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mattay32 · 2014-08-30, 18:52

Hello

I'm looking for little point in the right direction. I'm ditching my Atv2 as want to enjoy 1080p playback. I'm kind of confused on what to get! I was considering a raspberry pi or an android box. Which one of these would give the best picture and sound? It will be connected to my NAS drive. Any advice would be very helpful

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2014-08-31, 10:38

The best picture and sound? Raspberry Pi. It's a little slow for some things, but quite usable, and has the best picture quality of all the sub-$100 options.

mattay32 · 2014-08-31, 10:48

So would you say this is easier and better than a nuc computer? What advantage would a nuc computer give?

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2014-08-31, 11:33

If you can afford the NUC, or a Brix or Chromebox (basically, the $100-200 market) then I would go with one of those instead of a Raspberry Pi.

noggin · (This post was last modified: 2014-08-31, 13:01 by noggin.)

In A/V terms the Pi is the best <$100 option. The picture and sound quality are very good. You get hardware acceleration of H264 (and MPEG2/VC-1 if you add the very low cost licenses) 1080p content, hardware de-interlacing of 480i, 576i and 1080i content (which is a 2x de-interlace so great for Live TV). You get HDMI bit streaming of DD and DTS, as well as multichannel PCM (so if you have FLAC lossless or PCM lossless surround stuff you get that at full quality). It can have a slightly sluggish UI - and so if you are a heavy user of plugins (I use the SVT Play plug-in for Swedish TV for instance) you may find that a little annoying, though it is possible to over clock the Pi to improve this. Because the Pi shares a single USB bus with the USB ports and the 10/100 Ethernet port it can run out of a bandwidth in extreme situations, and may struggle with very high bitrate content.

So the Pi is great in quality terms, but a bit slower than possibly would be ideal in UI terms. Personally I'd avoid the Android boxes if A/V quality is your top concern. They are snappier, but have AV issues.

If you can go >$100 then the x86 options are much more powerful. You get HD Audio bit streaming over HDMI under Linux/OpenElec (DTS HD, Dolby True HD etc.) and a much snappier UI, so plugins are snappier, as is navigating your library etc.

The NUCs, Brix and Chromeboxes all have different benefits. The N2820 NUC has a few limitations (scaling and de-interlacing mainly - and there are issues with HD Audio under Windows) and isn't based on quite as powerful a CPU/GPU combo as the 2955u Brix or Chromebox. The Chromebox comes with everything you need (RAM, SSD, Wifi/Bluetooth card etc.) as it is sold as a working unit. Converting it to an OpenElec standalone device, or one running Ubuntu is pretty straightforward thanks to Matt Devo's amazing script (and his support is second-to-none)

mattay32 · 2014-08-31, 13:28

So from the above post would I be right in saying the brix or chromebox are going to the best bet? Thanks again for for the help.

DocG · 2014-08-31, 13:58

(2014-08-31, 13:28)mattay32 Wrote: So from the above post would I be right in saying the brix or chromebox are going to the best bet? Thanks again for for the help.

Just replied to you here, but in short, the Brix will be a lot more expensive than the Chromebox, the Chromebox really is the best value IMO, and can be had for as little as $142.88.