[bogchop]

Ok well.. I updated to the latest OpenELEC snapshot as of 6 February, found at:

http://snapshots.openelec.tv/OpenELEC-Ge...7447e4.tar

And can confirm that all my choppy playback with these high bitrate files no longer exists. Things play back much more smoothly. My CPU no longer maxes out to 100% during playback. Seems like it was definitely a driver issue then.

To confirm this, i went back to my last OpenELEC version from Jan 25 and experienced all the problems i described in my previous post. When i re-upgraded to the latest snapshot linked above, my files play back just as smoothly as they do on my i3. CPU cores sit at around 10-15% during playback. The NUC plays back all the 55+ bitrate JellyFish test files without dropping frames, and not surprisingly, now breezes through all my once problematic high bitrate rips (including untouched BluRay ISO's during my initial test now).

Very pleased indeed to see this issue can, and has been resolved in a software update. I'm sure we'll see even more improvements as further updates are released.

PS: The jellyfish test files can be found at http://jell.yfish.us/

IMHO, The only "issue" OpenELEC users will experience now is the inability to put the NUC to sleep/suspend. I'm sure this will get resolved in time. Probably not a deal breaker for most, as boot times only take about 20-30 seconds, even with wait for network to be ready checked in OpenELEC.

Has XBMC menu navigation improved at all? It was laggy under that particular build (Jan 25) for me, with the Revo 3700 outperforming it. Don't have access to the NUC i setup for a family member until the weekend to test it.