Time to upgrade my NUC. What's hot today?

    I've been running LE on an Haswell NUC for some years. Works fine but I'm planning to upgrade my TV to a 4K Samsung model, and while the NUC works fine with 1080p, 4K HDR is beyond its abilities.

    I've been reading the posts here and it looks like RPi4 is the way to go. Fair enough, but I would like a bit more information.

    - What are the current limitations of the RPi4 if any? 4K H264 I've heard, but that's not an issue, I don't have such files. Does CEC work fine? Does refresh rate adjusts ok to video? HDR10? HDR10+? AV1?

    - Will the RPi5 be an improvement for LE?

    - Any accessories I should consider?

    - Does any other device perform better regardless of the price? Such as a cheap but modern mini PC?

    Thanks!

    CEC works fine on RPi 5, so that's suggestion number one. Use our search function for specific codec info. Search on the main page to get results from all sub-forums.

    I have a ASUS PN42 with Intel N100 for a week or 2

    - fanless !!!

    - CIR RC6 works and wakeup from S5 too

    - HDMI CEC with extensiv BIOS config (not tested but saw the settings)

    - works.geat (for me) with LE11

    - wakeup from S5 with USB or IR

    -power consumption is like a RPi4 with USB3 SSD

    - BT and WiFi ofc

    - as fast as my i3-8100 HTPC but less then a 1/3 of the power consumption

    - decodes AV1 in hardware (my i3-8100 not)


    Even StandBy and WakeUp works. Most of the time the bios I can see too on my LG with a Denon AVR.

    This Hardware is great. The power button is a bit bright. I did get it for 220 Euro "used" at Amazon.

    have a nuc 11i3 (actually 2 of them)
    - no uhd via tv-headend client

    - audio via hdmi broken (keeps getting lost if format changes )

    the only stuff that works is le 9

    IMHO nuc support has been dropped since LE 10

    Quote from sky42

    ..

    Even StandBy and WakeUp works. Most of the time the bios I can see too on my LG with a Denon AVR.

    ...

    The first positive note about LE11 on intel HW in long time, great!, May I ask a few questions:
    1. how have you connected this (hdmi to denon passthrough/yes/no or Hdmi to LD and arc on demand) ? or dp ?
    2. what contents have you tested ? 4k ? hdr?
    3. what hd-audio formats work/don't work?
    4. do you watch TV? if so which client? if yes, can you watch uhd content (incl. time shift)

    Thks,

    Edited once, last by yamcenutzer (December 15, 2023 at 11:39 PM).

    oh boy ... i did a bit more of a playback test on LE11
    - Video all fine from Mpeg2, H264, HEVC up to 4k with HDR (on my LE BT2020 version)
    - did not yet test AV1 and LE12

    - HD Audio is not fine on LE11
    So i need to warn everybody of audio dropout for ALL HD Audio passthrough on my ASUS PN42. 1st check on a i3-8100 HDMI 1.4 i could not reproduce. Dropouts in the latest after around 5min. Sometimes every 15sec 2x-3x times.
    Used 6 different remux from BD made my self. DTS-HD 5.1/7.1, TrueHD with/without Atmos 2.1 Mbit - 6 Mbit have all dropouts. DDP 7.1 with Atmos is fine 1.5 Mbit.

    Will test more and come back
    - Denon X6700H and LG 55E6D only HDMI connections, no ARC, no CEC
    - ASUS PN42 HDMI 2.0 a or b (not sure)
    - Asrock B360 ITX/ac HDMI 1.4 (so far could not reproduce) with i3-8100
    - NUC8i7BEH HDMI 2.0a (need to free it 1st)
    - maybe NUC12WSKv7 (but that is even more work because it is my desktop)
    - maybe RPi4 too
    - maybe Vero 4k+ with OSMC too

    Anybody has a full fledged test plan and samples.
    I will manage to create one my self, just asking to save time.

    yamcenutzer
    1.
    - only HDMI
    - no ARC
    - no CEC
    - PN42 -> Denon -> LG TV
    - only passthrough except e.g. AAC that can not be passthrough

    2.
    - from SD to 4k HDR (with my BT2020 community build)
    - Mpeg2, H264, HEVC
    - no AV1 test so far

    3.
    - nearly all HD Audio has very short audio dropouts for like half a second from 1 up to 10 times in 5min, but at least one TrueHD did not dropout in the 1st 5min
    - all audio works with passthrough (not yet DTS:X tested, have only 1 remux)
    - now i will investigate the HD Audio dropouts, but that will mayby take some days to test

    4.
    - remux of DVD, BD, 4k BD
    - H264 720p50 Live Streaming ARD/ZDF
    - 720p AVC / 1080p HEVC streaming files
    - i do have live TV with tvheadend and VU+ plugin but do not use it

    adam.h. no not that one, the barebone N100 version and i put a 8GB DDR4 3200 and Samsung NVMe SSD in there

    Thanks a lot, sky42 for that detailed description.

    So audio still has issues, but it sounds a lot better than when I last gave up on it many many night(lies)s ago.

    I think I should start looking into it again.


    BTW,

    1. the last NUCs to have CIR (which, for me, is a must) are the 11gens..

    2. my preference of connections would be player->tv->receiver(via eARC). Of course+, assuming the tv can passthrough everything to the receiver. That's what I will be testing.

    ASUS PN42 has audio dropout with screen resolution 2160p @ 23,976 Hz if the Audio is HD (for 9 out of 10 BD/4k remux i tested).

    - if not extra stated all in passthrough with only HDMI PN42 -> Denon -> LG TV (no ARC, no CEC)
    - build LE11 and LE12 with the latest updates today for that
    - nearly all DTS-HD, TrueHD have dropout when played with screen resolution 2160p @ 23,976 Hz
    - NUC8i7BEH does play all content fine 1080p/2160p with and without HDR (for LE11 HDR with my Generic-BT2020)
    - NUC8i7BEH has a LSPcon MC2800 HW: 2.2 SW: 1.78 (from /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_display_info)
    -my LSPcon MC2900 und MC2907 do not work with HD audio on the PN42
    - source resolution does not matter if you play with screen resolution 2160p @ 23,976 Hz and it has HD audio it will have dropouts
    - LE12 makes no difference
    - Generic legacy makes no difference
    - 4k HDR source material played in screen resolution 1080p @ 23,976 Hz has NO audio dropouts and HDR works too
    - disable passthrough and do multichennel PCM works better but every couple of minutes i have a dropout
    - mainly tested by switching between NUC8, PN42 and RPi4 and settings changes
    - for test i did see parts of Alita - Battle Angel (2019) EAN 4010232073624 playlist 00800
    - for test i did see The Fast and the Furious (2001) EAN 5050582731248
    - content from NFS locally mounted with v4
    - short tests with Aquaman (2018) EAN 5051890317377 english E-AC3 with Atmos plays flawless all other HD audio tracks with dropouts (2x DTS-HD, 1x TrueHD/Atmos)

    I tested by seeing at leats 10min (if no dropouts) to be sure. Mostly in less then 5min i did get a droptout. Switched devices and setting many times. At the moment that looks like a N100 problem. Maybe tomorrow i test my 12th NUC i7

    yamcenutzer no CIR options in the BIOS but HDMI-CEC

    2 things that might be relevant, first, in response to the original poster, i have recently trested for a couple of days a Korean manufacturer mini PC based on Intel N6005 Silver Pentium and in one word it was AWESOME. Played everything flawlesly. (bought as open box slightliy used at ebay Germany, for less than 200 euro.

    Second, in response to the N100 discussion, i have just heard in yesterday's youtube video from a guy that i follow (explaining computers dot com) that propper drivers for N100 in Linux can be found ONLY in the very latest core. No idea what that means for Libreelec version 12 (correct Linux version? needs an even newer linux? I guess you guys can tell us more about it...)

    The fact is that N100 is a fairly decent spec CPU at a very low price compared to others, and in theory has everything needed to be used in a modern media player built, which would be still current in the several years to come. Would be nice to have Libreelec compatibility (even if with some beta build...)

    smp do you know how to build a version with pipewire? I dont. To put on some more versions to boot is not problem, there are alraedy 5 different LE version on there that i can boot with a grub2 menu (with the remote :)

    infoalter i agree to have N100 working would be nice. The N6000 has no hardware AV1 decoding, the N100 does because of the Gen12 GPU and is around 20% fater.

    I have still a 2nd N100 here and will test that today. A fanless HUNSN BM34 for less then 200 Euro as barebone, BUT no USB wakeup or CIR. WOL is working and power consumtion in S3 standby is very low and USB wakeup from S3 works. No USB on the back side, that is a bit impractical. It is fanless and not a bad chassis. They even give me a PXE capable BIOS (was not on there) after asking. The preassembled one i have has a DDR4 2666 not 3200 and it is a really cheap M2 SATA SSD. It is a very nice box.

    Now i will free my Desktop to test NUC12i7.

    LE12 nightlies are running Linux 6.6.x kernels (latest, and will be stable/LTS) and Linux 6.7 is still in the RC stages. Intel are very good at pushing support for new chips upstream. They are less good at fully testing all their media capabilities (their focus will be more on desktop distros) so there are occasional gaps in feature coverage and accidental driver breakage can happen. They do fix things that are reported to them, but few LE staff run x86_64 hardware these days so if there are issues the onus is on affected users to do the reporting. The general rule will always be that issues unreported upstream don't get fixed quickly.

    chewitt if someone teaches me where, how and what to report (or i can read it somewhere) i will certanly try, despite my very very bad expiriences with reporting to open source projects or even companies like intel

    Quote from sky42

    smp do you know how to build a version with pipewire?

    Edit distributions/LibreELEC/options

    PIPEWIRE_SUPPORT="yes"

    KODI_PIPEWIRE_SUPPORT="yes"

    ALSA_SUPPORT="no"

    KODI_ALSA_SUPPORT="no"

    PULSEAUDIO_SUPPORT="no"

    KODI_PULSEAUDIO_SUPPORT="no"

    So Here the situation for me as of now (todays nightly LE12):

    nuc11i3 -> denon 1703-->panasonic 65HZ2000

    - audio is stable as long as no pass through is attempted (note the TV can already do all formats)

    - passthru works for non hd formats

    - passthru doesn't passthrough any hd

    -- dts ma becomes dts-- trying trueHD (7.1 in my case) kills all audio, and the system needs to be restarted to regain any audio

    - UHD (4k) - tv via tvh-client doesn't play with HEVC VAAPi. Sometimes even not with VAAPI disabled, could not determine yet why.


    There may be other things, but these are the issues I have, that used to work in LE 9 (or was it 10 , I forgot)

    Edited once, last by yamcenutzer (December 26, 2023 at 2:32 PM).

    That started an interesting discussion, thanks. I understand the N100 is pretty new and since x86 is no longer the focus of the LE team it might take a while until the issues are solved on the Intel side without their contribution.

    I might join the Pi bandwagon if it's the best, but I'll keep an eye on the resolution of the N100 issues because on paper it looks like a perfect platform. N6005 working flawlessly is also interesting to know (although if it doesn't have AV1 there might not be any benefit over the Pi).

    I'm not in a rush and I'm grateful that my current setup is just flawless with LE in 1080p.