Asus Chromebox + Kodi mediacenter

[tom]

I have been using various custom hardware with media centers for a long time, and are also a happy Oppo customer, but have still been looking for the perfect media center solution. For me, this means:
- no noise
- low power
- bit-perfect output in any format
- can play blueray rip with no lag/stutter
- stable
- can read music/movies from network share
- wireless (no IR) remote control
- appliance-like use
- cellphone app for music/movie control that is pleasant to use to play your network media (Oppo: I am looking at you)
- can accept airplay content (for visitors)

After literally years of pretty good partial solutions, I finally found the first set-up that honestly leaves nothing to improve. 
- Asus Chromebox (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IT1WJZQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) ~USD 160
- 2GB memory extension (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LDLP8W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) ~USD 20
- FireTV bluetooth remote (http://www.amazon.com/Voice-remote-Amazon-Fire-Stick/dp/B00DU0X4WI/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417739076&sr=1-1&keywords=firetv+remote) USD ~30

TOTAL: USD 210

After this, I used this guide kodi.wiki/view/ASUS_Chromebox to install Kodi(used to be XBMC) and flash a standard BIOS. Took maybe 15 minutes and really easy to to, that's it. The FireTV remote pairs beautifully and can easily be configured the way you want (install the keymap app in Kodi, all in the GUI).

Now just be sure to disable replay gain etc and enable audio pass through, and with literally *zero* screwing with any settings, everything works and just keeps working. After (a few years ago) gluing my own copper fins on chips before to cool them passively, spending days debugging linux issues, merging patches etc. I was really impressed. 

Be sure to connect it to wired Ethernet though. At least in my tests, I needed to do that for reliable blue-ray streaming. And if you want to plug in an USB harddisk for content instead, works great as well.

For 210 USD, I got a media center that does anything I could want and just works. Amazing. Press the button, turns on like any device, boot is 4 seconds, draws less than 8(!!!) watts on. Best money I spent in a long time.

[awdspyder]

Interesting find, Tom.  I, like you, have been on an eerily similar quest for quite some time:  

My current HTPC running XMBC Frodo is nearly silent (PicoPSU, 1x80mm and 1x60mm NoiseBlocker fans, sub-20dba) and uses 22-25w while streaming.  Like you, I also found that 1Gbe is a near requirement for full BD-quality streaming.  I'm using Chinavision USB receiver and remote codes via a Logitech Harmony One for control and it's also mostly good, but certainly sufficient.

While I'm pretty happy with the current setup in that I get rock-solid stability, pass-through HD audio via HDMI, and solid video playback, the AMD E-350 APU is starting to show its age.  Higher bit-rate videos have always shown some tearing in wide panning (Why a WDTV Live can do this when a more powerful APU cannot, I'll never understand), and yet another Windows box to patch, etc., is somewhat tiresome.

I'm haven't quite found the perfect replacement, and my wishlist is as follows:

1. More appliance-like (Running Win7 now, but it's highly automated)
2. Smaller footprint (currently mini-itx)
3. Lower power consumption (Sub-15w would be nice)
4. Passthrough HD Audio
5. Must connect to CIFS/SMB shares in a Windows Domain
6. Silent or near-silent (my DirecTV DVR drowns out the current HTPC)

It sounds like your new setup fulfills most if not all of these requirements.

Number 5 gives me some trouble due to my somewhat irregular setup of a Linux File Server, which is a Windows domain member, running Samba and using Kerberos auth.  My WDTV Lives certainly don't like it, so I run Plex DLNA for them.

A couple of questions for you if you don't mind:

1. You mention pass-through audio -- I assume this means HD audio as well?
2. My fondness of XBMC/Kodi lies in the unparalleled UI on the PC.  I admittedly haven't read much on XBMC on Chromebox - how does it compare?
3. With 16GB of on-board storage, I assume it will cache fanart and thumbs locally.  What kind of disk consumption/free space are you seeing after the Kodi install?

Thanks for sharing!

[LuisV]

Curious as to how these options would compare to what I have been toying with lately. Amazon FireTV with XMBC / Kodi. Was rather easy to install / configure... took me longer to decide on a template for XMBC / Kodi than it took for me to side load and configure XMBC to connect to my NAS.

[unsound]

I also have XBMC on both my FireTV and Fire stick. Works very well on both. My media is stored on an external hard-drive attached to my router so I can access it wirelessly from anywhere in my house.

[rogersch]

Dec 19, 2014 17:50:32 GMT -5 awdspyder said:

Interesting find, Tom.  I, like you, have been on an eerily similar quest for quite some time:  

My current HTPC running XMBC Frodo is nearly silent (PicoPSU, 1x80mm and 1x60mm NoiseBlocker fans, sub-20dba) and uses 22-25w while streaming.  Like you, I also found that 1Gbe is a near requirement for full BD-quality streaming.  I'm using Chinavision USB receiver and remote codes via a Logitech Harmony One for control and it's also mostly good, but certainly sufficient.

While I'm pretty happy with the current setup in that I get rock-solid stability, pass-through HD audio via HDMI, and solid video playback, the AMD E-350 APU is starting to show its age.  Higher bit-rate videos have always shown some tearing in wide panning (Why a WDTV Live can do this when a more powerful APU cannot, I'll never understand), and yet another Windows box to patch, etc., is somewhat tiresome.

I'm haven't quite found the perfect replacement, and my wishlist is as follows:

1. More appliance-like (Running Win7 now, but it's highly automated)
2. Smaller footprint (currently mini-itx)
3. Lower power consumption (Sub-15w would be nice)
4. Passthrough HD Audio
5. Must connect to CIFS/SMB shares in a Windows Domain
6. Silent or near-silent (my DirecTV DVR drowns out the current HTPC)

It sounds like your new setup fulfills most if not all of these requirements.

Number 5 gives me some trouble due to my somewhat irregular setup of a Linux File Server, which is a Windows domain member, running Samba and using Kerberos auth.  My WDTV Lives certainly don't like it, so I run Plex DLNA for them.

A couple of questions for you if you don't mind:

1. You mention pass-through audio -- I assume this means HD audio as well?
2. My fondness of XBMC/Kodi lies in the unparalleled UI on the PC.  I admittedly haven't read much on XBMC on Chromebox - how does it compare?
3. With 16GB of on-board storage, I assume it will cache fanart and thumbs locally.  What kind of disk consumption/free space are you seeing after the Kodi install?

Thanks for sharing!

I'm using using an Intel NUC with OpenElec. My setup fulfills all your requirements.
The following (What is OpenElec) describes what OpenElec is. In fact it is a tailormade Linux distribution with Kodi (was XBMC) on it. Installing it is really easy and updates are even more easier. This can be done automatically, you get a message, or manually. On my machine an update to a newer version takes less than 1 minute (try that with Windows...).

The Intel NUC, which normally have a small fan, is very silent (my older media center setup, which I'm now using in my bedroom, was completely passive cooled and no HDD). It is so silent, running OpenElec there is hardly any CPU load, that I even didn't bother to replace the housing with version which enable passive cooling of the NUC.

You can get the Intel NUC with different CPU's. Already the Celeron version is more than powerfull enough to run OpenElec to play high bitrate HD 264 encoded movies. The reason why I choose for the i3 is that this has enough power to play HD movies encoded with the newest HEVC video codec. As this codec is not (yet) supported via GPU hardware decoding, it requires CPU power for software decoding.

[garbulky]

very interesting. How do you make the firetv work on chrome and can it do voice search?

[tom]

Hi awdspyder,

Sorry for the delay, I was out of the country for a bit. Here are the answers to your questions:

> You mention pass-through audio -- I assume this means HD audio as well?

Yes, absolutely, I verified bit-perfect pass though of flac files 192/24 and any DTS/Dolby etc blue-ray codec I could find. As long as you set the audio settings in Kodi to pass though and disable replay gain, all is unaltered.

> My fondness of XBMC/Kodi lies in the unparalleled UI on the PC. I admittedly haven't read much on XBMC on Chromebox - how does it compare?
The UI is beautiful and it's a total appliance-like experience. Press on botton, 5 seconds later ready. Super easy to control from TV, or cell phone.


> With 16GB of on-board storage, I assume it will cache fanart and thumbs locally. What kind of disk consumption/free space are you seeing after the Kodi install?
With 500 blue-ray movies and ~100GB music all on an external server, I am seeing ~200MB disk consumption. 


One more note: I have also tried the FireTV with Kodi/XBMC a couple of days ago for a friend, and I can not recommend that at all. Issues there:

- Forced up/downsample to 48/16 of anything playing and no way to pass though DTS/dolby codecs for surround sound reliably (crapshoot and often does not work). The problem is that Chromebox is Android based and you are forced to go though the Android sounds system--designed for a cell phone.

- NO Gigabit ethernet port, only 100MB. Will not play blue-ray rips smoothly.

- No way to start Kodi (XBMC) by default and crappy integration in the FireTV (no icon to start etc)
-Tom
 

[unsound]

Dec 29, 2014 17:35:58 GMT -5 tom said:

Hi awdspyder,

Sorry for the delay, I was out of the country for a bit. Here are the answers to your questions:

> You mention pass-through audio -- I assume this means HD audio as well?

Yes, absolutely, I verified bit-perfect pass though of flac files 192/24 and any DTS/Dolby etc blue-ray codec I could find. As long as you set the audio settings in Kodi to pass though and disable replay gain, all is unaltered.

> My fondness of XBMC/Kodi lies in the unparalleled UI on the PC. I admittedly haven't read much on XBMC on Chromebox - how does it compare?
The UI is beautiful and it's a total appliance-like experience. Press on botton, 5 seconds later ready. Super easy to control from TV, or cell phone.


> With 16GB of on-board storage, I assume it will cache fanart and thumbs locally. What kind of disk consumption/free space are you seeing after the Kodi install?
With 500 blue-ray movies and ~100GB music all on an external server, I am seeing ~200MB disk consumption. 


One more note: I have also tried the FireTV with Kodi/XBMC a couple of days ago for a friend, and I can not recommend that at all. Issues there:

- Forced up/downsample to 48/16 of anything playing and no way to pass though DTS/dolby codecs for surround sound reliably (crapshoot and often does not work). The problem is that Chromebox is Android based and you are forced to go though the Android sounds system--designed for a cell phone.

- NO Gigabit ethernet port, only 100MB. Will not play blue-ray rips smoothly.

- No way to start Kodi (XBMC) by default and crappy integration in the FireTV (no icon to start etc)
-Tom
 

Yes, those issues do certainly exist. Since it is sideloaded (and not an Amazon approved app) onto the FireTV, it won't show up as an icon under apps. I only use it for audio streaming and over 95% of my files are 44.1/16 so I'm ok with the 48/16 output.

[jamesflames]

Is usb audio out possible on the chromebox?

[roe12605]

Dec 4, 2014 19:36:28 GMT -5 tom said:

...
After this, I used this guide kodi.wiki/view/ASUS_Chromebox to install Kodi(used to be XBMC) and flash a standard BIOS. Took maybe 15 minutes and really easy to to, that's it. ...

Hello torn,  I realize I've dredged up quite an old post, but thought I'd throw out my two cents worth in case others are looking with your criteria:

   +1   for  kodi. 
kodi = Very easy to use, my wife loves it, and she's comfortable using it on her own   (an important feature) 

One kodi feature I've grown to love:  when binge watching multiple episodes in a TV series, kodi puts a check mark by each completed episode that we've watched.    Next time we turn it on, it's easy to pick up where we left off.
Nice when there's 20 or so episodes in a season of some things!

It's also nice that kodi itself is free and runs on a wide variety of hardware.       My hardware is a little different from your setup (yours is quite reasonably priced!) .     Putting in a little plug for Qnap:
I use two Qnap servers equipped with kodi (updated from the XBMC that it originally came with)    One provides 2 channel audio (FLAC, etc.)  output via HDMI and the other dishes up video in the theater room output via HDMI (no lag/stutter on bluray rips with full audio).
Many of the Qnap models provide video transcoding on the fly, also.  Similar to unsound below, maybe two thirds of my audio collection is ripped 44.1/16, and the rest is FLAC and other hires audio (no DSD yet).

I also use them as data file servers to back up all the computers in the house, and one provides a fallback copy of the other with a feature Qnap calls "real time remote replication".      Other available free apps downloadable from the Qnap site (tested and supported by Qnap)  include the usual TwonkyMedia, Pandora, Plex media server, etc.

Torn, regarding your other questions, this is how Qnap stands up AFAIK:
-no noise   (Qnap's not perfect here, fans only come on when processor temps heat up, but normally reasonably quiet; YMMV.  The faster processors in Qnap's product line are taxed much less when rendering and transcoding, so fans needed less. my TVS-471 is nearly dead quiet inside the wooden cabinet with rear exhaust fan)  Very low noise payload output signals delivered (free of skipping, pauses, tearing, speckles, other abnormalities).
-low power (Qnap with 5 hard drives at idle less than 40 watts when drives power down automatically [overnight, etc..]   a bit more during hard use, closer to 60-70 watts)
-bit-perfect output in any format (FLAC etc. being delivered via HDMI goes through no digital processing on-board AFAIK.  Other formats i.e. DSD, IDK; guess OK.   However if transcoding video, obviously that's not bit-perfect.)
-can play blu-ray with no lag/stutter    talking of ripped blu-ray; yes. outstanding.   pause, resume, chapter skip, start over, all near instantaneous.
-stable   yes, very.  Both of mine are on UPS systems.  Uptime frequently in months until I update firmware myself.. Software vetted by Qnap prior to release through their website; similar idea to iphone store software quality control
- can read music/movies from network share   (yes, in fact it  *is*  the network share.  Supports SAMBA, netbios, windows shares, linux file sharing, USB attached external drives formatted in NTFS or extX  with music/movie content, etc.)
- wireless (no IR) remote control  (yes, I'm using a USB Logitech Unified M525 wireless mouse on one, Logitech wireless keyboard n5901 on the other; wish it was backlit, but it works fine in the dark if you know how.  no drivers were required)
- appliance-like use    Use, yes.  Wife thrives on it.  It's advertised as a network appliance, so that's what they claim.  Setup; In reality, there's a bit to initial set-up, and it helps if you know your way around networking and hard drive technology, but if I'd RTFM it would have gone quicker!      (disclaimer: I'm an electrical engineer, it will probably be easier for others)               "with great power comes great responsibility"  -spiderman.
- cellphone app for music/movie control that is pleasant to use to play your network media   Yes, it's actually quite good (on iTunes store or Android play store, but the TV on-screen display is superior IMHO.) Free demo download.
- can accept airplay content (for visitors)   ( sorry, not in the Apple ecosystem here.  Wife has an iPhone and it'll stream via TwonkyMedia to phones, Samsung, Visio, and Panasonic smart TV apps, but don't know about airplay)
===
theater room:  Qnap TVS-471  (very good at transcoding)
two channel room: Qnap TS-569 Pro  (very reliable as a system backup with RAID 6)

[keithfree]

Lots of great info in this thread! I recently bought the XPA-5 amp and XMC-1 pre/pro and have begun my own search for the ideal playback solution. I've used XBMC a few times prior to the name change and was curious why folks prefer it over Plex, which started from the same (or similar) codebase.

[awdspyder]

I use Plex as a media center backend and DLNA server for WDTV Live clients, but will likely stick with XBMC/Kodi in the main media center. Simply put, Kodi offers an enormous amount of configuration and customization, while Plex Home Theater is fairly vanilla in that regard. To many, this may not be a bad thing -- to get things just the way I like them in Kodi, I spent quite a bit of time tweaking things. Frankly, I'll do it again when upgrading hardware, but I'm not looking forward to it. To those that don't care for all the minutia in Kodi, PHT likely offers all the necessities -- solid performance, good format support, and a decent looking 10-ft UI (not as nice as Kodi IMO, however).

Now there is a replacement due out for PHT (Plex Media Player) that may offer additional customization, but to me it looks even more "app-like" than the old version.

TLDR: Plex Home Theater is more of an "app" while Kodi is a full-blown "application."