[marekzehra]

Does anyone tried both of them? I have Xtreamer TV (which is terrible and I am giving it away), so I borrowed RPI from a friend. It works quite fine, just the xbmc is a little bit slow on it and sound is not perfect. But still hundred times better than XTV. I have searched this forum and found Pivos XIOS to be a good solution for XBMC. If I should choose between these two (RPI and Pivos) is Pivos worth it? I mean - is just the system more fluent or the movies (sound) look better as well?

I also found the third option Ouya which seems to be more for games... I just want to play movies and as far what I understand it is comparable to Pivos.

So is the Pivos worth it or is there any other option (not HTPC, but able to play 1080p)?

[ThePolarSky]

...

[BenH]

You mention the sound is not perfect on the Pi. Is that an issue with sound out of HDMI or poorish quality analogue audio? The Pivos (and Ouya) doesn't have analogue audio if that is necessary for you.
Ben

[Mick1152]

I got my Xios for $89 a while ago and I think it's a great device for the price. I also have several Raspberry Pi's. I'm using on two on both of my kids' TV's and they're great little devices but, they are nowhere as smooth in the menus as the Xios. That being said, the Xios isn't as nice and smooth as any of my HTPC's.

For their current $110 price point, I'm much happier with my Celeron 847 build which was only slightly more expensive. Granted, it's just using a cheap spare wireless keyboard I had laying around so adding a remote or wireless keyboard can bring the cost of that up a bit, but, honestly the functionality of the Celeron 847 system is so much better and smoother than the Xios and especially the Pi.

Although, don't let that make you think I don't love my Xios or my Pi's, I think they are all wonderful devices. Make sure you are using a recent build on your Pi of whichever OS you are using (Xbian, OpenELEC, Raspbmc). There was some sound related issues a while back that have been resolved in all of the builds.

[Ned Scott]

Mick1152 hits the nail on the head. They all have their place and are great in their own way, but current prices of Celeron (and equivalent power) processors really show that "desktop class" HTPCs are in on the inexpensive-game.

[marekzehra]

You mention the sound is not perfect on the Pi. Is that an issue with sound out of HDMI or poorish quality analogue audio? The Pivos (and Ouya) doesn't have analogue audio if that is necessary for you.
Ben

It's not playing in some scenes and it "crackles".

[marekzehra]

You mentioned Celeron 847. I found in same category (miniPC) also zotac zbox with intel atom and it seams more powerfull than celeron.
Celeron has better 2xDDR3 1333, Zotac "only" 1xDDR3 800. But Celeron 1,1GHz, and Zotac 1,8GHz.

So where is the difference?

[jjd-uk]

You mentioned Celeron 847. I found in same category (miniPC) also zotac zbox with intel atom and it seams more powerfull than celeron.
Celeron has better 2xDDR3 1333, Zotac "only" 1xDDR3 800. But Celeron 1,1GHz, and Zotac 1,8GHz.

So where is the difference?

You can't compare different models CPU's by clock speeds alone, despite having the lower clock speed the Celeron is based on a more powerful architecture and will offer much better performance than a Atom, plus the Celeron has Intel HD Graphics built in which will do full Blu-Ray rips with HD audio which would require a dedicated GPU on a Atom based system.

[Riffmaker]

I have the Pivos and I'm not really happy with it. I bought it for a dedicated bedroom xbmc front end. It didn't bother me that the menu wasn't snappy, what did bother me tho was that on any 1080p rip with 5.1 audio, the audio would go way out of sync with the video. I tried alot of builds, tried the linux build, the android build, newest build, older build. I'm sure if the audio was being pass thru to a surround sound system it'd be fine but this being bought for a bed room without surround sound thats not an option. I guess processing 1080p video and down sampling 5.1 is just too much strain for it. I'd return it if I had bought it locally and not have to ship it back to Amazon(on my dime.)

Maybe they'll get a nightly build that fixes this but I really think its a limitation on the hardware. I'm hoping the Ouya and its Tegra 3 will work better on 1080p videos(tho not looking so well on my Asus Transformer tf300)

[Dougie Fresh]

You mentioned Celeron 847. I found in same category (miniPC) also zotac zbox with intel atom and it seams more powerfull than celeron.
Celeron has better 2xDDR3 1333, Zotac "only" 1xDDR3 800. But Celeron 1,1GHz, and Zotac 1,8GHz.

So where is the difference?

The difference is in the CPU architecture. The Celeron at 1.1GHz is nearly twice as fast as the Atom at 1.8GHz. One example is Passmark scores:

Celeron 847: 1016
Atom D525: 690

And, unlike, Atom or Zacate (or any of these ARM chips), the Celeron 847 is powerful enough it can actually render 1080p in software (in my own testing).

[marekzehra]

Ok, thanks for replies. Now I'm decided to buy some device with Celeron.

I have three candidates:
Intel NUC with Celeron 847
ZOTAC ZBOX ID85 with Celeron 847
Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 with Celeron 887

Lenovo is about $70 more expensive. Worth the performance difference for it?

[marekzehra]

I have accidentally found out that my TV supports HDMI CEC so my TV remote works also on RaspberryPi. Unfortunately it looks that neither Intel NUC nor Zotac zbox does support it... It would be really comfortable to use the same remote. Is there any other way to make it work even if there isn't offical support from Intel?

[cwide]

http://www.pulse-eight.com/store/product...apter.aspx

[marekzehra]

http://www.pulse-eight.com/store/product...apter.aspx

Any cheaper way?

[solamnic]

Buy a cheap universal remote