2017-02-10, 15:52
Some specific HTPC feeback from the review:
Quote:The Kaby Lake NUC should make a nice HTPC due to a couple of reasons. Lively performance, small size and quietness are just a few of them. In addition it has a HDMI 2.0 interface (needed for 4k at 60 Hz) and it features full hardware decoding of H.264 and HEVC video even at 4k resolutions @60 Hz refresh rate. Even 10-bit HEVC video decoding is supported by the hardware. VP9 hardware decoding is also included with both 8 and 10-bit content support.
The Kaby Lake SoC does not support HDMI 2.0 natively, but instead Intel has added a LSPCon that will convert the DisplayPort signal to HDMI 2.0. According to the spec sheet for the MegaChips LSPCon that is used in this NUC the chip should also be able to support High Dynamic Range (HDR). Unfortunately I don’t have a 4k HDR television that I could use to test this now.
I installed LibreELEC 8 Beta version on the NUC and to my surprise most of the things were working straight away, including the WiFi adapter. However, the HD audio passthrough did not seem to work for anything fancier than Dolby Digital or DTS on LE either. It seems this is a known problem with the Intel GPU drivers. I would expect it to be solved in the nearby future as well.
It’s worth noting that support for the 10-bit HEVC decoding on the Kaby Lake GPU is not part of the LibreELEC 8.0 code. Experimental builds do exist that handle the decoding in hardware.
