[-DDD-]

Why you have to wait for Helix? Chromebox should play Yadif with Lanczos3 without Problems, where Baytrail NUC can only play Bob.

[t2ffn]

Is the chromebox running openelec able to play live TV (interlaced SD or HD) without issue? I was looking at the Celeron NUC until I read it doesn't handle live TV well at all.

Anyone using PVR on the chromebox?

there aren't any issues that I'm aware of; the ChromeBox is capable of much higher quality deinterlacing than the N2830 NUC, but you'll have to wait until Helix/Kodi 14 for that. All of the interlaced content I've tested (480i, 576i, 1080i) has played back without issue.

Thanks Matt.

I'm sure it won't matter the source of that video, but is that live TV or video direct from HDD / NAS you've tested?

I'm surprised the chromebox is higher spec than the 2820. So a better all around choice then? HD audio passthrough, 1080p full bluray ISOs etc all work no issue via openelec?

[Matt Devo]

Thanks Matt.

I'm sure it won't matter the source of that video, but is that live TV or video direct from HDD / NAS you've tested?

I'm surprised the chromebox is higher spec than the 2820. So a better all around choice then? HD audio passthrough, 1080p full bluray ISOs etc all work no issue via openelec?

from the HDD, I don't have a PVR setup currently, but that doesn't matter in terms of playback. If you do a CPU/GPU comparison between the BayTrail N2830 and Haswell 2955U, you'll see the only advantage of the former is lower TDP / ability to run without a fan; otherwise the 2955U blows it away. The ChromeBox wiki (link in my sig) provides a good overview of capabilities/limitations.

[t2ffn]

Thanks Matt, rep'd.

Think I'll go pick up a 2gb model tomorrow and start tinkering.

[pipomolo]

Alex,

looks like the fix I made in v3.1 of the script broke that function for older versions of ChromeOS. I just pushed a script update (3.2) which fixes it, so re-download and then re-run the script and it should work correctly

It works great !

Thanks a lot !

[wdjoho]

Hi,

I had actually posted this message below on the openelec forum. But figured I would also post it in this thread since it was the instructions I followed. I am still at the same point in the issue where I cannot get past the "booting from hard drive".

Openelec post I made yesterday:

I have a issue that I am trying to resolve. We bought a HP Chromebox at best buy last weekend. We had done the initial steps to get a "standalone" boot. We did all the steps in the wiki post and also following the instructions in the xbmc forum. This is what we have done:

1) Put in developer mode
2) Remove write protect screw
3) DL/Run the EZ setup script
4) Ran the "SEtup: coreboot Firmware Install/Update" step - we did choose to do a backup of our firmware when promted - this is on a 4gb flash drive
5) Ran the "Create OpenElec install media" - this is on a separate 16 flash drive.
6) Powered off Chromebox
7) Connected the USB made from step #5 above
8) Powered on

It is at the powered on step that we are not able to get past. The screen boots and initially has 2 lines. The frist top line says something about the SEABIOS and the developer at the end in parentheses. The second line does prompt to press the ESC key. However, it does not take it and a thrid line appears after stuck on booting from hard disk.

I do not know what route to go now. I read some other posts that a manual install is neccesary. But reading a blog it says that a special version is needed for the Chromebox? I don't find that one in the downloads area. The only one I think of using is the Genric x86 64 version?

Any insight to help recover from this is much appreciated.

The only 2 things I can add is that I tried other things between that post and now:

1) Instead of using the 16gb USB drive, I used a spare 4gb USB drive. Same issue with not booting. On both USB drives the red light is constantly on with no blinking.

2) I followed the link in the wiki under doing a recover to stock firmware. I followed the link to download the latest image file and using the instructions on that page to write it to a USB drive. Once loaded and put in the Chromebox, it has the same issue as installing Openelec where I cannot get past the "booting from hard drive".

The 1 thing I would like to add is that maybe a keyboard does not work with the Chromebox. The keyboard I am using is a USB type from my desktop. It was working well using it on the Chrome OS for the initial 4 days we had it. It also worked when doing all steps #1 to #6. It seems that after it was powered down, the keyboard is not being recognized which is why the escape key does not take on the chromebox? My in-law let me use her keyboard this morning and it also did not work. I am at a lost of what to do next.

If that is the case, is their any way I can bypass that "ESC key" black screen to autorun openelec install OR to revert back to the stock firmware.

Thanks

[Matt Devo]

The 1 thing I would like to add is that maybe a keyboard does not work with the Chromebox. The keyboard I am using is a USB type from my desktop. It was working well using it on the Chrome OS for the initial 4 days we had it. It also worked when doing all steps #1 to #6. It seems that after it was powered down, the keyboard is not being recognized which is why the escape key does not take on the chromebox? My in-law let me use her keyboard this morning and it also did not work. I am at a lost of what to do next.

If that is the case, is their any way I can bypass that "ESC key" black screen to autorun openelec install OR to revert back to the stock firmware.

Thanks

This is clearly an issue of the keyboard not being initialized/ready, thereby preventing you from bringing up the boot menu. All you need is a different/working keyboard, and you will be able to select the OpenELEC install media. There's no real alternative, since any path forward requires booting from USB media, which requires a working keyboard.

[wdjoho]

The 1 thing I would like to add is that maybe a keyboard does not work with the Chromebox. The keyboard I am using is a USB type from my desktop. It was working well using it on the Chrome OS for the initial 4 days we had it. It also worked when doing all steps #1 to #6. It seems that after it was powered down, the keyboard is not being recognized which is why the escape key does not take on the chromebox? My in-law let me use her keyboard this morning and it also did not work. I am at a lost of what to do next.

If that is the case, is their any way I can bypass that "ESC key" black screen to autorun openelec install OR to revert back to the stock firmware.

Thanks

This is clearly an issue of the keyboard not being initialized/ready, thereby preventing you from bringing up the boot menu. All you need is a different/working keyboard, and you will be able to select the OpenELEC install media. There's no real alternative, since any path forward requires booting from USB media, which requires a working keyboard.

Would you recommend that a wireless keyboard would work more often than a wired one? Just found it odd that the keyboard would all of a sudden not work on the boot screen.

[Matt Devo]

Would you recommend that a wireless keyboard would work more often than a wired one? Just found it odd that the keyboard would all of a sudden not work on the boot screen.

there's no rule as to one being better than another. It didn't all of the sudden not work, you simply hadn't need to use it prior to booting the OS before. Everything else you did with the script etc was with the OS (and OS drivers) loaded. There are some initialization quirks with non-USB3 devices connected to a USB3 port; I've done my best to mitigate/fix them, but some devices that don't quite adhere to the USB specs are still problematic

[Sunflux]

Yeah, I even have a simple USB wired Viewsonic keyboard (laptop-style) that wouldn't work on the boot screen. So then I plugged in a Microsoft wireless... and it worked fine!

[figaro]

Dell wired keyboard and mouse connected to the USB ports located on the back part of the box work the best.

[Matt Devo]

All of the USB ports are connected to the same root hub, there's no difference between them outside of order of enumeration. Likewise, I have 2 logitech wireless keyboards that work fine, one that doesn't, and a wired one that doesn't. It's a toss up sadly

[megamanwilson]

Hi, I just bought ASUS CHROMEBOX-M075U on ebay for $240, 5 months own used, it will arrive 11/22-11/30. Was this a good price? I wanted to know if it was possible to dual boot openelec and xubuntu. Will this be powerful enough to handle hw acceleration and Deinterlacing. If I later decide to install windows 8 will it be fast enough for windows.

[Matt Devo]

Hi, I just bought ASUS CHROMEBOX-M075U on ebay for $240, 5 months own used, it will arrive 11/22-11/30. Was this a good price? I wanted to know if it was possible to dual boot openelec and xubuntu. Will this be powerful enough to handle hw acceleration and Deinterlacing. If I later decide to install windows 8 will it be fast enough for windows.

yes
yes
yes
yes, but Windows has lots of issues on this box (no HDMI audio output, power mgmt, etc), so it's not recommended

[megamanwilson]

Hi, I just bought ASUS CHROMEBOX-M075U on ebay for $240, 5 months own used, it will arrive 11/22-11/30. Was this a good price? I wanted to know if it was possible to dual boot openelec and xubuntu. Will this be powerful enough to handle hw acceleration and Deinterlacing. If I later decide to install windows 8 will it be fast enough for windows.

yes
yes
yes
yes, but Windows has lots of issues on this box (no HDMI audio output, power mgmt, etc), so it's not recommended

Thanks.