Should I ditch my HTPC?!

[jguinn2005]

Picked up the latest Intel NUC w/ i5 the other day. This little guy is pretty sweet. It is supposed to function as my HTPC.

For the movies that this thing can play without problems it is amazing. However some movies I drop entirely too many frames on. This can be cleared up on about half of the movies with hardware acceleration but the problem is that not all of my movies support acceleration. Frankly I'm not interested in spending HOURS upon HOURS encoding my movie collection to another format and dealing with losing my HD audio and blah blah blah.

If I built another HTPC with a dedicated graphics card am I likely to resolve this issue entirely since it will have move power than the integrated HD5000? From what I'm seeing the NUC should be able to handle what I'm throwing at it but that simply isn't the case.

 

[InvalidError]

If whatever funky CODEC you use does not work with hardware decode, having a more powerful GPU won't help you unless that GPU supports hardware decode for your funky CODEC.

An i5 NUC should have more than enough processing power to handle decoding a 1080p60 stream in software so your problems are probably due to either a poorly written CODEC or conflicts between middleware layers such as what happens when stacking multiple CODEC packs or installing tons of 3rd-party CODECs, media splitters, filters and whatever else.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

What codec is it? Even in software everything should work at 1080p.

Tried a different player that tries to multithread the decode, or is at least better at it?

 

[photonboy]

http/www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330

I don't see the point of a PC-based setup when the WD TV LIVE is cheaper and easier to use. I couldn't find a video it wouldn't play including the typical MKV, but even ISO images of DVD/BluRay.

You can add a USB drive (recommend the 2TB WD Elements), or use something like the WDMYCLOUD. I'm using both. I have the cloud box because I can share content with the entire house.

*Stutter:
You shouldn't be getting stutter with that PC. I would suggest you try the K-Lite Standard Codec Pack.

When you install K-Lite you can enable HARDWARE acceleration which your i5 probably supports for MPEG2, H.264, and VC1. That may help if your CPU was too weak.

 

[i7Baby]

When you say 'drop too many frames' - what do you mean - does the movie skip? I thought hardware acceleration was the use of additional hardware eg GPU's to help render videos; not play them. Are you talking about movies you've made yourself? If so, what format/codec are you outputting them as? Maybe some aren't support by the HD 4600 or whatever your NUC has.

 

[photonboy]

Hardware acceleration simply offloads most of the processing to a dedicated decoder on the GPU. It's mainly useful for when the CPU itself isn't powerful enough to decode the video. When the CPU does it all by itself that's called "software decoding."

It would also run QUIETER using hardware acceleration (if a buzzing fan was an issue).

Hardware acceleration needs to be enabled in the Video Player. AMD has an annoying habit if turning on advanced video features in their drivers that make the video look worse by default (NVidia does not. Intel probably does not.).

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Eugh. I had a similarly marketed device from Netgear years ago - it was pretty useless.

What do you do when H.265 starts to take off? You can bet that they won't issue a firmware update for it, and will require you to purchase a new one. Plus it can't support MPEG4.2 at more than 720p.

Also, it's not clear if it can actually read directly from networked drives (e.g. SMB, NFS), or if you have to do everything over the somewhat unstable horror that is UPnP or DLNA.

 

[jguinn2005]

Wow, lot of replies really quick! Appreciate that!

To be honest I'm not sure what codec I'm using... sorta new to all of this stuff. I'm using makeMKV to rip my movies and I don't go any further.

By dropping frames I mean the movie is skipping. I'm using XBMC and when I pull up fraps I can see it drops frames as it approached 17 Mb/s.

The nuc has an i5 with HD5000. Hope that helps.

 

[i7Baby]

In the OP's case there's no GPU, just Integrated Graphics. So there'd be stuff all 'hardware acceleration' going on. Does Hardware Acceleration in the case of the NUC only work depending on the movie codec? I wouldn't think so. Or is it more effective with some codecs than others? How is it that an i5 in the NUC isn't as good as a Media Player then?
And I thought it wasn't physically possible to fit a separate GPU in a NUC - they're too small.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

The NUC will have HD4600, probably. By memory they have a pile of fixed function logic for H.264 and a few other codecs.

I think that those dropped frames may actually be due to network, not processing. Where's it loading them from?

 

[jguinn2005]

I gave the k-lite codec pack a shot. No dice. I tried both software and hardware decoding. Software still presented the dropped frames and hardware produced the usual "very screwed up" image.

The NUC I have has HD5000. The source is coming from a Synology DS1513+ NAS via wired gigabit. I doubt that is the issue. The NAS has a read of nearly double what a gigabit network will carry.

 

[jguinn2005]

I did a quick test and pulled a problematic movie off of the NAS and put it on the desktop of the NUC and played it from there. Same issue so I know its not a network issue.

 

[jguinn2005]

Hm. Tried a different player (PowerDVD13) and it works flawlessly. So it appears that the problem lies with XBMC.

 

[InvalidError]

Hardware acceleration simply offloads most of the processing to a dedicated decoder on the GPU. It's mainly useful for when the CPU itself isn't powerful enough to decode the video.

It is also very useful for low-power or quiet application since hardware decode leveraging some fixed-function circuitry and the GPU/IGP's other resources uses much less power (often a 10X gap if not wider) as fully software decode.