[noggin]

H.265 file 1 was 720p and on her i3 NUC, the CPU went up to about 15-20% and the video played back perfectly. The 2nd H.265 file had a .265 extension and wasn't seen by Kodi and when I tried playing it in VLC, VLC CPU usage jumped to about 80% but nothing happened, just a black screen. I tried the nightly build of VLC (3.0.0) and same result. Guess the .265 extension just isn't ready for Kodi/VLC!?

The .265 file will be the raw HEVC/H265 video which will need to be wrapped in a container like a Matroska .mkv or an MPEG2 transport stream .ts file. (NB MPEG2 transport streams can carry video in codecs other than MPEG2. They are used to carry H264/AVC, VC-1 and H265/HEVC video in areas like broadcasting, and a modified .m2ts version is used in Blu-ray)

Looking at the Elecard site you need to download the MPEG2 Transport Streams NOT the Elementary streams (which are likely to be flagged .265) to test H265/HEVC in VLC, Kodi etc. (You may find some players correctly detect an .265 Elemental Stream, but many won't)

[gene0915]

H.265 file 1 was 720p and on her i3 NUC, the CPU went up to about 15-20% and the video played back perfectly. The 2nd H.265 file had a .265 extension and wasn't seen by Kodi and when I tried playing it in VLC, VLC CPU usage jumped to about 80% but nothing happened, just a black screen. I tried the nightly build of VLC (3.0.0) and same result. Guess the .265 extension just isn't ready for Kodi/VLC!?

The .265 file will be the raw HEVC/H265 video which will need to be wrapped in a container like a Matroska .mkv or an MPEG2 transport stream .ts file. (NB MPEG2 transport streams can carry video in codecs other than MPEG2. They are used to carry H264/AVC, VC-1 and H265/HEVC video in areas like broadcasting, and a modified .m2ts version is used in Blu-ray)

Looking at the Elecard site you need to download the MPEG2 Transport Streams NOT the Elementary streams (which are likely to be flagged .265) to test H265/HEVC in VLC, Kodi etc. (You may find some players correctly detect an .265 Elemental Stream, but many won't)

I downloaded some .ts files and some played and others just showed me a single image and the audio kept playing. Eh..... enough with that.

So back to my main question....... what do you experts recommend I buy based on this: (copied from my original post)

....Could care less about 4K but want something that can: (made a few small edits)

1) Handle h.265 encoded 720p/1080p files. (Should hardware decoding of h.265 be a must have feature I look at? If so, feel free to add that to your recommendations)
2) Doesn't need to support 5.1 or any fancy sound gear.
3) Needs to have Bluetooth
4) Needs to support 802.11AC (ethernet jack would also be nice)
5) Small, like a NUC
6) Quiet, like a NUC
8) Sips power
9) Must be OpenElec/Windows friendly. Don't want anything Android related.

Would be OK with spending anywhere from $100-$300 (I know that adding RAM and an SSD to a NUC might bust that budget a little bit and that's OK)

Also, a friend of mine would like the same but she strictly wants a box that runs on Android. Her price point is $100-$200. (Think the NVidia Shield is the way to go for her?)

[nickr]

Braswell nuc or perhaps chromebox. The wiki lists the chromebox capabilities.

[wrxtasy]

Also, a friend of mine would like the same but she strictly wants a box that runs on Android. Her price point is $100-$200. (Think the NVidia Shield is the way to go for her?)

If she wants plug and play in a sorted out, stress free, elegant Kodi / Android device the recommended options are:
$140 - MINIX NEO X8-H Plus (does 4K / HEVC / 23.976/59.94Hz)
$85 - MINIX NEO X6 (1080p / HEVC / 23.976/59.94Hz)

The NVIDIA Shield will likely be sorted out with the desired features like 23.976/59.94Hz video ouput and others, sometime down the track for proper video sync and Kodi use. It will be a bit more future proofed than the MINIX devices.

I personally run an AMlogic S805 device that has the same SoC aka CPU/GPU/VPU as in the NEO X6. It runs Kodi Isengard quite nicely.

BEWARE: for an Android device - be very careful with the Firmware. Don't get a cheap device with rubbish firmware. There is a flood of Android Isengard users at the moment with problems with these types of cheap Android devices with rubbish Firmware.

See this thread for Android Firmware guidance:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=229161

[User 68127]

More a storage than a box question, please let me know if this is better suited to a new topic.

In terms of devices I use Kodi on, I currently have a Gaming PC which houses my main install and library, with my media on a 4TB External Drive.

For upstairs I have a Fire TV I use plug and play sharing to access my library. The downside of this being that the PC has to remain on.

My new downstairs TV has Android TV, so I've installed Kodi on there from the play store. I'd like this to be the main usage point, so I'm looking at a better media and library sharing option that means my gaming PC isn't on 24/7.

I'd like something networked up I can leave on 24/7 and run (I assume this is the best way?) the MySQL library sharing so I can access it from Android TV and Fire TV. I'd also like it to be able to do torrenting.

Parity/Backup/RAID is something I'd like to have in the future, but as I'm on a tight budget currently, I likely wouldn't pick up another drive(s) to do it immediately.

In terms of existing hardware I have lying around, I have a 1st gen Celeron NUC and a Raspberry Pi around, if there's a way to use these, great. Otherwise, what's the best way to get a stable system with what I'm after?

<3 Cheers guys.

[apgood]

Unraid might be worth looking at. That will probably allow you to reuse your old pc hardware.

[nickr]

The nuc and rpi both suffer from needing external drives to use them as a storage unit/nas. Messy. However the nuc certainly has the computing power to run mysql and samba.

I would get some external drives and install Ubuntu server LTS.

[Wintersdark]

If you want something cleaner, grab an old desktop - pretty much anything will have the horsepower for what you need here.

Then you can cram hard drives into it as you get them, and it never gets messier. Have it run Ubuntu Server LTS, MySQL, Samba, etc.

That, anyways, is my approach.

Then, after you get more drives, you can use one of the assorted drive pooling filesystems like AUFS or mhddfs to pool your multiple disparate drives into a single filesystem.

Also, when you have more drives, you can look to software like SnapRAID to have parity protection, all at the cost of nothing, without ever needing to build arrays or anything like that - you can add or remove SnapRAID freely at any time.

I'm a huge fan of this route, because it allows you to have one ideally low power desktop in a closet somewhere acting as a server. Once they're set up, you don't need a keyboard or mouse; just forget about them. Maybe install Webmin to have a very easy web based management interface.

It's surprisingly cheap to do. Mine's running on my old Phenom AMD desktop, and has been for years. I restart it maybe once a month after installing security updates. When I start running low on space, I grab a HDD on sale and cram it in, add it to the pool and forget about it.


Then use the NUC and Raspi for HTPC's

[nickr]

If you want something cleaner, grab an old desktop - pretty much anything will have the horsepower for what you need here.

Then you can cram hard drives into it as you get them, and it never gets messier. Have it run Ubuntu Server LTS, MySQL, Samba, etc.

That, anyways, is my approach.

Then, after you get more drives, you can use one of the assorted drive pooling filesystems like AUFS or mhddfs to pool your multiple disparate drives into a single filesystem.

Also, when you have more drives, you can look to software like SnapRAID to have parity protection, all at the cost of nothing, without ever needing to build arrays or anything like that - you can add or remove SnapRAID freely at any time.

I'm a huge fan of this route, because it allows you to have one ideally low power desktop in a closet somewhere acting as a server. Once they're set up, you don't need a keyboard or mouse; just forget about them. Maybe install Webmin to have a very easy web based management interface.

It's surprisingly cheap to do. Mine's running on my old Phenom AMD desktop, and has been for years. I restart it maybe once a month after installing security updates. When I start running low on space, I grab a HDD on sale and cram it in, add it to the pool and forget about it.


Then use the NUC and Raspi for HTPC's

Good post. If I hadn't been on my phone for my last post I probably would have said all of that!

I bought an older HP workstation with lots of SATA ports and space, and I use mhddfs, I share only two folders, /mnt/movies and /mnt/tv. Each of those is an amalgamation of partitions on multiple disks. It also runs a mythtv backend.

[oWarchild]

I've went through a similar route in the past using FreeNAS (free and open source) and the only thing that bothered me was power consumption. Old desktops (like those using 350W+ PSUs) can draw lots of power and after a couple of years the money spent on electricity equals the price of dedicated NAS hardware. I would only advise going that route if the "old desktop" is a low power one or if you live in a country where electricity is dirt cheap.

[pr0xZen]

The new Braswell NUCs seem to be quite worthy contenders - even the celeron NUC5CPYH sporting very decent HEVC HW decoding (don't think ffmpeg supports it yet though - but the hardware is there when the software follows suit. On Windows there are working options). And at roughly the same price mark as the DN2820FYKH predecessor. More good news is the price jump up to the Pentium NUC5PPYH is nowhere near the previous celeron->i3 difference - and it packs a little more punch for non-AV related tasks.

A recent review for the Celeron (Win and OpenELEC): http://nucblog.net/2015/07/braswell-nuc-...yh-review/

[Ned Scott]

Wow, the new NUCs look like they might take back the mini PC crown.

[oWarchild]

Yeap, another good option is the ASRock Beebox. You can find a compilation of announced Braswell boxes in Intel Braswell boxes compilation.

[eka1990]

Can I tell me what is best choice up to 150$.

i currently use Kodi on my PC but i going to eliminate it.

I would like to have some box that supports good audio (7.1) and of course good video capability (no need for 4k)

[pr0xZen]

Can I tell me what is best choice up to 150$.

i currently use Kodi on my PC but i going to eliminate it.

I would like to have some box that supports good audio (7.1) and of course good video capability (no need for 4k)

As with its predecessors, the NUCs mentioned above haven't quiiite gotten a firm grasp on DTS-HD passthrough on Windows 8.x/10 yet (or so a couple of reports indicate). Decoding to LPCM (in windows) and DTS-HD passthrough in OpenELEC is as before, not a problem. There is rapid feedback on this, so hopefully this will be in the clear soon. Otherwise - the new celeron NUCs are well within the $150 mark (The Intel kits anyway), but those are barebones[/i}. You'll still need a DDR3L stick and storage. Good news is, you'll have the option of both a 2.5" drive, USB [i]and an SD card. For a tad above $150 you should be set with the celeron nuc, a 4GB DDR3L stick and a USB drive/SDXC card running OpenELEC.

If you're going to use it for much anything than Kodi on OpenELEC - I'd strongly advice you get an snappy SSD (like the Samsung 840 (EVO) ). Be adviced, you can always do this "upgrade" at a later point in time. Prices on the smaller ones are dropping good. I opted to save ~$30 and got a Kingston SSDNow SSD instead. My friend has the exact setup as me on the old DN2820FYKH except he went with the Samsung 840 EVO, and seeing the real-world perfomance difference between them (on Win 8.1 pro), I regret my choice "every day".