2014-01-25, 10:07
I'll preface by saying that I'm an OpenELEC and XBMC rookie. The NUC is my first HTPC. If you're only interested in the outcome rather than the story of how I got there skip down to the TL;DR.
I recently decided to buy an Intel NUC i5 Haswell thanks to all the great community involvement on the huge Intel NUC - HTPC (Haswell Late 2013 edition) thread. Trying to be thorough I went through probably the first 50 and the last 20 or so pages of posts looking for any specific issues and seeing most of them resolved I considered it a pretty safe purchase. Even to try OpenELEC stable.
Since I'm about two days into troubleshooting sound issues in particular I thought I'd summarise my experiences here so that hopefully no one else will have to go to all the trouble. I've searched up and down this forum for pieces of information that might help so I'll try and link to as many of those as I can.
For reference the NUC and components:
...monitor, TV and components:
Firstly, perhaps foolishly, I started out with OpenELEC 3.2.4 stable. I went through the USB stick install process using HDMI on my Dell U2711, fiddled with a few test videos I had kicking around and everything seemed pretty reasonable. No video stuttering, keyboard and mouse worked fine, gigabit, wireless, etc.
I then moved to my Panasonic TV and followed the existing nuvoton_cir wisdom to get IR with my Harmony One working. Things went really pear shaped really quickly. I had no audio and I had stuttering video. No matter what I did I just could not get audio and the only way to have video that was not stuttering was to not use HDMI as the audio output device. The phenotype was very similar to an issue that OptyCT raised on the aforementioned huge Intel NUC Haswell thread back in November 2013 and was also mentioned recently by dgatlin:
Sadly neither thread mentioned a resolution to the problem. At first I thought I was lead down the garden path by what was mentioned on the second thread about enabling software rendering and disabling VA-API. Neither of these suggestions worked but I remembered the extensive and thorough work from lmyllari detailing the RGB decoding issues with these devices and the subsequent kernel/driver patches by Intel. This led me to scour GitHub for commits or issues which mentioned HDMI audio. Bingo. The GitHub issue, mailing list post with the fix and a couple related posts:
Sure enough OpenELEC 3.2.4 stable is built atop a 3.10 Linux kernel. Unlikely to have exactly the patches required but I haven't spent the time to validate that fully. Off to test an OpenELEC 4.0.0 Gotham nightly build (OpenELEC-Generic.x86_64-devel-20140123155120-r17126-gceb58b6; 3.13.0 kernel) I went, re-following the nuvoton_cir spell. Instant success. Wow, there's even sound in the menu without configuring a thing!
I suppose it's also interesting that both OptyCT have these issues with Panasonic TVs. Maybe they're more susceptible, or at least resilient, to timing differences between audio and video over HDMI. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has thoughts about that.
I think it's fairly safe to say based on my experience that with a Haswell based NUC you run the risk of some serious frustration if you try and run OpenELEC 3.2.4 stable. Unfortunately these issues can be really subtle. I'd definitely recommend trying an OpenELEC 4.0.0 Gotham nightly if you run into even the slightest trouble that smells of hardware or driver issues.
I recently decided to buy an Intel NUC i5 Haswell thanks to all the great community involvement on the huge Intel NUC - HTPC (Haswell Late 2013 edition) thread. Trying to be thorough I went through probably the first 50 and the last 20 or so pages of posts looking for any specific issues and seeing most of them resolved I considered it a pretty safe purchase. Even to try OpenELEC stable.
Since I'm about two days into troubleshooting sound issues in particular I thought I'd summarise my experiences here so that hopefully no one else will have to go to all the trouble. I've searched up and down this forum for pieces of information that might help so I'll try and link to as many of those as I can.
For reference the NUC and components:
- Intel Next Unit of Computing Kit D54250WYK
- Kingston ValueRAM KVR16LS11/4
- Kingston SSDNow SMS200S3/60G
- Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235AN
...monitor, TV and components:
- Dell U2711
- Panasonic Viera TX-32LZD80
- Logitech Harmony One
- StarTech.com High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - HDMI to HDMI Mini
Firstly, perhaps foolishly, I started out with OpenELEC 3.2.4 stable. I went through the USB stick install process using HDMI on my Dell U2711, fiddled with a few test videos I had kicking around and everything seemed pretty reasonable. No video stuttering, keyboard and mouse worked fine, gigabit, wireless, etc.
I then moved to my Panasonic TV and followed the existing nuvoton_cir wisdom to get IR with my Harmony One working. Things went really pear shaped really quickly. I had no audio and I had stuttering video. No matter what I did I just could not get audio and the only way to have video that was not stuttering was to not use HDMI as the audio output device. The phenotype was very similar to an issue that OptyCT raised on the aforementioned huge Intel NUC Haswell thread back in November 2013 and was also mentioned recently by dgatlin:
- http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1551496
- http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1596441
Sadly neither thread mentioned a resolution to the problem. At first I thought I was lead down the garden path by what was mentioned on the second thread about enabling software rendering and disabling VA-API. Neither of these suggestions worked but I remembered the extensive and thorough work from lmyllari detailing the RGB decoding issues with these devices and the subsequent kernel/driver patches by Intel. This led me to scour GitHub for commits or issues which mentioned HDMI audio. Bingo. The GitHub issue, mailing list post with the fix and a couple related posts:
- https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/issues/2683
- http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
- http://www.twibble.org/2014/01/pioneer-s...-gpu-hdmi/
- https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/9...-at-1080p/
Sure enough OpenELEC 3.2.4 stable is built atop a 3.10 Linux kernel. Unlikely to have exactly the patches required but I haven't spent the time to validate that fully. Off to test an OpenELEC 4.0.0 Gotham nightly build (OpenELEC-Generic.x86_64-devel-20140123155120-r17126-gceb58b6; 3.13.0 kernel) I went, re-following the nuvoton_cir spell. Instant success. Wow, there's even sound in the menu without configuring a thing!
I suppose it's also interesting that both OptyCT have these issues with Panasonic TVs. Maybe they're more susceptible, or at least resilient, to timing differences between audio and video over HDMI. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has thoughts about that.
Code:
TL;DRI think it's fairly safe to say based on my experience that with a Haswell based NUC you run the risk of some serious frustration if you try and run OpenELEC 3.2.4 stable. Unfortunately these issues can be really subtle. I'd definitely recommend trying an OpenELEC 4.0.0 Gotham nightly if you run into even the slightest trouble that smells of hardware or driver issues.
