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Gozinbulx posted:It's a pretty slick, small package. The non-tech savy people are scared of putting together NUC kits. No need to buy your own ram and hdd. Even comes with OS already installed (not the case for NUC) and its only 200 bucks. I'd say thats a pretty drat good package. I guess the one x-factor is the performance of the BayTrail Atom, are these already out in the wild, are they good for HTPC application? My tablet has similar specs (Atom Z3745 1.33 GHz) and it can do normal desktop stuff, XBMC and light gaming with no issue. My only worry is how hot these will get in such a tiny case. But it's still pretty wild compared to my old Zbox Nano AD10 I bought two years ago for $175. That was 5.74in x 5.67in x 3.18in bigger, didn't have passive cooling, didn't include the ram/hdd/os and is about half as powerful as the new generation of Atom processors. The only thing it's missing is a USB port and an IR remote. Thermopyle posted:Looks nice. Not sure how it's a game changer, though. Game changer may have been a bit of hyperbole but having a cheap, no fuss, Windows box to put XBMC on where you could potentially set it to launch certain metro apps like Netflix/Hulu Plus while also having enough power (or at least I think it has enough power, I'll have to test it later) to play HD silverlight content from Amazon is pretty exciting. Especially when you think it's only $100 more than an android box like the Fire TV. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 27, 2014 20:29
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Gozinbulx posted:Also, I could see this being a pretty good kiosk/simple office work station, quite frankly. As soon as I saw this thing, I thought it could be put in our kiosks that my company uses. I was trying to find a spec sheet to pass under the nose of someone in our software department. Something less marketing-ing.
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Aug 27, 2014 20:49
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Call Me Charlie posted:My tablet has similar specs (Atom Z3745 1.33 GHz) What tablet is this, out of curiosity.
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Aug 27, 2014 21:23
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That little thing looks neat. I would definitely look into getting it when my current HTPC shits the bed.
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Aug 27, 2014 21:32
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Gozinbulx posted:Don't believe so, but the FLIRC + small usb extension should do the trick. Not sure if this is what you're after, but I use this bind in my XBMC keymap xml file to bring up the subtitle search window. <b>RunScript(script.xbmc.subtitles)</b>
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Aug 27, 2014 22:32
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Lusername posted:Not sure if this is what you're after, but I use this bind in my XBMC keymap xml file to bring up the subtitle search window. Unfortunately, from all I've read, this is the old (frodo) way of doing. Supposedly the way I wrote it is the new Gotham way but I'll be damned if it actually works.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:16
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MycroftXXX posted:That little thing looks neat. I would definitely look into getting it when my current HTPC shits the bed. I would buy one today if it also had an eSATA port, but I'm not sure these little atom boards even natively come with SATA controllers.
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Aug 28, 2014 21:25
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Naffer posted:I would buy one today if it also had an eSATA port, but I'm not sure these little atom boards even natively come with SATA controllers. Atom Z series are designed for tablets (Bay Trail-T) and don't have SATA/PCIe support.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:13
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GokieKS posted:Atom Z series are designed for tablets (Bay Trail-T) and don't have SATA/PCIe support. That makes sense. On thinking about this some more it seems like Zotac has a decent margin in that tiny PC. You can buy a low powered Celeron notebook for the same price http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Acer-Aspire-E-15-ES1-511-C590-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.304985400 that comes with 4G RAM, a screen, a battery, USB 3.0 and a comparable CPU (only two cores, but faster per core than the zbox (twice the TDP though)). I realize that isn't what Zotac is going for, but it seems like the pico really could be $150 or less.
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Aug 29, 2014 18:28
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Hey I'm sorry if this is ignorant or the wrong thread or whatever, but I am feeling desperate. I really want to give some person/company a bunch of money so that I can do two things: 1) stream HD stuff from netflix etc, 2) stream HD stuff from my computer or NAS if I get one. I want to spend zero time tweaking stupid nerd poo poo, and I want things to work. I recently tried a chromecast with plex on my computer, but that started lagging and dropping out randomly. Now I have ordered a FireTV, which half the internet seems to love and the other half hates, so I'm super pumped to watch it fail I guess. If you are experienced with this and can recommend me a turnkey solution that loving functions without breaking or needing rooting or sideloading or any other loving fragile homebrew poo poo and that also involves this FireTV that I just ordered, please for the love of god let me know. I'm not sure why this is still so difficult in 2014. Thanks. Sorry to be irate, but I just want to watch dumb things on a big screen late at night, and nobody seems to make a foolproof thing for that.
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Aug 31, 2014 08:52
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SupahDren posted:Hey I'm sorry if this is ignorant or the wrong thread or whatever, but I am feeling desperate. I really want to give some person/company a bunch of money so that I can do two things: 1) stream HD stuff from netflix etc, 2) stream HD stuff from my computer or NAS if I get one. I want to spend zero time tweaking stupid nerd poo poo, and I want things to work. I recently tried a chromecast with plex on my computer, but that started lagging and dropping out randomly. Now I have ordered a FireTV, which half the internet seems to love and the other half hates, so I'm super pumped to watch it fail I guess. There's nothing full-on turnkey for that. The closest you can get to my knowledge is putting XBMC on that FireTV and the https://github.com/elmerohueso/nnxbmcnetflix addon, which allows you to launch the FireTV Netflix app directly from XBMC. The reason for this is that content providers are extremely reluctant to open up access to their things. Netflix requires encryption, to attempt to reduce piracy. Because of this, they only allow people to stream from either a web browser with an encryption plugin, or one of their own apps which provides the encryption natively. XBMC does a great job playing almost anything that you throw at it and is very professional at this point, but providers don't want to integrate their stuff with it because of the questionable history, because they don't do binary plugins, and because they're not a big company.
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Aug 31, 2014 13:45
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Gozinbulx posted:Don't believe so, but the FLIRC + small usb extension should do the trick. I do this for all my HTPC's already; FLIRC is awesome. The only thing I would change about it (FLIRC) would be A) Make it a little smaller and B) Make it black. It kinda sticks out velcro'd to the top or bottom of my TV's. Not enough to make it worth not using though. So count me interested in this Zotac. The Z3735F is a really decent CPU/GPU for media/XBMC, way better than the old ION setups I run on a couple guest room TV's. And mine are all hidden away so port placement doesn't bother me. With passive cooling this thing is clearly meant to be hidden anyway. I just hope that like with some other Zotac's it's easy to turn off that stupid lit ring of theirs in the bios. Call Me Charlie posted:Windows box to put XBMC on where you could potentially set it to launch certain metro apps like Netflix/Hulu Plus while also having enough power (or at least I think it has enough power, I'll have to test it later) to play HD silverlight content from Amazon is pretty exciting. Are Windows 8/Metro versions of Netflix/Hulu remote friendly now? I know a little while ago Netflix wasn't. Ixian fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 14:12
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SupahDren posted:Hey I'm sorry if this is ignorant or the wrong thread or whatever, but I am feeling desperate. I really want to give some person/company a bunch of money so that I can do two things: 1) stream HD stuff from netflix etc, 2) stream HD stuff from my computer or NAS if I get one. I want to spend zero time tweaking stupid nerd poo poo, and I want things to work. I recently tried a chromecast with plex on my computer, but that started lagging and dropping out randomly. Now I have ordered a FireTV, which half the internet seems to love and the other half hates, so I'm super pumped to watch it fail I guess. This is what pisses me off - even if you throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at this, you probably won't have anything that works terribly well for very long in terms of current technology and content availability with a decent user experience for the consumer. This is really not a good hobby for people that "just want it to work" and have any demands about the content available.
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Aug 31, 2014 21:28
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SupahDren posted:Hey I'm sorry if this is ignorant or the wrong thread or whatever, but I am feeling desperate. I really want to give some person/company a bunch of money so that I can do two things: 1) stream HD stuff from netflix etc, 2) stream HD stuff from my computer or NAS if I get one. I want to spend zero time tweaking stupid nerd poo poo, and I want things to work. I recently tried a chromecast with plex on my computer, but that started lagging and dropping out randomly. Now I have ordered a FireTV, which half the internet seems to love and the other half hates, so I'm super pumped to watch it fail I guess. The FireTV should be fine for that. What is the hatr based on? I have a Roku3 and it does everything you're describing perfectly. I run the plex server off my PC and it is flawless (though I have never tried streaming 1080... But it does 720 at 10mbps just fine), and Netflix is great. I have it wired to my router though... No doubt that helps the performance. I wish the interfaces, though 
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Sep 1, 2014 13:57
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I'm looking for recommendations on the simplest way to get a S/PDIF signal *in* to my HTPC with minimal latency. I want to be able to use my USB headphones with the rest of the home theater rather than just the HTPC and this seems like the simplest way. My plan is to hook the receiver's digital output to the HTPC and configure it as an audio passthrough to the headphones from there. If anyone's tried anything like this or has any better ideas I'd be interested to hear about it, I can't find much of anything online.
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Sep 1, 2014 15:17
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wolrah posted:I'm looking for recommendations on the simplest way to get a S/PDIF signal *in* to my HTPC with minimal latency. I want to be able to use my USB headphones with the rest of the home theater rather than just the HTPC and this seems like the simplest way. Are you sure your receiver even has a digital output?
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Sep 1, 2014 15:57
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wolrah posted:I'm looking for recommendations on the simplest way to get a S/PDIF signal *in* to my HTPC with minimal latency. Unless you know for a fact that your receiver converts HDMI signals (you're using HDMI, right?) to optical, it probably won't. Most likely scenario: you get optical out only from sources that use optical or coax. If that is the case, best course of action is to buy a new pair of headphones. Converters are expensive and simple 3,5mm to USB cables simply don't work.
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Sep 1, 2014 16:23
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Naffer posted:That makes sense. On thinking about this some more it seems like Zotac has a decent margin in that tiny PC. You can buy a low powered Celeron notebook for the same price http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Acer-Aspire-E-15-ES1-511-C590-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.304985400 that comes with 4G RAM, a screen, a battery, USB 3.0 and a comparable CPU (only two cores, but faster per core than the zbox (twice the TDP though)). I realize that isn't what Zotac is going for, but it seems like the pico really could be $150 or less. Looks like someone else did this math too. http://liliputing.com/2014/09/minix-neo-z64-is-a-pint-sized-129-pc-with-android-or-windows.html If this is true it could make an awesome x86 XBMC box. Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core processor 2GB of RAM 32GB of eMMC microSD card reader 10/100 Ethernet, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and HDMI output. IR remote? $129
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Sep 2, 2014 16:45
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SupahDren posted:Hey I'm sorry if this is ignorant or the wrong thread or whatever, but I am feeling desperate. I really want to give some person/company a bunch of money so that I can do two things: 1) stream HD stuff from netflix etc, 2) stream HD stuff from my computer or NAS if I get one. I want to spend zero time tweaking stupid nerd poo poo, and I want things to work. I recently tried a chromecast with plex on my computer, but that started lagging and dropping out randomly. Now I have ordered a FireTV, which half the internet seems to love and the other half hates, so I'm super pumped to watch it fail I guess. I have a HTPC with XBMC loaded and I have a Amazon Fire TV with XBMC sideloaded. Both going to my Lenovo NAS. I would hands down pick the Amazon Fire TV with XBMC side loaded. It's fast and slick. It takes basically no time at all to sideload XBMC. I'm actually taking my HTPC out of the living room and putting the fire there.
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Sep 2, 2014 20:25
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I built an HTPC a couple years ago for an older couple with limited computer experience (which, just in case you ever consider doing: DON'T), but they've actually come up with a question that has me stumped. The husband is a bit hard of hearing, and sometimes likes to listen via headphones while his wife just listens over the surround sound system built in. They want to be able to do that with the HTPC, but whenever they plug in the bluetooth headphones, the audio just switches automatically to the headphones and cuts off the surround sound audio. So - does anyone know of a way to set Windows to play audio over both headphones and HDMI? There HAS to be some setting somewhere, I just can't seem to find it.
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Sep 3, 2014 03:31
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stimpy posted:I built an HTPC a couple years ago for an older couple with limited computer experience (which, just in case you ever consider doing: DON'T), but they've actually come up with a question that has me stumped. The husband is a bit hard of hearing, and sometimes likes to listen via headphones while his wife just listens over the surround sound system built in. They want to be able to do that with the HTPC, but whenever they plug in the bluetooth headphones, the audio just switches automatically to the headphones and cuts off the surround sound audio. Virtual Audio Cable is a software solution.
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Sep 3, 2014 04:30
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Anyone have any insight on this issue? I may be served better in the general PC help thread but I figured I'd ask here since us HTPC goons are heavier users of external storage. I have an i3 NUC with an internal HD (BOXD34010WYKH1). I recently wanted to add on some big external USB storage so I bought one of these guys (Seagate 5tb 'backup plus' external HDs - USB 3.0) - http://goo.gl/GdLoku After I managed to get my media migrated over I noticed that while watching stuff in XBMC I hear the windows "device removed" bloop and then the "device interted" chime a second later. As soon as the XBMC buffer ran out the video I was watching simply quits and puts me at the main XBMC menu. This seems to happen regardless of background activity on the drive and doesn't seem to be related to high IO to the drive. Doing some digging I am finding dozens of event log entries like this: quote:An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\DR4 during a paging operation (this is the USB drive). Google hasn't been of much help and I am trying to determine if I am overlooking some stupid or if external USB storage isn't the best idea for an HTPC? Could it just be a bad drive?
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Sep 7, 2014 23:09
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cr0y posted:Anyone have any insight on this issue? I may be served better in the general PC help thread but I figured I'd ask here since us HTPC goons are heavier users of external storage. More likely than not, it's a problem with the drive. USB storage is generally just fine for an HTPC. It's possible, also, that you've got problems with your USB drivers. Might look at that option first.
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Sep 7, 2014 23:18
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cr0y posted:Google hasn't been of much help and I am trying to determine if I am overlooking some stupid or if external USB storage isn't the best idea for an HTPC? Could it just be a bad drive? I had a similar issue and is was the enclosure. Does the issue happen if you use a different USB port? Also try watching something off a flash drive, you can just use VLC Player. You should be able to quickly tell if it's the PC or the drive.
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Sep 8, 2014 03:25
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Don Lapre posted:Are you sure your receiver even has a digital output? Yes, it has both coax and optical outputs. Hob_Gadling posted:Unless you know for a fact that your receiver converts HDMI signals (you're using HDMI, right?) to optical, it probably won't. Most likely scenario: you get optical out only from sources that use optical or coax. Not 100% on this one, but worst case all of my other source devices can output S/PDIF so I could rewire things to make that work if it doesn't convert from HDMI. My cheap lovely Dynex bedroom TV happily converts HDMI audio to optical so I assume a nice Marantz receiver will do it too. quote:If that is the case, best course of action is to buy a new pair of headphones. Converters are expensive and simple 3,5mm to USB cables simply don't work. If they were wired that would be the obvious choice, to just plug right in to the 1/4" jack on the front of the receiver, but wireless is a lot more expensive and I like the headphones I have so buying an analog set that's equal or better would certainly cost more than a USB sound device with a digital input.
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Sep 8, 2014 04:32
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My WDTV Live is pissing me of and I've gotta find something better on the cheap. I've got an Asus G73JH gaming laptop that I never really use and I'm wondering if I can turn this thing into an HTPC? Is this feasible? If possible, is it as simple installing OpenElec or XMBC and having at it? Should I format the laptop first and get rid of the Windows 7 install? Any quick tips before I attempt to set this thing up would be appreciated. So upon further reading of this thread I'm realizing that XBMC on a laptop won't be a whole lot better than the setup I've got now. Still I might give this plus a chromecast for netflix a shot. The WDTV is just so drat clunky and I've been using it for years so I could use a change of pace. visuvius fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 00:15
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In regards to external storage- what device is goon approved when it comes to external hard drives?
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Sep 9, 2014 15:42
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cr0y posted:In regards to external storage- what device is goon approved when it comes to external hard drives? Whatever is on sale that day.
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Sep 9, 2014 15:45
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cr0y posted:In regards to external storage- what device is goon approved when it comes to external hard drives? I'm partial to Western Digital, though I'd recommend getting a desktop/laptop drive and popping it into an external enclosure. Some externals have proprietary connectors on the inside that make it difficult/impossible to access the drive when removed from the enclosure if something goes wrong.
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Sep 9, 2014 15:49
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Rukus posted:I'm partial to Western Digital, though I'd recommend getting a desktop/laptop drive and popping it into an external enclosure. Some externals have proprietary connectors on the inside that make it difficult/impossible to access the drive when removed from the enclosure if something goes wrong. Typically this is only with 2.5" drives. the full size externals I have never seen a custom connector on the drive.
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Sep 9, 2014 16:17
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What's a decent nettop device now? I just need a cheap and simple computer to hook to the tv. I need something cheap (like under $100), has hdmi, can play hd video files, youtube and video sites without choking, do torrents without choking, and has no fans. I was thinking of finding a cheapo used nettop from a few years ago. Would the older atoms handle this ok? I'd probably run windows on it for simplicity's sake. Its for a friend and needs to be silent so building a loud old computer out of spare parts isn't really an option unfortunately.
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Sep 13, 2014 09:53
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Long Francesco posted:What's a decent nettop device now? I just need a cheap and simple computer to hook to the tv. The old atoms couldn't run windows XP worth a drat, let alone anything modern. It's gonna be hard to find all that list for under 100.
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Sep 13, 2014 10:13
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For under $100 all you'll get will be an android box, like the FireTV. The good news is that most of them are fanless and android can do torrents.
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Sep 13, 2014 13:43
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Long Francesco posted:What's a decent nettop device now? I just need a cheap and simple computer to hook to the tv. I had most of this working on a Revo 3610 until recently, but it's not fanless and navigating through Windows was slow enough to be very frustrating, even after I spent the cash to put an SSD in. Initial setup was kind of a pain, too --getting everything on GPU acceleration for decently smooth video. I sold mine for $100 on eBay and went Roku+Plex.
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Sep 13, 2014 17:03
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Yeah, you'll need to double that price to get a decent fanless windows box. Nevermind about the tablet idea. I forgot that the model I suggested charges via USB and only has one port. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 17:48
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Long Francesco posted:What's a decent nettop device now? I just need a cheap and simple computer to hook to the tv. If you wait a few weeks/months there are some quad-core x86 atom-powered tiny fanless PCs coming. http://www.zotac.com/en/z-zone/zbox-pico.html ($200) http://liliputing.com/2014/09/minix-neo-z64-is-a-pint-sized-129-pc-with-android-or-windows.html ($130ish) These will probably be more work than something like an Amazon fire, but if you want X86 I don't see how you can beat them for the price.
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Sep 13, 2014 18:50
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I have an HTPC with what looks loke a PCI Express 2.1 slot - I assume 3.0 is the name for the double-wide format that's so popular with desktops? Anyway, it's been sitting empty since I bought the thing, and as a consequence, I haven't been able to stream Netflix HD. I'd like a basic sort of video card to go in that slot, but I have no idea what to shop for. Does anyone have recommendations?
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Sep 14, 2014 14:19
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LordSaturn posted:I have an HTPC with what looks loke a PCI Express 2.1 slot - I assume 3.0 is the name for the double-wide format that's so popular with desktops? Anyway, it's been sitting empty since I bought the thing, and as a consequence, I haven't been able to stream Netflix HD. I'd like a basic sort of video card to go in that slot, but I have no idea what to shop for. Does anyone have recommendations? 1.0/2.0/2.1/3.0 etc. are about advancing generations of the technology and how much bandwidth a given PCIe lane can provide ("lane" being a set of data-carrying electrical connections). PCIe 1.x can do 250 MB/s per lane, 2.x can do 500 MB/s per lane, and PCIe 3.x can do ~1 GB/s per lane. The shape of the slot determines how many lanes are teamed together for that particular expansion card.  The numbers listed for bandwidth are old and wrong, ignore those. They assume a PCIe that does 200 MB/s per lane. Being double wide, i.e. taking up two expansion slots, has nothing to do with the PCIe specifications. It's just what happens if the card needs a bigger cooler than can fit in one slot; it still just uses a single electrical PCIe connection. So what sort of slot do you have, exactly?
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Sep 14, 2014 16:01
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Factory Factory posted:1.0/2.0/2.1/3.0 etc. are about advancing generations of the technology and how much bandwidth a given PCIe lane can provide ("lane" being a set of data-carrying electrical connections). PCIe 1.x can do 250 MB/s per lane, 2.x can do 500 MB/s per lane, and PCIe 3.x can do ~1 GB/s per lane. "1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (blue @ x4 mode)" per my Newegg order history. EDIT: vvv Thanks! LordSaturn fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 14, 2014 17:48
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LordSaturn posted:"1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (blue @ x4 mode)" per my Newegg order history. That will hold any card but only give it limited bandwidth. Not a big deal for non - gaming use. A GeForce GT 720 should be appropriate for your needs. It's also really undemanding on power, heat, and physical space, so I wouldn't worry about whether you can install it or not.
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Sep 14, 2014 18:50
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