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MBT on Intel Celeron NUC


whitestrat13

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Go with a CPU that has at least intel 4000 graphics on the chip... The 2500 and 3000 graphics is OK, but the 4000 or 4500 have more cores, are faster and support Direct X 11. They all will do 3D and 4K.. If you like to play games on this little PC, the >4000 graphics is 40 to 50% faster..

 

Here are a few other ultra small HTPC choices

http://www.giadapc.com/products/minipc/  

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/list.aspx?s=47&ck=104

 

I do not know the GIADA, but really like the BRIX from Gigabyte (My choice because it has a fully open BIOS).. but the Intel NUC should be at least as good and I believe it as the build in IR censor..but then again the BRIX has Bluetooth and WIFI.. you cant go wrong with either

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mini__me

What about an old Acer Revo thing? I have a couple floating around used to be a good little box with hardware acceleration, I retired them when I bought my Ceton Echo's....looks like I may bring them out of retirement and re-instate them again :)

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whitestrat13

For what it is worth, I went ahead and got a roku.  The dn2820fykh hasn't arrived at reputable sellers (newegg, amazon prime, etc...), I needed something quickly, and I wasn't terribly excited about spending $300+ anyway.  

 

I'll probably get around to building a real HTPC in a year or so, once MBT closer to a final release.  I didn't see any real advantage, right now, to going with a NUC over the roku, since my library is all in h.264 (mp4) and mkv files.  If I'm going to build a HTPC for my family room I want to take advantage of madVR, and possibly play a few games.  This is something that is in the works, but just isn't for right now.  

 

I will say, I have been using MBT on my laptop, and it's REALLY GOOD.  I just wish netflix would allow the MBT devs to integrate netflix into MBT.  This way we wouldn't have to use the app store version of netflix (since you can't use a remote to navigate it!!!!).

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That would be awesome but I don't think it is going to happen.  Netflix closed their API last year and I understand why - now that you see the unified experience on the different platforms.

 

I think our experience can mimic that but there is absolutely no advantage for them to allow us to present their content in our interface.

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Deihmos
trooper11, on 04 Feb 2014 - 12:28 AM, said:

I was pretty excited to hear impressions about the new Celeron based NUCs, but it looks like there may be some bad news:

 

http://www.missingremote.com/news/2014-01-30/baytrail-dn2820fykh-no-intel-clear-video-hd-support

 

here is the intel spec page that is referenced in the post:

 

http://ark.intel.com/products/79052/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N2820-1M-Cache-up-to-2_39-GHz

 

If this is true, it kills my interest entirely.  I'm interested in the smallest box that can still play 1080p/possibly 3D content natively.  Without basic decoding support, this can't do it.

Intel quick sync and even DXVA will work with Celeron even though Intel says no. My Celeron works fine with it. An intel employee released intel quick sync for Celeron , Pentium and others which is used in lav and ffdshow. My Celeron is much slower than that one and plays everything without a hiccup.

 

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162442

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trooper11

Intel quick sync and even DXVA will work with Celeron even though Intel says no. My Celeron works fine with it. An intel employee released intel quick sync for Celeron , Pentium and others which is used in lav and ffdshow. My Celeron is much slower than that one and plays everything without a hiccup.

 

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162442

 

Hmm, well that does sound like good news, but I would want to see tests done with the NUC before I spent money on it.  I'm not going to risk it otherwise.

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For the purpose of a HTPC and the difference in cost, I would not get the Celeron. It would force you to use hardware acceleration and will eliminate use for games  I would get the newer I3 or I5 with intel 4000 or better graphics. If you go with that, you can not go wrong with the NUC or the BRIX.. 

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I'd expect an haswell i3+ nuc to cost a LOT more than a bay trail nuc... I wouldn't use a nuc for gaming either!

 

Sent by my HTC8X using Tapatalk

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I'm in love with MBT and want to replace my aging wd live hd in my bedroom.

 

So what would be the cheapest/best nuc to get that could handle 3d? Optical out would be a bonus and i don't need wifi as i have a network cable already run. I need to buy it with amazon prime.

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I'm in love with MBT and want to replace my aging wd live hd in my bedroom.

 

So what would be the cheapest/best nuc to get that could handle 3d? Optical out would be a bonus and i don't need wifi as i have a network cable already run. I need to buy it with amazon prime.

I suggest the BRIX with an I3.. The NUC does not offer any benefits over the BRIX and is more expensive..

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MrFlibbles

Judging by this review, it looks like the DN2820 does perform hardware decoding:

 

We also downloaded Media Player Classic – Home Cinema along with two 1080P H.264 MKV video clips (one at 10Mbps and the other at 40Mbps) to see how how the DN2820FYKH would perform. Both played back the clip just fine and looked to be around 7-11% CPU usage. It looks like the Bay Trail NUC has hardware decoding here since the CPU usage is so low.

 

Looks like it could be a winner for a cheap MBT box. The celeron may have issues with Mad VR as I believe that is more CPU intensive but I have not played with Mad VR to comment.

 

One thing that crops up in most online references to this new NUC is lack of Windows 7 drivers. An intel rep on intel's forum as stated they are coming but has not committed to when. Windows 8 and 8.1 runs without issues.

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JustEric78

I know I am late to this topic and it appears you guys have come to the same conclusion but I was given a NUC for testing purposes by my distributor and it was miserable with playing media. I strapped the thing to the back of my bedroom TV and it would not play much of my content. This was the celeron version as mentioned above. Due to the video limitations I would struggle over a gigabit lan to even play 720p content. I had to make some special settings on the player to force transcoding and it would still struggle to play even average content. Once I tried to do 1080p which is most of my collection I actually let it go for about 15 minutes choking over and over until the thing actually shut down on me which I assume was due to heat. I am about to get my hands on the I5 version which I am told will handle what we are looking for just fine with increased ram and the nicer integrated video. I will report back if you guys are curious about it. 

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MrFlibbles

I know I am late to this topic and it appears you guys have come to the same conclusion but I was given a NUC for testing purposes by my distributor and it was miserable with playing media. I strapped the thing to the back of my bedroom TV and it would not play much of my content. This was the celeron version as mentioned above. Due to the video limitations I would struggle over a gigabit lan to even play 720p content. I had to make some special settings on the player to force transcoding and it would still struggle to play even average content. Once I tried to do 1080p which is most of my collection I actually let it go for about 15 minutes choking over and over until the thing actually shut down on me which I assume was due to heat. I am about to get my hands on the I5 version which I am told will handle what we are looking for just fine with increased ram and the nicer integrated video. I will report back if you guys are curious about it. 

 

That is disappointing to hear. Did you happen to set the IGD graphics memory to 512mb in BIOS and were you running the latest BIOS release? They seemed to fix a number of issues in a recent release (so I have read). Others also experienced the poor performance as you describe but reported it fixed after a driver update. I really hope this is just teething issues with the celeron NUC, it was so promising.

 

Thanks for reporting on your experience JustEric.

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Deihmos

I have a Zbox from 2+ years ago with Intel Celeron 857 1.2 GHz Dual-Core and it plays 1080P using software decoding just fine but I use intel quick sync instead. There must be something wrong if you can't play 1080P with a Nuc. What are the specs on that thing? There must be some other reason because even my old AMD laptop can play 1080P just fine. 

Edited by Deihmos
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Just setup the Bay Trail NUC: DN2820FYK

Installed latest Bios and Drivers, did not need to adjust the IGD memory (the setting only adjust minimum levels anyway).

 

Installed MBT and with default settings across inbuilt wireless I was streaming 720p flawlessly and 1080p seemed to be fine as well. CPU usage with the 1080p was at ~60%.

 

I'll try post more when i get to test it more.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have MBT and Total Media Theater 6 with Windows 8.1 running on a...

 

Intel NUC Kit D34010WYK, Mini HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, USB 3.0, 4th Gen Intel Core i3-4010U, Consumer Infrared sensor.

I added a 128GB SSD, and 8GB memory.

 

Startup is very fast, and have had no playback or heat issues while viewing Blu-Ray ISOs.   

 

I love the little box. 

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swhitmore

I have MBT and Total Media Theater 6 with Windows 8.1 running on a...

 

Intel NUC Kit D34010WYK, Mini HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, USB 3.0, 4th Gen Intel Core i3-4010U, Consumer Infrared sensor.

I added a 128GB SSD, and 8GB memory.

 

Startup is very fast, and have had no playback or heat issues while viewing Blu-Ray ISOs.   

 

I love the little box. 

 

Thank you so much. That's really good to know. I've been thinking about buying one of these. I'm holding off atm to see how well the Chromecast and DLNA apps work. I might upgrade to this later though. Please update us if anything stops working.

Edited by swhitmore
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The NUC is running as an MBT client only.   The MB server is running on an older Windows 7 Sandy Bridge i3 HTPC that has the media stored on 2 internal and 2 external drives  (Eventually I want to change that to NAS).  

 

Intel fixed the 24P bug with the release of the Haswell chips which is a reason to go with one of the newer NUC kits like my D34010WYK if you have Blu-Ray media and your display supports that refresh rate.

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  • 2 months later...
swhitmore

Just bought a DN2820FYKH. I've been eying it out for awhile and the price is good atm. Built a HTPC for less than $300. I'll let you know how it handles MBT with my setup.

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