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View Full Version : Standalone Player vs. HTPC - Which to go with for mkv & 3d-mkv ?


LOGiC
28th November 2013, 22:00
Hey guys,

haven't been around for a long time and would like to ask something!

As summer is over I am starting to watch more movies again, mounted my old HC7000 and started working with the wireless-HDMI zyxel WHD6215, which works like a charm.

Recently I started watching mkv's again. As I like good quality, I am more and more into remuxes with DTS-HD Audio. First I played mkv with my Asus O'Play, but I think it's got HDMI 1.3 and does not seem to properly playback DTS-HD. My Sony bluray BDP-S490 which worked well for quite a long time doesn't seem to handle DTS-HD in mkv, it freezes after 1-2 minutes and totally crashes all the time. As I am thinking of getting a 3D tv or projector next year, I would like to have a good stand alone media player as well and thats why I am asking you guys. I've investigated throughout loads of players last days, but negative comments on these machines always prevail the positive ones.

Had a look at the Dune base 3D, the mede8er, xtreamer, egreat, PCH and other machines. I am not sure if there is anything true about it, but I personally feel better about Sigma than Realtek. I don't have much .iso files, but I absolutely want to watch MKV with DTS-HD without any dropouts. I hear the support for firmware isn't that good anymore for dune and PCH.

On the other hand, I am totally interested in stuff as the ASRock machines, the Zotac ZBoxes or NUC with the haswell based things. Amongst the three Intel, Radeon and NVidia, what would you recommend ? Which of them would be able to handle 3D as well, if one is absolutely not interested in playing any games on the machine ?

I learned that the mobility graphic cards have horrible benchmark results, but does that matter when it's just used for watching movies ? Are there any quality differences between a media player as the dune/PCH and a HTPC ?

I apologize for asking all these probably stupid questions, but you're the only guys I can reliably ask.

Thanks in advance and the US guys have a great thanksgiving today!

turbojet
1st December 2013, 10:05
If you want to play everything but it's a little more complicated go HTPC. If you want something that's simple that may not play everything you have go STB.

If you are using any renderer other than madvr any modern intel, ati, nvidia will do. If you are using madvr you might want to go with at least a midrange ati 7650+ or nvidia 640+ gpu. It's also dependent on display size and resolution of source files.

As far as PQ goes HTPC has the capability to be just as good if not better than STB depending on how it's setup, like madvr.

Ghitulescu
1st December 2013, 10:48
1. if you want MKV the safe bet is a HTPC, in particular when MKVs are "custom".
2. most standalones (like Dune or Popcorn) are HTPCs with custom software/firmware.
3. beware that sometimes it's difficult to configure a PC to overcome all copyright-restrictions