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[jmone]

What do you want in a Media Player?
- Sick of the compatibility vagaries of DLNA devices (like the PS3 or WD TV Live etc) for accessing and playing your media?
- Like the Look and Feel of Theaterview and RC support?
- Want the flexibility and power of MC?
- Low Power Usage
- Need a small and quiet unit?
...but don't want to pay big $$$ ?

Then read on!



For "fun" I decided to try out the entry level Intel NUC DN2820 as a Media Player front end using MC on the NUC to pull content from a MC Library Server.  These are "cheap" at around US $200 (including 4GB of memory) but you will then need to add a 2.5" SDD/HDD (I had an old 60GB SSD that I re-purposed) and a Win8.1 Licence (note: currently Intel have not released all the Win 7 drivers).

To me it looked dubious on paper if this little NUC could pull it off, but the std inclusion of HDMI, IR, Wireless & Wired NW all in a small and quiet form factor makes it a possible contender if the Bay Trail Processor could keep up (Celeron CPU, and only Intel "HD Graphics" iGPU).  Especially given I have alot of high frame rate content (eg AVC 1080/50p / 50i / 60i) that can tax much more powerful systems.


Install:  
- HW (5Min) : You remove 4 screws from the base to gain access and then just slot in the Memory and the SATA II drive.  Easy
- Win 8.1 (30Mins) : Straight Forward
- Updating Drivers / BIOS (hours) : Uggg the usual doing Windows Updates, downloading latest drivers/BIOS from Intel etc.  You really need to get the latest BIOS and GPU drivers from Intel before it starts to run well (it runs like a dog with the std Win8.1 GPU driver).  I also had some trouble getting the inbuilt IR driver working (I had to delete and reinstall this driver and now it is fine).
- Initial MC Install (10Mins) : Straight Forward as usual, with the only manual add-on being the copying of the dtsdecoderdll.dll to the LAV Filters folder

Tweaks:  My first impression was that the NUC was not going to cut it at all for video playback as CPU utilisation was high even with std BD's and unable to play my high frame rate content (dropped frames, audio / video sync problems).  It turns out if you delete the IntelQuickSyncDecoder.dll from the LAV plugin folder, RO Std will then use DXVA2 and my CPU utilisation dropped to under 50% and playback was fine even for my high frame rate content. Edit - This is fixed from MC V19.120

Results:  Overall, this thing works!
- Audio: No problems with decoding Audio over HDMI for all formats (including dtsdecoderdll.dll)
- Video: Fine with RO Std on AVC, MPEG2, VC-1 material up to 1080/50p/60i.  All the MC Video goodies such as Auto Frame Rate Switching and Video Clock worked without issue.  It does not have the horse power for 2K, 4K, HEVC material.  It does not have the horse power to use ROHQ in any form.
- Power and Noise: While it does have a small fan, it is quiet and pulls only 10w (apparently).  I did get some BIOS logs during testing about Thermal Limiting (so I just turned it off - I figure it was when I was pegging it at 100% trying to see if ROHQ could be configured to work).

Conclusion:  This NUC is a viable option instead of a Media Player / Streamer / DLNA box.  It is a fully fledged PC that lets you run MC as you would on a "real" PC but is cheap, small and quiet.  It has good connectivity to AVR equipment and also your network (but no 5hz wireless but instead includes BT that I did not test).  Is it going to replace my current HTPC....? No way.  I love ROHQ and the quality you can get from this, but it also cost 4 times the amount!  It can be argued that the video quality of the NUC is better than the Media Players as you don't have to transcode on the Library Server to lower bitrate formats.  So for me I now have a "better" solution for the kids game room than using the PS3 or the WD TV Live for them to access the Library Server.  It is also portable so you can take the NUC with you to another location and control playback using Gizmo.  Perfect for an "outside" party for example.

[jmone]

Here is a PIC of the NUC when testing.  You can get an idea of the size next to the Harmony Remote.

[jmone]

Here is the MC Benchmark:

=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 9.403 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 4.930 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 9.429 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 5.203 seconds
Score: 656

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 1.444 seconds
    Flood filling... 1.641 seconds
    Direct copying... 2.547 seconds
    Small renders... 5.285 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 6.135 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 4.374 seconds
Score: 1027

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 1.109 seconds
    Populate database... 4.957 seconds
    Save database... 0.901 seconds
    Reload database... 0.121 seconds
    Search database... 3.607 seconds
    Sort database... 3.123 seconds
    Group database... 1.990 seconds
Score: 1360

JRMark (version 19.0.118): 1014

[JimH]

That's not terrible.

[JimH]

Thanks for a nice view of what this machine can do.

[jmone]

It was thinking these NUC could be well suited to the Linux distro.  eg even without Video Support a preconfigured one would be a good replacement for the ID.... and when/if MC can run Video with a Linux Distro it would have an even better cost/performance ratio to the various media players.

[InflatableMouse]

That's not terrible.

Were those words carefully picked or did mean to say its pretty good? 

Either way, it made me laugh

[InflatableMouse]

Pretty neat, Nathan. I might consider this for a present for my parents.

[jmone]

Were those words carefully picked or did mean to say its pretty good? 

Either way, it made me laugh

I think Jim once posted a score from an Abacus that was a bit less.

[InflatableMouse]

Yeh I think the score was to be expected but I am happy to see its playing HD videos without much trouble. I think its a good replacement for my dad's Asrock Atom pc. I think that score was somewhere in the 600 IIRC.

[jmone]

FYI - No longer need the tweak as this is fixed from MC V19.120

[jmone]

Tweak: So is "quiet" not good enough, and you want "Silent"?

Probably!  You can just turn off (or limit the speed of) the CPU Fan.  Here is a screen shot lifted from this review on how to turn off the fan in the BIOS.



The N2820's Electrical / Thermal parameters specifies a Maximum operating temperature of 105° C, and in my testing in a normal room with an ambient temp of 23° C:
- Fan on Default Settings (runs around 3,000rpm) = Idle Temps where just under 40° C, under Load Temps was around 45° C after 10mins (see pic 1 and 2)
- Fan OFF = Idle Temps where around 60° C, under Load Temps rose to around 68° C after 10min (see pic 3) ... but ... after a good long heat soak at load for hours I saw the temps continue to rise till I hit the Thermal Trap and clock speeds then auto dropped.

I did a further test that instead of turning it off, I just set the minimum speed to 0 to see at what point the fan would start, at what speed, and for how long.  As you can see in the S2 PIC below, I loaded all CPU, GPU, Memory then plotted the temp
* For the first 50Mins there was no fan and the temp slowly grew
* The fan then kicked in just shy of 80° C at around 1,700 rpm then as the temp fell the speed dropped (varied between 500-900 rmp) and the temperature stabilised at around 70° C this point.  

You don't see it in this pic, but when I stopped the load the fan stopped soon after.

While I'm not currently in a quiet room, I did press my ear up to the fan port to hear the level of fan noise and I heard some ticking... but that was my watch!  It was more like a warm breath coming out of the NUC that a "sound" but I'll test more tonight when it is much quieter.

My recommendation (so far)? - From what I can work out, the NUC needs just a bit of active cooling (and not necessary all the time)...., so if you think you can hear the fan:
1) just turn it off and see how you go with Temps (but I think heat soak will get you if you leave it on all the time)
2) turn the minimum down to 0 and it will only kick in when needed
3) set the fan to 15% (approx 670rmp) - keeps the temps stable sub 70° C

Of course if you can not hear the fan leave it on the default settings!

So how Loud is the Fan at various RPM's in a very quiet room with a teenager doing the listening starting from the NUC and moving back?
- 40% (about 3,000 RPM) - Quiet but perceptible if you are focusing for the sound even at 4m
- 15% (about 670 RPM) - Just perceptible if you put you ear next to the port but inaudible after 30cm
- 0% (0 RPM) - well .... not perceptible even if channelling a higher being!

[jmone]

Updated again

[shadowlight]

Thx for the information.  One question.  I am assuming that you are using NUC to play physical bluray disk.  If yes, which bluray player are you using?

[jmone]

Actually I'm not (it is all ripped to a server) but I do have a couple of USB BD Drive that I could use (nothing special I'd particularly recommend)

[jmone]

FYI - I had my daughters 16th B'Day party and used this NUC running MC as a Library Server Client Feeding an outside PJ to a 5M screen.  The kids were controlling it all using Gizmo from a Tablet.... and it all worked!  We letterboxed out neighbours as the audio was all fed to a 6000 watt amp (but limited to about 25%) feeding 6 outside speakers and an active 800w sub.  It made LOTS of noise but thankfully no complaints.  

Note: I do mean Noise as the stuff teenagers play can not be called Music! (Or am I getting old?)

[JimH]

Great!  Any pictures?

[jmone]

I have some of that new fangled moving pictures stuff that I'll pull something off

[dtb300]

I use the 54250 NUC (i5 Processor, Cat5E, no wireless) as an AUDIO only player running Server 2012 R2 Core Mode with Phil's Optimizer.

If running a NUC check for bios updates as they had fan issues with earlier versions, but new bios takes care of it.   And like Jmone said, you can always change the fan settings in the bios to see what works best for you.  Personally, my HD for music makes far more noise than the NUC.

[glynor]

FYI - I had my daughters 16th B'Day party...

(Or am I getting old?)

You answered this question on your first sentence, but yes, the noise comment is a good indicator too.

[Bluemoon]

I use the 54250 NUC (i5 Processor, Cat5E, no wireless) as an AUDIO only player running Server 2012 R2 Core Mode with Phil's Optimizer.

I'm considering DN2820 as an audio only unit. I plan to use only USB interface for audio (Audiophilleo2), Ethernet to NAS music source (Flac) and disable all the other signal producing services such as BT, Wi-Fi, IR.

How do you like the SQ of your NUC unit? Do you think that it needs a better quality power supply?

Thanks

[JimH]

Welcome to the forum.  I'm using the 2820 at home and like it.  We're about to release a product that uses it:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89084.0

[jmone]

Hi Bluemoon - sounds like your requirments fits the build that JimH has sent a link to (though I don't know about your DAC)

[Bluemoon]

Hi Bluemoon - sounds like your requirments fits the build that JimH has sent a link to (though I don't know about your DAC)

@JimH &  Jmone, thanks for the feedback and info. Food for thought