[wrxtasy]

Intel Skylake likely with a cheap Celeron mobile chipset will what we will all be talking about before years end. Wait for that if you want to h265 encode as everything else will be a stopgap measure till then and expensive hardware will need another upgrade.

[noggin]

Because its the new buzzword! You have to have the newest buzzword!

I joke, I have a little HEVC stuff but you are right it is a minority and will be for a while given how long divx survived (survives?). With that said my Amlogic S805 box will play 1080p HEVC in Openelec (not Android).

I'm not really joking. HEVC pretty much has to be self encoded. Why would you encode to something you can't play back on your HW? There's no commercial streaming source for HEVC that runs in OpenELEC or any PC OS (so far).

If you are a movie collector and buy your Blu-ray Disc movies legally and want to keep a backup library for yourself, then H.265 (HEVC) takes up half the harddrive space as H.264 today.

You are correct that HEVC movies are really only available today if you encode them yourself, but I believe that if you look again in 12-months from now then HEVC rips will be readily available. Thus i you are are buying a new box TODAY when WHY NOT look for one that supports HEVC? Otherwise you have to buy a new box next year if you then want to play HEVC.

Commercial sources for HEVC are also coming this year, with 4K Blu-ray discs arriving before end of 2015 and 4K HEVC @ 60 fps DVB broadcasting coming for the summer Olympics.

Many HEVC boxes don't cost that much, so why assume that people are not thinking ahead and don't care about trying to be just a little future proof when buying their new devices.

Hence if you only needed a new box to playback H.264 this year, why not buy a box today that can playback HEVC so next year it will still at least be capable of playing back HEVC rips.

For 2160/50p and 60p HEVC DVB broadcasts you also need to add HDMI 2.0 to the checklist as well...

For the price of a Pi 2 I think you can afford to buy now and replace in a year to 18 months if HEVC really becomes important. Apart from the DVB-T2 stuff broadcast during the summer in the UK, and some DVB-S2 test transmissions, both of which would need HDMI 2.0 (or a Displayport MST compatible TV and player) I've not really come across any HEVC content to play.

[RockerC]

For the price of a Pi 2 I think you can afford to buy now and replace in a year to 18 months if HEVC really becomes important. Apart from the DVB-T2 stuff broadcast during the summer in the UK, and some DVB-S2 test transmissions, both of which would need HDMI 2.0 (or a Displayport MST compatible TV and player) I've not really come across any HEVC content to play.

Yes I'm saying why invest in a new Pi 2 based setup today that can not play HEVC when you can now buy a Amlogic S805 based player for the same price as a new Pi 2 with the needed accessories? Again Beelink MK808B Plus TV stick, Beelink MXIII, Beelink MXQ TV Box, ENY EM8, Tronsmart Vega S89, and Sumvision Cyclone X4 all comes with a remote and are available for similar or smaller price that a new Pi 2 with is needed accessories cost.

http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box/pp_94464.html
http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box/pp_80703.html

True those Amlogic S805 based players does not feature HDMI 2.0 and can not playback 4K videos, but they can playback all 1080p videos including HEVC, which the Pi 2 can not.

Even if you can afford to buy a new box next year why not buy a box today that you will still be able to use next year as long as you do not require 4K support and HDMI 2.0?

Again those Amlogic S805 based players can also run OpenELEC, so I think your arguments for buying a Pi 2 now today instead of a Amlogic S805 based player does not hold.

[Degenerate76]

True those Amlogic S805 based players does not feature HDMI 2.0 and can not playback 4K videos, but they can playback all 1080p videos including HEVC, which the Pi 2 can not.

If anyone can enlighten me on this I'd be grateful... Is it that the S805 hardware HEVC decoder is not powerful enough to decode a 4k stream, or is it just that it's not capable of outputting video at 4k resolution?

This difference is important to me, because if it's the latter, then it would be quite useful paired with a 1080p screen as a player that can play 4k videos downscaled. I'm not ready to upgrade every screen in the house to 4k, but I want to be able to collect 4k content and have it playable everywhere.

[wrxtasy]

AMlogic SoC comparisons:

http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/04/25/a...-and-s812/

And the only guys I would recommend if you want 23.976fps aka True 24p video output and Dynamic Refresh Rate switching and well sorted Firmware in a AMlogic media player are MINX. The HardKernel ODROID C1 has Dynamic Refresh Rate switching and True 24p that is in the testing phase at the moment when running Android 4.4.2. Initial reports are these work well but with some bugs yet to be squashed.

[RockerC]

True those Amlogic S805 based players does not feature HDMI 2.0 and can not playback 4K videos, but they can playback all 1080p videos including HEVC, which the Pi 2 can not.

If anyone can enlighten me on this I'd be grateful... Is it that the S805 hardware HEVC decoder is not powerful enough to decode a 4k stream, or is it just that it's not capable of outputting video at 4k resolution?

No the S805 only support 1080p ("Full HD") decoding, however S812 does support 2160p ("Ultra HD"), but neither support 10-bit HEVC / H.265 or H.264

For the full 2160p ("Ultra HD") with 10-bit support you need to go with Nvidia Shield Android TV or a newer computer that supports HDMI 2.0 output in 10-bit color range.

If decoding 4K videos and down-scaling to 1080p is enough then go with a newer Chromebox or similar mini-PC, so checkout the stickies in this forum.