m-ITX with HDMI CEC, where?
#1
Hi,

Today I have two raspberryPi's running Xbian and to be completely honest, the performance sucks ass. I don't know if it's because I mount everything over NFS or if it's the performance in general but my rPi's can't playback 1080p content without glitching, it's more of a micro-glitch but when playing back 1080p content it happens every few seconds and it's really annoying.
I've been sticking to 720p as it will mostly playback this smoothly, but lately the performance has deteriorated and it starts to micro-glitch even here.

So I am going to build at least one HTPC with a m-ITX board but I can't really find any info on any that supports HDMI-CEC.
Is there anyone that can point me in the right direction here or recommend some boards that support this?
The only requirement I have is that it has HDMI-CEC and that it can playback 1080p without any problems at all. Having a 1 Gbit Ethernet port would be nice but is not a must, though I guess this is standard by now anyways?

What are you guys using for hardware on your XBMC rigs?
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#2
Dh61Ag is a good htpc mobo, which supports the pulse right CEC adapter I believe. Other than that you could look into the haswell NUC as that looks to be a great htpc with CIR built in
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#3
Tried running xbmc off USB stick on pi? Supposedly better than SD card.

Other than that. The pulse eight jobbie works externally.
Modded MK1 NUC - CLICK ----- NUC Wiki - CLICK

Bay Trail NUC FTW!

I've donated, have you?

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#4
(2014-01-10, 11:31)ears1991 Wrote: Dh61Ag is a good htpc mobo, which supports the pulse right CEC adapter I believe. Other than that you could look into the haswell NUC as that looks to be a great htpc with CIR built in

I've also seen a number of posts mentioning the internal Pulse Eight CEC adapter. Is that easy to install or do I have to solder or something to get it working?
So the Haswell NUC also supports the internal adapter or do you mean their external CEC to USB adapter?

(2014-01-10, 11:40)jammyb Wrote: Tried running xbmc off USB stick on pi? Supposedly better than SD card.

Other than that. The pulse eight jobbie works externally.

No I haven't, I might as well try that this weekend to see if I get any performance differences.

This might be on another topic, but what rPi distribution is the best for XBMC? Are there any performance differences between the distros or is Xbian good enough? I've seen a lot of people talk about OpenElec and I tried it when it was in beta or something and I didn't like it at all. But it might be a lot better now?
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#5
Pass. Don't use pi's. I like my XBMC performance a bit better and I can tinker.

Meant the external pulse eight ones. Have a look on their site for more detail on therir internal one.
Modded MK1 NUC - CLICK ----- NUC Wiki - CLICK

Bay Trail NUC FTW!

I've donated, have you?

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#6
OpenELEC performs best on all of the Pi's I've tested by a long way. I didn't find the performance of Xbian to be all that great.

Using a usb stick for your install will massively improve your user experience - library, artwork, etc... Also are you running at stock speeds or are you overclocking - overclocking will again improve your experience.

What kind of content are you playing that's causing issues - I only use my pi's as secondary devices but they seem to handle most content reasonable well.
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#7
(2014-01-10, 11:45)PatricF Wrote: I've also seen a number of posts mentioning the internal Pulse Eight CEC adapter. Is that easy to install or do I have to solder or something to get it working?

According to Pulse Eight the Asus Q87T haswell motherboard should support the internal CEC adapter. The adapter is attached to the chassis with an adhesive pad and there is a connector cable that is connected from the adapter to the motherboard HTPC header and an internal USB2 port, no soldering required. According to what I have read there is not enough room for this adapter in the standard NUC case.

I have yet to find anyone that claims to have gotten the internal CEC working on an Asus Q87T though. I am going to try it myself in my upcoming build but I am still waiting for my HDPLEX H1.S chassis to arrive before I can give it a go.
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#8
(2014-01-10, 11:05)PatricF Wrote: I don't know if it's because I mount everything over NFS or if it's the performance in general but my rPi's can't playback 1080p content without glitching, it's more of a micro-glitch but when playing back 1080p content it happens every few seconds and it's really annoying.

Are you sure it's not just judder caused by framerates not matching?
Make sure "Adjust display refresh rate to match video" is enabled:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Settings/Videos

and the TV is switching to a 24Hz mode.
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#9
Thought I might update this thread. I tried openElec and didn't really see any performance improvements at all, it was rather worse than I had before.
I tried Xbian one more time and updated to RC1, the micro-glitching was pretty much gone but I still had problems sometimes and it would randomly reboot.
I then swithed the usb cable I was using and noticed that the cable that I was using for the rPi was faulty and wouldn't even charge my phone. I got a new cable and now I can play 1080p movies without any problems. So I guess that it didn't get enough power to play my videos and therefore was lagging and acting weird.
I was really close to buying new hardware, not rPi, so I'm really happy I got this sorted out.

Hope this can help someone else in the future. Remember, always check that your cable is working correctly.

-Patric
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#10
(2014-03-04, 14:33)PatricF Wrote: I was really close to buying new hardware, not rPi, so I'm really happy I got this sorted out.

Hope this can help someone else in the future. Remember, always check that your cable is working correctly.

Thanks for reporting back. The Pi's GPU is very powerful and should have no problem with 1080p.
Problems with playback are often related to network, or power supply (which often includes the cable).
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m-ITX with HDMI CEC, where?0