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hiohaa · 2012-02-19, 22:01

hello.
i was hoping someone could give a few recommendations for my following needs (i did check out what group i belong to, but the bistream hd audio thing confused me.....)

- needs to play bluray rips or bluray iso's perfectly
- ethernet capability
- toslink digital optical out
- hdmi out

(i run everything through my AV receiver)

there seems to be quite a lot on the market, with varying prices....i know the £300+ ones will do the job but i dont want to spend money on stuff i don't need.

im hoping i can get the above for a lot less than 300!

Flomaster · 2012-02-19, 22:22

zotac Ion settop boxes are around $200 US will stream 1080P.

I don't have the settop box, but I have a zotac Ion micro motherboard and its awesome.

-=Jason=-

hiohaa · 2012-02-19, 22:36

ve only just discovered these media centres (moved on since the shuttle first came out lol) - i find it incredible that they can do this without a chunky pc graphics card.

ive been looking at the xtreamer products - at really affordable prices.
some are selling for only £130.
http://www.xtreamer.co.uk/produkte/xtrea...r-3/daten/

is that really capable of playing bluray iso's and 1080p rips perfectly?
40+mb bitrates with no problems?
the website is a bit short of technical data for some of its products.

would be great if someone could confirm this.

Orclas · 2012-02-19, 23:22

I can't confirm it as such, but if the WDTV can do it, I'm sure the Xtreamer can. What it can't do is run XBMC, Xtreamer comes with its own Firmware, at least the previous ones did.

charlie0440 · (This post was last modified: 2012-02-19, 23:52 by charlie0440.)

hiohaa Wrote:- needs to play bluray rips or bluray iso's perfectly
- ethernet capability
- toslink digital optical out
- hdmi out

If you don't mind losing the toslink (digital sound can be send over HDMI) and are lucky enough to get your hands on, I think they will sell out in minutes. For £35 get a rasberry pi:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/571

hiohaa · 2012-02-19, 23:57

well, im on the verge of buying this
http://www.asrock.com/nettop/overview.as...D%20Series

however, i have one question - reading a review on it, i came across this sentence:
'The ASRock ION 3D lost points for two reasons. The first and the greatest offender was the inability to bitstream high-end codecs such as TrueHD and several DTS variations.'

what does this mean? lets say i chuck in a bluray film to play, and its audio is TrueHD. If i've connected the HTPC via the SPDIF optical output to my AV receiver.... and my AV receiver can decode TrueHD - then it should work shouldnt it?

DDDamian · 2012-02-20, 00:00

Be careful - others have been burned on that - including on some that say they can bitstream and don't. Read the reviews carefully, and if there's no definitive answer move on or wait until it's been tested to do so.

charlie0440 · 2012-02-20, 00:00

Well it won't be able to decode the TrueHD audio.

XBMC does not currently support HD audio out the box. You need to look for the AudioEngine branch of XBMC or there is another one but I can't remember the name. I don't believe either are production stable yet but are usable

bluray · 2012-02-20, 00:06

hiohaa Wrote:ive been looking at the xtreamer products - at really affordable prices.
some are selling for only £130.
http://www.xtreamer.co.uk/produkte/xtrea...r-3/daten/

is that really capable of playing bluray iso's and 1080p rips perfectly?
40+mb bitrates with no problems?

That is a standalone media player, and it'll not work with XBMC. It have its own media player to playback ISO, M2TS, MKV, etc files.

If you want to playback XBMC in full 1080P video with DTS-HD/TrueHD audio, you might have to go with this very well equipped little guy- ASUS Eee Box EB1021-B028E Windows 7 Nettop

hiohaa · 2012-02-20, 00:09

charlie0440 Wrote:Well it won't be able to decode the TrueHD audio.

XBMC does not currently support HD audio out the box. You need to look for the AudioEngine branch of XBMC or there is another one but I can't remember the name. I don't believe either are production stable yet but are usable

i understand it won't be able to decode TrueHD audio, but i have an AV Receiver that can - so if im sending the audio via SPDIF optical out to the AV receiver, that will work right?

charlie0440 · 2012-02-20, 00:22

No because XBMC is handling the video and sound and passing it to the AV.

hiohaa · 2012-02-20, 00:59

charlie0440 Wrote:No because XBMC is handling the video and sound and passing it to the AV.

if i wasnt using XBMC - and just running windows 7 and vlc player for example - would it work then?

bluray · 2012-02-20, 02:05

hiohaa Wrote:if i wasnt using XBMC - and just running windows 7 and vlc player for example - would it work then?

As far as I know, VLC might be able to bitstream TrueHD but not DTS-HD. Most blu-ray movies are in DTS-HD.

In order for HTPC to bitstreamTrueHD and DTS-HD audio, you'll need at least AMD HD5xxx GPU or AMD HD6xxx iGPU. With proper hardware's, you still need to have proper software's to bitstream it. You'll need Windows 7+media player (XBMC, VLC, MPC-HC, TMT5, PDVD10, etc) to bitstream. Here is what you needs for bitstreaming:

1. HTPC with HD5xxx GPU or HD6xxx iGPU (these GPU/iGPU included HDMI output)
2. AVR- Onkyo TX-NR509
3. Windows 7
4. one media player (XBMC, VLC, MPC-HC, TMT5, PDVD10, etc)

hiohaa · 2012-02-20, 20:50

excellent i finally understand - after some digging around...
optical out doesnt support DTS MA or DD HD.....
it has to be only through HDMI, which leads to what you just said.

thank you, looks like i'm just gona build a system myself....

hiohaa · 2012-02-20, 23:33

bluray Wrote:As far as I know, VLC might be able to bitstream TrueHD but not DTS-HD. Most blu-ray movies are in DTS-HD.

In order for HTPC to bitstreamTrueHD and DTS-HD audio, you'll need at least AMD HD5xxx GPU or AMD HD6xxx iGPU. With proper hardware's, you still need to have proper software's to bitstream it. You'll need Windows 7+media player (XBMC, VLC, MPC-HC, TMT5, PDVD10, etc) to bitstream. Here is what you needs for bitstreaming:

1. HTPC with HD5xxx GPU or HD6xxx iGPU (these GPU/iGPU included HDMI output)
2. AVR- Onkyo TX-NR509
3. Windows 7
4. one media player (XBMC, VLC, MPC-HC, TMT5, PDVD10, etc)

no actually, i don't understand.
Im more confused than ever now.

Lets say I have a bluray film which haas Dolby TrueHD. All i want is to hear the audio track on the bluray disc, the way its meant to be heard.

here's what it says on the manual of my Onkyo AV receiver (which is 5.1):
'• 2-channel linear PCM (32–192 kHz, 16/20/24 bit)
• Multichannel linear PCM (up to 7.1 ch, 32–192 kHz, 16/20/24 bit)
• Bitstream (DSD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, DTS-HD
Master Audio)
Your Blu-ray Disc/DVD player must also support HDMI output of the above audio formats.'

So - if i've got this right -
The decoding of the TrueHD MUST occur in the GPU, for it to then send that via HDMI to the AVR, for the AVR to output the Sound as TrueHD.

have i got that right?