2014-07-18, 20:44
Little mini update/status for people who are just looking at doing this and can't scan through the whole thread.
I just ordered several of the i3 Haswell NUCs (D34010WYK) for my wife's office and for a kick set one up from scratch with latest OpenElec to see how "tough" it is to get proper playback of my large collection of MKVs that are ripped straight from BD;
1. NUC did not like the "bluerigger" mini HDMI cable I ordered with it... would not get signal on my Denon X4000 AVR... using another HDMI cable cured this.
2. Update of BIOS was quite quick, all you need is the .BIO file on a USB stick and it takes just a minute.
3. Install of OE took, literally, seconds.
4. MS IR remote not working until I found instructions on OE forum for waking up USB IR and had that in startup script. All of that takes maybe 60 seconds. Once I did that remote working very very well. Not sure why OE has not modified to support this natively.
5. Sync to display SEEMS to be working, as I've played back 1+ hours of my "torture file" which is Dark Knight... high bit-rate VC1 with TrueHD audio. So far, no audio glitches and pretty good playback but lip sync might need to be adjusted on my Denon a bit.
6. Only problems so far are very minor. If my AVR is not booted when the NUC starts up it does not see that the HDMI on my Denon supports HD audio. Probably have to change boot order on the macro that starts this up. NUC boots to OE in something crazy like 5-7 seconds, so this is just probably a timing thing. Not having any of the other problems people have regarding spontaneous reboot after shutdown, etc.
7. All in all pretty nice experience. Box is tiny, quiet, IR sensitivity very good, and at first blush the media playback capabilities are impressive.
I just ordered several of the i3 Haswell NUCs (D34010WYK) for my wife's office and for a kick set one up from scratch with latest OpenElec to see how "tough" it is to get proper playback of my large collection of MKVs that are ripped straight from BD;
1. NUC did not like the "bluerigger" mini HDMI cable I ordered with it... would not get signal on my Denon X4000 AVR... using another HDMI cable cured this.
2. Update of BIOS was quite quick, all you need is the .BIO file on a USB stick and it takes just a minute.
3. Install of OE took, literally, seconds.
4. MS IR remote not working until I found instructions on OE forum for waking up USB IR and had that in startup script. All of that takes maybe 60 seconds. Once I did that remote working very very well. Not sure why OE has not modified to support this natively.
5. Sync to display SEEMS to be working, as I've played back 1+ hours of my "torture file" which is Dark Knight... high bit-rate VC1 with TrueHD audio. So far, no audio glitches and pretty good playback but lip sync might need to be adjusted on my Denon a bit.
6. Only problems so far are very minor. If my AVR is not booted when the NUC starts up it does not see that the HDMI on my Denon supports HD audio. Probably have to change boot order on the macro that starts this up. NUC boots to OE in something crazy like 5-7 seconds, so this is just probably a timing thing. Not having any of the other problems people have regarding spontaneous reboot after shutdown, etc.
7. All in all pretty nice experience. Box is tiny, quiet, IR sensitivity very good, and at first blush the media playback capabilities are impressive.
