for my Celeron NUC with 4GB ram and 32GB SSD.
Spent a little extra for simerec.com though
How's it run? Anything it can't handle? That include power and stuff?
Only just ordered it so hasn't arrived yet. Reading around it will play pretty anything. Everything is included as above other than the remote.
Edit: sorry thought you were quoting me
(2013-06-09, 22:09)nabberuk Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-06-09, 20:38)FlammableD Wrote: [ -> ] (2013-06-09, 19:09)jammyb Wrote: [ -> ]£200 all in for my Celeron NUC with 4GB ram and 32GB SSD.
Spent a little extra for simerec.com though
How's it run? Anything it can't handle? That include power and stuff?
Only just ordered it so hasn't arrived yet. Reading around it will play pretty anything. Everything is included as above other than the remote.
Edit: sorry thought you were quoting me
No problem, seem to have answered my questions!
Mines with intel. It didn't have the internal USB header for me to be able to internally connect my IR receiver.
Have a read of the NUC thread. General consensus is that it can do everything but full 3D and transcode. But I have neither need for either! So all good!