Any recommendations for a dedicated media player which would stream videos from an unRAID box via LAN?

 

Requirements:

- DTS HD-MA 5.1 support (or audio passthrough) using HDMI  without transcoding (so Roku, Playstation TV and anything reliant on Plex are out of the question AFAICT)

- must be able to play transmuxed BD rips (20+ gigs per movie) without transcoding

- easy-to-setup universal remote support or dedicated remote

- rock solid playback

- nice UI, Kodi preferred unless there's better out there

- some level of community or big company behind so there's continuity and actual support for the contraption, as I don't want to change my player every year, or even five

 

Right now I'm leaning towards the new quad core Raspberry Pi, although remote setup would be a major PITA using Lirc - have a FLIRC dongle sitting around. Not sure if Amazon's or Google's offerings are viable alternatives, or anything else?

 

I've been using a Linux Mint desktop and Ouya as my media players to stream movies and TV series from my unRAID box. Both have shortcomings; desktop has to be on and takes a while to setup (well, 30 secs...), and IR remote is unreliable and responds slowly. Ouya media playback is awfully buggy and crashy with XBMC/Kodi. So I'm looking for a replacement.

 

EDIT: ended up going with the Raspberry Pi 2 based on the feedback in this thread. It fills all the requirements above, although haven't tested universal remote, yet. Details in this post.

I have a three NTV0550's which do a decent job and would meet your requirements but Netgear discontinued it around 2013.  Since then I have watched to see if anyone else has offered anything that would meet both your (and mine) requirements. 

 

There are two units that I am aware available at this time.  One is offered by DVDfab and links are below:

 

      http://www.dvdfab.cn/dvdfab-plus-vidonbox.htm

and

      http://www.dvdfab.cn/media-player.htm

 

And the other one is from Dune.  The link to the site is below:

 

      http://www.dune-hd-usa.com/Home.aspx

 

I personally like the Dune HD Smart D1 media player from Dune but it is expensive.  I have no experience with either one so you  might want to do a bit of research about current customer support.  I do know that Dune has had the players out for several years and might have a better chance at remaining in  business.  A couple of years ago, a lot of folks who had them were very enthusiastic about them.  I have not really been tracking since then to see if they still feel the same way. 

 

 

I would definitely go for the new rpi.

I use flirc on one of mine and it was absolutely no problem setting it up. I only had to set it up in the harmony setup. If you can live without ir and instead use your phone/tablet you can use the kore remote app or yatse.

I have bought a remotepi board plus so I can turn on/off the rpi with a remote as the rpi doesn't have wake on lan or any other way to turn it on when it's shut down.

I think you have to use a test build of openelec to get dts hd-ma support, but it shouldn't take too long to get it in a stable release I would think. There is a thread on the kodi forum about it. Just Google milhouse rpi test build and you will find it easily.

I use an Amazon FireTV running Kodi and never have any problem with any media files.  I stayed away from the fire stick as it didn't have an Ethernet port.

Thank you for these, hadn't heard of Dune or DVDFab!

 

Dune does look great, and they have a decently price TV-102 at 129 EUR with features I'm after. But none of Dune's products support DTS-HD MA, not even passthrough or transcoding, verified by calling them. Although I'm no audiophile, DTS-HD MA is getting more and more popular, and is often the only surround audio stream on a BD, so it's a deal-breaker for me. I've also found that DTS/TrueHD streams typically have much wider dynamic range than other streams, which is great for action movies - not sure if that's just a mastering decision, or thanks to the codec's features.

 

DVDFab's VidOn Box at 70 USD is quite affordable, and it supports and the company is a sponsor of Kodi. It has HD audio passthrough, but it looks like that you need a 15 USD per year subscription, so if the company goes belly-up or gets into legal trouble over licensing, you might lose HD audio. Native (?) Netflix app is a nice plus, and has quad core processor so should be snappy.

 

While doing research on these, found out about HiMedia which supports DTS-HD MA passhtrough and downmixing in their Q5 and Q10 models. Four-core Android devices, pre-installed Kodi support, and they do h.265 hardware decoding and UHD video, which is pretty damn impressive. Not sure how relevant the UHD capability is, as the standards are not fully established AFAIK. But would be nice to be able to use the same box in 2-3 years time when 4K projector prices are reasonable. Prices start around 100 EUR, apparently sold in EU only outside of Far East, support in Chinese only, with some intrepid enthusiasts on forums trying it out.

 

I'll take a closer look at RPi2, and do some further research!

 

Dune does look great, and they have a decently price TV-102 at 129 EUR with features I'm after. But none of Dune's products support DTS-HD MA, not even passthrough or transcoding, verified by calling them. Although I'm no audiophile, DTS-HD MA is getting more and more popular, and is often the only surround audio stream on a BD, so it's a deal-breaker for me. I've also found that DTS/TrueHD streams typically have much wider dynamic range than other streams, which is great for action movies - not sure if that's just a mastering decision, or thanks to the codec's features.

 

 

The Dune HD Smart D1 media player Does according to this spec sheet:

 

      http://dune-hd-usa.com/Products/DuneHDSMARTD1.aspx

 

But as I said it is expensive. 

One more question.  Do the Raspberry pi or Amazon Fire (with the patched software) solutions mount BluRay and DVD ISo's and play them?

I would try out an android box to be sure it does what it says. There is a lot of false claims going around and buggy software. Especially if you want to run kodi on it.

I bought an Open hour chameleon and its useless. The RPI 2 knocks it out easily with openelec on it.

Chrome box running openelec (Kodi) plays anything and has HD audio. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IT1WJZQ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

The $160 version works perfectly.

I have Dune HD Smart D1. Excellent player will play anything I throw at it. Problem is having an interface to connect with your media server. Currently using an unofficial port for Plex that works pretty well for what it lacks in aesthetics.

 

I was an pre-order purchaser of the DVDFab product and had a horrible experience with it (constant crashes, audio synch probs, unsupported audio formats, etc). I have not followed it since then (been at least a year) so no idea how it performs now.

 

My player of choice for most things now is the Roku 3. Excellent integration with Plex. Have one on every TV now.

Chrome box running openelec (Kodi) plays anything and has HD audio. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IT1WJZQ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

The $160 version works perfectly.

 

Seconded. OpenELEC installation instructions: http://kodi.wiki/view/Chromebox

There is an excellent thread on Kodi forums showing a summary of Kodi players with 3D video and HD audio support.

 

Looks like RPi 2 won't most likely ever be able to bitstream HD audio due to bandwidth (hardware) limitations. But based on a few posts on Kodi forums, and above by saarg, HD audio support is in beta builds already. It should decode losslessly and send 5.1 to your AVR via PCM, not sure about more channels than 5.1, though. I am a bit paranoid about RPi decoding HD audio, and would prefer bitstreaming and let my AVR do it, though.

 

Chromebox seems like a very nice and powerful machine with Linux installation, but they cost over 200 EUR in Europe, well over twice what an RPi 2 setup would cost. Given that it looks like I'd need to upgrade anyway in 2-3 years when 4K content is more readily available and at decent prices, doesn't make sense to get a Chromebox, as the only benefit appears to be a snappier UI.

 

HiMedia player seems to have issues with 24p content which is a dealbreaker for me (occasional stutters with movie playback), and I share the concern raised above by saarg about stability of such devices, lack of proper documentation, and continued support. RPi has a very enthusiastic and wide user base, and the original versions were often used as media centers, so I'm confident in Kodi community providing support for it for years.

 

So my conclusion: Chromebox for the absolute smoothest experience if you don't mind spending the money on it, and RPi 2 for everyone else

 

If you don't absolutely need HD audio - few do or care, and even fewer can tell the difference -, options get much more varied, including Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Playstation TV, etc. There are also new "stick" PCs coming from Intel, Asus and others which are only slightly more expensive than a full RPi build, which will surely widen the variety of media players/centers.

I'll check in a day or two if the rpi 2 does 7.1 decoding 

I'll check in a day or two if the rpi 2 does 7.1 decoding 

 

Then I might beat you to it - picking up an(other) RPi tomorrow Although might be until the weekend when I get it set up. Except I don't have a 7.1 system, only 5.1...

 

Here's more info on the latest status of the OpenELEC HD audio efforts from Milhouse himself. 7.1 should be possible with latest nightlies.

Raspberry Pi 2 can handle TrueHD decoding using Kodi (was XBMC), but not DTS HD MA. It cannot pass either HD format through to a compatible receiver due to hardware limitations.  I use an old Asus AT5IONT-I mini-ITX board to run Kodi (I use the OpenELEC builds) and it works very well passing through HD audio.  Plenty of remote control solutions too.

If you look at the info in the link that ulvan posted you'll see that it does decode DTS HD-MA. That is info from the guy that makes the testbuilds himself so I guess he should know 

 

I tested fast to check if it decodes 7.1 files and it did with the mkv I tested with Dolby truehd. Didn't have time to test more today.

Interesting.  I wasn't aware that there was support for internal decode of DTS HD MA on the RPi2.  Thanks for the correction.

Interesting.  I wasn't aware that there was support for internal decode of DTS HD MA on the RPi2.  Thanks for the correction.

 

Yes, it appears that test builds of Kodi can decode DTS HD-MA and TrueHD, and send it via PCM to your AVR. End result should be identical to bitstreaming, only thing you don't get is the fancy lights on your AVR

 

Yes, it appears that test builds of Kodi can decode DTS HD-MA and TrueHD, and send it via PCM to your AVR. End result should be identical to bitstreaming, only thing you don't get is the fancy lights on your AVR

 

Do you know if the RPi 2 has the horsepower to do this with any issues?

 

Secondary question:  Why are the lossless HD audio streams decoded to PCM before being sent to the AVR?  I would think it would take less CPU horsepower to simply bit-stream them. 

 

Yes, it appears that test builds of Kodi can decode DTS HD-MA and TrueHD, and send it via PCM to your AVR. End result should be identical to bitstreaming, only thing you don't get is the fancy lights on your AVR

 

Do you know if the RPi 2 has the horsepower to do this with any issues?

 

Secondary question:  Why are the lossless HD audio streams decoded to PCM before being sent to the AVR?  I would think it would take less CPU horsepower to simply bit-stream them.

As far as I have understood it's support for decoding this in the GPU so doesn't really use the CPU for it. But I might be wrong. I might check to be sure later today.

The problem with bit streaming lossless audio is that the RPI2 doesn't have the bandwidth to send it over HDMI. It only supports 4 channels at 192kHz. Lossless audio are sent as 8 channels 192kHz even if it's only 96kHz. It's explained in the thread Ulvan linked to

Since the Millhouse builds are still beta, there might be issues, but not related to hardware.

Too bad the RPI2 doesn't have support for 4k and bitstraming (for future audio codecs like atmos and dts:x) as it would have been the perfect media player.

Got my Pi2 earlier this week, and have been test driving it. Just watched the first DTS HD-MA bluray remux on it (Begin Again, highly recommended if you like movies about music, and it has Keira Knightley in it, and she can sing!), and Pi2+OpenELEC nightly worked flawlessly, like everything else I've tested with. I get 5.1 audio with AC3 and DTS (HD-MA and plain) soundtracks, both surround test file and movies. I feed my speakers and projector via an AVR over HDMI.

 

DTS HD-MA has been confirmed to use the HD-MA track, not the lower-bitrate embedded "core" DTS stream. Decoding of HD-MA stream is done by the Pi, but it is sent over HDMI digitally. Therefore my AVR DAC does the analog conversion, and there shouldn't be any issue with noise or general audio quality even for those with golden ears, as it's your AVR which does the conversion critical for audio quality.

 

HD-MA support is only on nightly test builds of OpenELEC as of now, coming soon I'm sure to a stable release - but haven't had any issues with the nightly. See link in a previous post for a thread on Kodi forums for further info. Haven't tried TrueHD as I don't have any files with it. Appears that the upcoming multi-channel audio codecs might not get support on the Pi as saarg mentions above, but if I ever go for an epic 11.1 setup it's a much bigger investment; new apartment for starters Same story with 4K.

 

Setup was very easy, took me an hour to get up and running following the official installation wiki guide, including a bad image write the first time. My rather extensive video library took two+ hours to read. UI is quite snappy with the native skin, haven't tried others. Videos start quickly, no buffering issues even with the 25GB remux file - the array has always performed well, although haven't tried remuxes while running a parity check or a rebuild I set up weekly library refresh from my unRAID box (cronjob via OpenELEC UI), and a nightly library config backup cronjob to my desktop via ssh.

 

I leave the Pi on 24/7, as it doesn't come with a power button - and Wake-on-LAN/IR isn't supported or reliable AFAIK so I'm not going to even bother trying.

 

I've been using Kore, the official Android remote, which works well most of the time. Really cool how it pulls all your library data and you can browse on your phone, with links to IMDB, etc. But it's a major PITA to use during playback as the phone doesn't have tactile buttons, so you have to look at the phone to be able to use it. Will set up FLIRC with Logitech Harmony One some other time.

 

Overall very happy with the purchase - 61 EUR including the Pi2, power supply, 8GB memory card and case. Installation is not for newbies, but everyone experienced with unRAID setup and maintenance will find it easy. Hard to beat at any price based on my research - Chromebox is possibly better, but significantly more expensive -, and the Pi2 will be supported for several years, guaranteed!

If you want to be able to turn the RPI on/off by remote this is the add-on to get http://www.msldigital.com/collections/all-products/products/remotepi-board-plus-2015

Only downside is that you have to modify your existing case for the power button and the power.

 

I will most likely get one more RPI and the remotepi board and their modified case for my home theatre. I have a mede8er, but want to have kodi