Media centre cheap build?

PaulCa

PaulCa

PaulCa

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So I finally got round to setting up the Raspberry PI 3 as a media client. Initially things looked okay, but then I realised that YouTube was defaulting to 480p. The streams I was watching only had higher options of 720p@60fps and 1080p@60fps. Selecting any of these produced slowing, lagging video and constant stutters.

It seems the PI just can't handle that, which I found a bit surprising. It did play the 720p 60fps stream for a while, but then reverted to slow and lagging. Maybe the chip is overheating and throttling.

Nuc's etc. are a bit expensive for what they are.

What are my other options?

Requirments:
Small
Silent (ish)
1080p 60FPS video
HDMI out
No games
YouTube/Netflix
Streaming video off DLNA

I'm thinking that any basic mini-itx motherboard and the lowest celeron would delivery this. Is it worth considering an AMD APU though?
 
Install a kodi build onto the pi with openelec/libreelec and it should be fine.I have my pi 2 running it with ease.
 
EssexBoy said:
Install a kodi build onto the pi with openelec/libreelec and it should be fine.I have my pi 2 running it with ease.
Click to expand...

I have had Kodi running on a PI. The YouTube addon was horrid and then stopped working all together.

The other issue I am having is that even with the default rasbian install, the browser (Chromium) is dire slow. Hitting full screen on a YouTube video takes a good 2 or 3 seconds to actually complete.

Of course while actually watch a movie or whatever it was usually fine, just the UI was sluggish.

I just need something with a little more horse power.
 
So I took a look at Brix reviews and unfortunately there are too many negative reviews regarding Linux support. Some are solved with kernel parameters, but there are too many instances of the device locking up. :(
 
You could try an Intel Compute Stick with an M3 processor. I have one plugged directly into my projector and it does everything you list.

Martin
 
I forgot one use case. Steam Link. I'm not entirely sure how much processing power this needs, as it's really just an H264 network decode.

I did consider the SteamLink hardware itself which has YouTube, but I don't think it has the media player abilities I would be after.
 
Basically the Pi has great hardware decode of standard streams (H264) but is awful in terms of bandwidth, processing power, GPU rendering of displays. I had a Bay Trail Atom for a couple years as my media PC, plenty good enough for HD streaming, hard drive playback and it ran PS1 emulation/basic gaming fine. Steam streaming was also good although I disliked the compression and stopped using it.

The only downside was the 2GB memory limit became too small for Windows 10 but I imagine you can work around that with sensible Linux distro choice. Newer Cherry Trail CPUs are a bit better, or as mentioned the M series are better still.

Bear in mind the Steam Link can stream your desktop in its entirety.
 
Yes, the PI is fine for a lot of things. And yes, the headlines that it can run a full Linux distro and be a complete desktop PC or media centre are completely true. True, however, in the same sense that a bicycle can be used to travel great distances.

I've kinda of gone off the PI. I currently have 3 of them. 2 of them are headless "appliances" running home automation stuff, which amounts to sensors and data logging currently. The downside here is that the PI is notorious for corrupting it's SD card in power outs. I have had to repair or completely replace several SD cards in the first year.

Running Kodi or a full Linux desktop the PI is sluggish, like treacle. It works, but it reminds me of using Windows 98 on 128Mb of RAM, tolerable, but occasionally infuriating.

The trouble I have trying to spec a more powerful replacement is that I'm clueless about actual horsepower of these mini devices and their CPUs. I need a cheat sheet, like a performance sorted list of embedded CPUs.

From reviews it is hard to determine when they say it will run a media centre fine, if they mean that it will run it like the Raspberry PI or if they mean it will run it snappy and responsive.

Anyone have any bookmarks comparing the performance of the various CPUs et. al. that these things use?
 
I really like CPUboss. I just search for example "Z3735f Vs N2800" and check the benchmarks comparison. Just as a quick check only, and I often compare to a CPU I own as well for perspective.
 
Unless you wanna play PC games on it, I'd just go with a LibreELEC box. I built my HTPC in 2011; it's huge and a bit clunky because it runs Windows, but at the time it was a great option. Smart TVs weren't a thing and I could use MediaPortal with a Sky card (all legal and paid for) and also play the odd Steam game. However, I recently got a Minix U9-H and installed LibreELEC on it. Aside from a few teething issues (which I think are the result of my database being a bit funky), I haven't really used the HTPC since. It can play UHD HDR over the network without issues (probably not using WiFi though) and more of my content will end up being in that format going forward, so that's important.

An HTPC is more versatile and will likely produce overall better image quality when playing back lower resolution and/or interlaced stuff (because you can use a renderer like madVR) but honestly if I was starting now I wouldn't bother with one. So basically you need to decide what you want to use the machine for. If it's also for gaming then an HTPC makes sense, if not then it might be a pointlessly expensive exercise.
 
Try a USFF PC or something along those lines. We use a 800 G1 USFF as our HTPC in the living and it has been superb. 8GB RAM, i5 CPU (3rd or 4th gen I think) and 128GB SSD. Cost me about £200 ish and runs off of a 65w laptop charger.

It has Windows 10 on it and runs Kodi to stream everything from our server upstairs.

Stoner81.
 
USFF = Ultra Small Form Factor?

I can see dozens or job lots on eBay of companies selling them off. Some Dell ones as cheap as £30 with Core 2 Duos. I'm use I can find something a bit more modern there though.

Interesting idea, thanks.
 
A little digging brought me to the reason why the Raspberry PI is struggling so much with YouTube while it can indeed play 1080p content from Kodi, etc.

It comes down to no browser having a hardware acceleration layer for the PI. HTML5 content will be software decoded. The PI ARM processor is not capable of decoding anything beyond about 480p, even there it struggles.

Actually native YouTube content is severed in a format that is even worse and unwatchable at even 480p and the only reason the PI plays 480p at all is because Chromium comes installed with the h264ify plugin, which forces YouTube to send H264 video instead of it's default format.

So the short of it is. There is no way to make YouTube videos play properly in the PI. The only option is to download the video using YouTube Downloader and use a player that does support hardware accelerated decode, such as VLC. I cannot find a working version of the YTDownloader for Raspbian and apparently you need Ubuntu MATE to get it. There may be workarounds to get it working on Raspbian, but I can't be bothered.

Kodi and others have got hardware accelerated decode support and this is why they work.
 
DragonQ said:
You know you can play YouTube videos via Kodi, right? That should be hardware accelerated.
Click to expand...

I used to do this. The YouTube app was absolutely hideous, then YouTube caught on to it and it stopped working at all. This was about a year ago, so maybe things have changed.

Someone else put me onto this:
https://yatse.tv/

Which alegedly can stream YouTube URLs to KODI from my phone. I'll try it this weekend.
 
I have the standard YouTube plugin for Kodi and it works fine. It's a bit clunky to find stuff though - if there's stuff I watch often, I just put the playlist in my favourites so I can access it from the Kodi home screen.
 
PaulCa said:
USFF = Ultra Small Form Factor?

I can see dozens or job lots on eBay of companies selling them off. Some Dell ones as cheap as £30 with Core 2 Duos. I'm use I can find something a bit more modern there though.

Interesting idea, thanks.
Click to expand...

USFF is Ultra Small Form Factor. I think the one I have is even smaller since it measures about 7 inch by 7 inch and is only about an inch or so tall (mini I think). We get them at work now and then :)

PaulCa said:
So this looks interesting:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-M...0GHz-8GB-RAM-128GB-SSD-Win-7-Pro/282939216152

I'm sitting in work and used to have one of these on my desk as my "thin client". I now have it's younger brother think centre, but an i3. As it's a thin client to run VMWare clients on, I have no idea how performant they are, but they can't be that bad with an i5 and 8Gb of RAM.
Click to expand...

My machine is 4th gen not 3rd so a little boost there but that is about it. KODI works perfectly for me without issues and the system runs Windows 10 so that should be more than enough :)

Most of my family now have media PC's since I get the machines from work :D

Stoner81.
 
So in the end I ordered a S/H

Dell Optiplex 7010 usff Core i5-3470S (2.9Ghz) 8GB Ram 500GB HDD Windows 10 Pro

And a Display Port to HDMI 2.0 adapter. Total cost: £120.
 
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