Intel recently announced their
Compute Stick that is due to ship in the first half 2015 and is basically:
- Size of a large USB Stick
- HDMI for Audio and Sound (just plug it into your TV or Screen)
- 2GB of RAM & 32GB GM of storage + a MicroSD Slot so you can "add another drive"
- Wifi (N @ 2.4GHZ) and Blutooth 4.0
- 1 Full Sized USB 2 port (and one mini usb port for feeding it power)
- Expected to cost around US$89 with Linux or $US109 with Windows - it is cheap!
Similar to my review of the
Intel NUC DN2828, I'm always looking for great low cost Media Players concepts, and this looks interesting, but how does it go with MC as a Low Cost Media Player?
While the Intel Compute stick is not out yet, the clones are and I will be testing the MeeGoPad I got from China (about 1 week) as a Media Server Client pulling content from a MC Library Server and running it on Windows 10 Preview.
Install: See attached pics for what came in the Box (note: the Mouse is only for a size comparison)
- HW (0Min) : You just plug it in but some words of caution with this clone. The PS is the usual garbage that comes with a country adapter that just keeps popping off. I have a heap of 2amp 5volt usb PS already so I'm using one of those to power the device. You are also going to need a USB hub to make setting this stick up easy. You REALLY want to get a hub or you will go nuts (I did).
- Installing OS - Win 10 Preview (30Mins) : This things shipped with a dodgy Win8.1 Bing addition that can not be activated and is already setup for China. There was absolutely no issues in installing Win 10 32-Bit from a Optical Disk Drive as a clean install. You could also install from a USB drive but you can not use a MicroSD card as this slot is not seen as bootable by the BIOS (note: BIOS is UEFI only). Also, I could not install Win 10 64-Bit no matter what I did. Finding all this out has taken hours of frustration. You really want to do a Clean Install as who knows what is on the pre-installed version it ships with.
- Updating Drivers / BIOS (15 Minutes) : This was a delight for a change! The first thing I did was export the drivers from the install that came with the Stick onto a USB drive prior to installing Win 10. So after the Win 10 install, I went to device manager and for each unknown device did an Update Driver and pointed it at the USB drive. I then ran the Intel HDMI driver checker and got a recent GFX build. Here is a
link to the driver set I made (80MB).
- Initial MC Install (10Mins) : Straight Forward as usual.
Tweaks: None (yet)
Results: My first impression was that the Stick is awkward and sluggish at times when it is doing "stuff" behind the scenes but the boot is very quick, and MC's TheaterView seems snappy enough. Given my experience with the N2820 NUC I was expecting it to all work on the media front but not so:
- Audio: No problems with decoding Audio over HDMI for all formats though the implementation only support 16 Bit with Multi Channel Audio (up to 192k). No 24-Bit! It does support 24-Bit (up to 192K) for 2ch.
- Video: Fine with RO Std on AVC, MPEG2, VC-1 material up to and including 1080/50p / 50i / 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. There is a playback issue as the WiFi adapter maxs out at 40Mbps, so I can not play my high bitrate 1080/50 or 60i BD material without stuttering and audio sync issues. This is a deal breaker for me.
- WiFi: According to a review by
anandtech of other devices using the Realtek RTL8723BS chipset, it is a "single spatial stream 802.11n part, with no 5GHz support and only 20MHz channel width. That means that we're dealing with a theoretical maximum speed of 72Mbps. In real world use, it's quite a bit less, as you can see.... 40Mbps". My own testing would confirm this.
- Power and Noise: Silent / No Fan. It does get hot and the instructions say don't leave it on for extended periods (they quoted months).
- Other: No IR, so you are going to have to control this over BT or WiFi.
Conclusion: The Stick is a viable option instead of a Media Player / Streamer / DLNA box if you can live with its limitations. It is a fully fledged PC that lets you run MC as you would on a "real" PC but is cheap, small and silent. The simple connectivity to an AVR/Screen/TV over HDMI is easy and just works.... but did I mention that you really want to buy a USB hub as at times (like setup) you will need more than one USB port.
Is it going to replace my current main HTPC....? No way. My existing HTPC is much more powerful for ROHQ and includes additional conveniences built in such as BD Drive, IR for the RC, Analog out for separate audio zones. The other main limitations are:
- The - Realtek RTL8723BS Wifi speed limit will prevent you from playing high bit rate material even though the Stick can decode it just fine
- No 24-Bit for Multi Channel Audio
- The occasional sluggishness when the OS is doing background "stuff" is the Disk IO - it hits 100%. To be fair I've only really seen this during the setup phase when Windows was installing and configuring stuff
- No Boot on Power Restore in the BIOS. This is an odd one as you may supply power to your stick from a TV's USB port and if it powers off you have to find and press the power button on the Stick (which may be behind the TV). In general the BIOS is pretty limited. Fixed with different BIOS flash
I was hoping to use this Stick for as a ultra portable HTPC device so you could setup media playback in flexible locations (eg put it into the back of a PJ for a quick outside setup). The main issue for me will be the inability to play some of my high bit rate videos (eg TV and Music Videos that are 1920x1080/50 or 60i).
My Rating: 4/10 An interesting concept and I hope the "real" Intel Compute stick does better but I think it will take a V2 to overcome some of these problems as they seem to be HW limitations of the low power Bay Trail Atom Z3735F processor and the choice of WiFi module (hopping that Intel will use a different WiFi Module!)