[lmyllari]

Did u see my post about how to turn off the Nuc without it rebooting again?
Is it possible to make a code so that pressing stop or X twice wouldnt be necessary?
Do u have rebooting issue when powering off?
Could u try to play a movie and then press stop or x twice and then power off and see if it reboots for u?

I will test when I have a chance. The system is starting to work well enough that I'm not the only one around the house using it.

After disabling Vaapi, HD material works.
About software vd hardware decoding, isnt it ment that we use the intel graphics for decoding?
Whats to prefer software decoding or hardware decoding?

I'm not sure what you're saying. Use either VA-API or multithreaded decoding - do not enable both at the same time.

I would prefer hardware decoding (uses less power -> less heat; more CPU available for other tasks). At the moment I'm using software decoding for better quality. My aim is to get the same quality with hardware decoding.

[Mangoes]

I would prefer hardware decoding (uses less power -> less heat; more CPU available for other tasks). At the moment I'm using software decoding for better quality. My aim is to get the same quality with hardware decoding.

Yes, the vaapi decoding is lower quality than software. It sometimes shows some blockiness in the picture.

I am only using vaapi because the i3 is not strong enough to decode the 2D streams in the 3D blurays. With the i5 I would use software all the way.

What do you mean with "My aim is to get the same quality with hardware decoding". Does this mean you think you can do something about this?

[scarecrow420]

Question regarding the built in IR: Is the sensor in the front of the case or is it on an extension lead? Eg if you want to VESA mount a haswell NUC behind a TV screen what can you do about the IR remote signal getting to the box? With a normal USB IR receiver, you can run use the USB lead to locate it some distance away from the actual HTPC unit, can we do that with the NUC or is it built in to the case only?

[lmyllari]

I would prefer hardware decoding (uses less power -> less heat; more CPU available for other tasks). At the moment I'm using software decoding for better quality. My aim is to get the same quality with hardware decoding.

Yes, the vaapi decoding is lower quality than software. It sometimes shows some blockiness in the picture.

I am only using vaapi because the i3 is not strong enough to decode the 2D streams in the 3D blurays. With the i5 I would use software all the way.

What do you mean with "My aim is to get the same quality with hardware decoding". Does this mean you think you can do something about this?

Yes.

The decoding itself should be bit exact; I would be very surprised if it wasn't. The problems are with the RGB range expansion. Video decoder outputs YCbCr data, where Y (luminance) is in the range 16-235. Both Intel hardware decoder and FFmpeg software decoder work the same here. The difference lies in what happens next. With software decoding, xbmc gets the decoded frame in YCbCr format, calculates coefficients taking into account the colorspace and desired output range, and converts to RGB using these. When xbmc requests the decoded frame from VA-API, it specifies the colorspace (bt.601 or bt.709) and gets RGB data. There is no parameter for RGB output range, so VA-API always converts to full range. This means that luminance gets expanded from 16-235 to 0-255 and this is where the problem lies. This creates banding in the output signal.

With software decoding, we can avoid the conversion from 16-235 to 0-255 and get nice clean output.

My plan is to add a range parameter to VA-API and modify it to support limited range (16-235) RGB output. Then xbmc rendering and gpu drivers need to be checked to make sure they pass this through unmodified. The latter part I have already prototyped using the "Video 16:235 pass-through" xrandr rgb range setting.

All of this is for TV users. PC monitors usually want full range signal. That can also be improved by using limited range output from decoder, and dithering when expanding to full range. For software decoding this should be pretty straightforward by adding dithering to the colorspace conversion shader. For hardware decoding I'm not yet sure how it would work. The dithering should not be done before scaling. There are also changes coming with the VA-API post processing. If the decoder output goes through deinterlacing, other post processing, colorspace conversion and scaling, it gets interesting. If all of that could be done with 10bit resolution and dithered at the end, that would be the best for accuracy. I'm not sure if the hardware supports that, and I'm pretty sure the drivers don't.

[BLKMGK]

Question regarding the built in IR: Is the sensor in the front of the case or is it on an extension lead? Eg if you want to VESA mount a haswell NUC behind a TV screen what can you do about the IR remote signal getting to the box? With a normal USB IR receiver, you can run use the USB lead to locate it some distance away from the actual HTPC unit, can we do that with the NUC or is it built in to the case only?

Sensor is in the front of the device, if mounted on the back of a set it will be a problem yes.

[BLKMGK]

Is anyone playing with a NUC and NOT using OE? So far I've had issues getting the boot record properly setup but got past that. Now I'm trying to get sound working over HDMI and as usual it's a hassle so I'd like to network with others. I've yanked PulseAudio off the load but ALSA is proving troublesome per usual...

I'm tempted to go OE but I really like being able to pull code from Git to compile myself :-(

Sure, I'm on Arch and here is my asound.conf:

Code:

defaults.pcm.card 0
defaults.pcm.device 7
defaults.ctl.card 0

Don't think you need more than that, I'm not using Pulseaudio.

Sadly this isn't working for me. I setup both an asound.conf in /etc and an .asoundrc in my home directory - no joy. Alsamixer only shows SPIDIF as my default (still) and the usual analog on the second card. Speaker test gives the output below. None of the GUI mixers show any outputs for some reason or fail to run. I suspect this is something silly, I'm still learning Linux - the hard way - and this isn't my first head banger with ALSA. Having trouble getting my shell script to execute on boot to fixup the remote too but that's far less critical and likely even more silly!

Code:

speaker-test 1.0.25

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory

Trying this all on Mint but as I said before not wedded to it however I DO want a full desktop and dev environment loaded so OE isn't my first choice at this point.

[micoba]

As there are still no Nuc Kits available in Germany (at least at the moment), I'm thinking of buying the UCff version (pure mainboard without a case). Is it possible to turn the nuc on without the case, perhaps with a jumper ("always on")?

Can anybody provide a link to a case manufacterer, that sells nuc haswell cases? Google didn't find ANY!

Please!

[twelvebore]

Looks like the bare motherboards are now available

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem

[micoba]

Looks like the bare motherboards are now available

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem

Was that a direct reply to my post? Because that was exactly what I was referring to! But I can't find suitable cases, so the pure mainboards are useless, I guess!?

[zag]

Looks like the bare motherboards are now available

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem

Was that a direct reply to my post? Because that was exactly what I was referring to! But I can't find suitable cases, so the pure mainboards are useless, I guess!?

Nice! where do you get the power leads from though?

[micoba]

Finally they are available in Germany, but only limited numbers! See here:

http://geizhals.de/intel-nuc-kit-d34010w...06841.html

[twelvebore]

Looks like the bare motherboards are now available

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc...i-ucff-oem

Was that a direct reply to my post? Because that was exactly what I was referring to! But I can't find suitable cases, so the pure mainboards are useless, I guess!?

No, it wasn't, it was just for general information to anyone interested. Intel use the word 'kit' to refer to the version that ships in a case with a power supply, so I thought you were referring to something else.

[arokh]

Sadly this isn't working for me. I setup both an asound.conf in /etc and an .asoundrc in my home directory - no joy. Alsamixer only shows SPIDIF as my default (still) and the usual analog on the second card. Speaker test gives the output below. None of the GUI mixers show any outputs for some reason or fail to run. I suspect this is something silly, I'm still learning Linux - the hard way - and this isn't my first head banger with ALSA. Having trouble getting my shell script to execute on boot to fixup the remote too but that's far less critical and likely even more silly!

Well, there's your problem then. Alsamixer should show your PCM device, sounds like you don't have the correct modules loaded. They should be by default on any modern distro, not sure why that's not the case for you.

Trying this all on Mint but as I said before not wedded to it however I DO want a full desktop and dev environment loaded so OE isn't my first choice at this point.

Try the latest Mint version, or the latest Ubuntu should work fine as well. When it comes to Haswell support, you are better off with a bleeding edge distribution.

[micoba]

Do the haswell nucs need the same power cords like the old nucs? Is so, than I'm good to go!

[twelvebore]

Looks like Akasa will be doing a version of their fanless case for the Haswell NUC

http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=p...-NUC03-A1B