Post #438,535
3/1/21 5:43:46 PM
3/1/21 10:50:54 PM
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Media PCs...
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I set up an Intel NUC for my living room TV. 1080p, beautiful streaming, worked great. I managed to put the whole thing together for less than $300. Then some time later, the TV died, and we replaced it with a 4k monstrosity. The NUC will do 4k display, but drops frames like I drop rhymes. (Badly, with inappropriate timing.) We run it at 1080p, and it works just fine. Buuuut...
I'm getting that itch. I went and looked at NUCs pretty much everywhere, and it looks like Intel has abandoned the low end. That's fine, fuck Intel. The problem is, I haven't kept up with the hardware scene like I used to. The wife likes cheap, so my plan is to run Linux on it to save the license, and stream local/web content to it @ 4k if possible. (we don't have any 4k streaming services to be honest, but always good to build with the future in mind) Also fanless or very quiet.
Any of you guys doing this sort of thing lately? Also, who actually has decent Linux video drivers these days? Ceterum autem censeo pars Republican esse delendam.
Edited by InThane
March 1, 2021, 10:50:54 PM EST
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Post #438,540
3/1/21 8:51:56 PM
3/1/21 8:51:56 PM
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Something tells me you want to try this post again.
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Post #438,544
3/1/21 10:51:09 PM
3/1/21 10:51:09 PM
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Fixed
I put an unescaped bracket in. Ceterum autem censeo pars Republican esse delendam.
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Post #438,547
3/1/21 11:11:03 PM
3/1/21 11:11:03 PM
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Love my raspberry pi and it doesn't get any cheaper
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/build-the-ultimate-4k-home-theatre-pc-using-a-raspberry-pi-4-and-kodi/According to the above you can do a kodi install and it'll handle the bandwidth. I have no idea what resolution it's throwing my TV right now but it's the biggest best monitor I've ever used, and I don't notice any dropouts in video when web surfing and then playing videos. So 100 bucks for the raspberry pi with the keyboard built in (really take the fully constructed model, you're not building hardware for the sake of building hardware) and then another 20 bucks for a tiny remote keyboard should be all you need.
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Post #438,548
3/1/21 11:17:43 PM
3/1/21 11:17:43 PM
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But do you really need a real media center?
Are you downloading movies and streaming them up or are you playing a service or a web page? Have you actually used kodi or were you using some built-in default application?
Can you get away with simply putting in a Chromecast? All my streaming applications and web surfing is on my phone which I throw at my TV via the Chromecast. Android phone. Chromecast is incredibly cheap compared to a computer solution. What activity do you want on that TV that you can't do via Chromecast? You should also be able to throw your laptop screen to the TV via Chromecast.
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Post #438,553
3/2/21 2:15:26 AM
3/2/21 2:15:26 AM
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This
But if you're scratching a nerd itch, go for it. I totally get that.
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Post #438,552
3/2/21 2:14:53 AM
3/2/21 2:14:53 AM
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4K is not just about having horsepower
It's also about supporting the appropriate HDMI standard.
Obviously, discrete GPUs like the 5700XT in my PC don't have any issues here.
The on-board iGPU in a NUC will be a different bag of hammers. Read the manual.
If you're just streaming from the network, just about any answer is better than "make a Linux PC to do it" - Xbox, PlayStation, Roku, Chromecast, Fire Stick all are vast improvements on both the UX and janitorial sides.
If you have any streaming services, you have 4K services. Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, etc. etc. all stream at 4K.
Can't help you on the local content side. My idea of "playing local content" is "putting the Blu-Ray in the Xbox".
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Post #438,557
3/2/21 2:52:21 PM
3/2/21 2:52:21 PM
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Agreed, with some caveats.
Unless one is ripping one's own DVDs/BluRays or something, streaming seems to be the sensible way to go.
However, ...
J has been watching live concerts by bands/performers she likes recently. Sometimes it's easy to cast it to the Chromecast dongle on the TV without problems. Sometimes, at the same service, it just doesn't work right at all (busy pointer or she gets kicked out or something). It's not clear to me yet what's going on - whether they're overloaded or whether they're using some sort of encoding that the Chromecast doesn't like, or what.
I suppose one has to be willing to accept that this streaming stuff isn't bulletproof yet - especially for live events.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #438,562
3/2/21 6:49:02 PM
3/2/21 6:49:02 PM
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It's not about whether it's bulletproof "yet"
They've been able to do this stuff for a decade. They keep breaking it in new and proprietary ways.
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Post #438,574
3/4/21 4:16:34 PM
3/4/21 4:16:34 PM
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One of the latest was HDCP v2.
4K on HDMI requires HDCP. And it also requires HDCP all the way from he source to the display. Which means if your streaming box is HDCP v2 and so is your receiver, your TV needs to support it (and thus be 4K capable) as well. The idiots who designed this didn't think of where the TV is _not_ 4K capable, in which case the receiver says "I can't display this content".
I had to do a hack to make my streaming box drop to HDCP 1.4 (until they did a software release so I could do it in the box itself) and thus come back down to 1080p for it to all work. All because in the standard the receiver couldn't or wouldn't automatically tell the streaming box to downgrade.
Wade.
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