E. Bluebaugh
I wanted something cheap and small for a HTPC application. This is borderline too slow for this application, at least when it comes to iTunes movie streaming. I am working on moving my library to network storage to download all of my iTunes movies to see if it will stop stuttering the video. I would have probably would have marked this with 5 star anyway because its still a good small PC if it were not for the almost endless reboot from a BSOD related to the USB3 controller. Ive seen others have this issue so I will share what seemed to fix it with me. I had to hit F8 booting up to get it to the troubleshooting menu for Windows 10, then I had to reboot into Safe Mode. After that, I brought up the Device Manager and went to the Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller and uninstalled it. Trying this in regular mode kept bringing up the blue screen. I rebooted it and logged back in and it finally stopped rebooting. I think that it must have reloaded the driver upon booting and stopped it from erroring out. I used to be a computer technician before moving into Systems Engineering thankfully, or I probably would have given up. Make sure you run the updates for Windows first thing, it takes forever. Then run Disk Cleanup, making sure you click the Systems Settings (I think thats the name) so that you can remove previous versions of Windows which will clear like 15-19GB after the update. Also, for home theater use, resist the urge to move the audio to the highest sampling rate and bit rate. When I did that, I only got 2 channel audio going to my AV Receiver. I could go to the audio settings and add the surround channels, but I could only do L C R RS. I had to move it down to DVD quality 16 bit and then I could do L C R Sub RS LS. Getting iTunes to use the surround channels was also difficult until I found advice after an hour of Googling. You have to launch a movie and click the little balloon icon in the lower right corner of iTunes that is the Audio settings. You have to put a checkmark next to the one that says something about Bypass for AC3, then it sends Dolby Digital to the AVR. Other than the stuttering of video, my only other complaint is I cant make the icon on the start menu super large like the others. RIght now I have it in Tablet mode so that it brings up just the start menu icons that I am using for streaming. eta: I have tried downloading movies and running them but iTunes continues to lag. I think the iTunes app must be a bit bloated compared to other video services. I even brought up VUDU and put Gravity 3D on while downloading iTunes movies in the background, figuring that 3D would be harder to download and play smoothly, and it played flawlessly with all of that going on. So VUDU really blows iTunes away for streaming, even with already downloaded iTunes movies. I just dont get it. VUDU seems to stream pretty good using the Windows 10 app. I was going to try to use Kodi as a hub for all of my streaming apps, but something it does prevents VUDU from playing movies; it kept giving the HDCP error until I removed Kodi. The Disney and DisneyXD apps work better than on my Apple TV, it seems to output surround sound which my Apple TV app does not. My Dish Network channel isnt in HD, so I used to use the Apple TV to watch Star Wars Rebels in HD, so now I get surround sound too; small win! Native Windows 10 movies stream extremely well. HD, 5.1 surround (my Yamaha AVR is only 5.1), and no lag. I assume all movies work fine, but I only have Disney Movies Anywhere movies in my Windows collection since I linked DMA to my Microsoft account. But running movies from the Movies and TV app is really great for video and audio. Dish Anywhere app is very laggy, especially Audio, which I noticed on all apps, until buffering catches up, sound like Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi when she is talking through the voice modulator in the bounty hunter costume. I wish YouTube had an app like on iOS that I could just launch and play videos rather than using Microsoft Edge to go to a website. I may have to make a shortcut to YouTube and pin it to the start menu. I still need to think about getting the small remote/keyboard that they offer, I currently use the Logitech K400 keyboard/trackpad, and I do love it, but once im done setting it up completely for streaming, I want something a bit smaller to control it all. I have no idea how streaming works over wifi, I chose to just plug in the Ethernet to the switch in my entertainment center, no sense in competing with all of my wireless devices. I havent decided if I am just going to leave it on all the time or turn it on when I need to use it. I just dont know if I trust a fanless computer running 24/7. If you boot it up on a tv and the start button and clock run off the side of the screen, go into your tv settings and look for an aspect ratio setting. On my LG, the proper aspect ratio setting was "Just Scan". Previously it was set to something like "Set By Program", but that had my start button going off of the screen. I think that covers my experience, if I remember anything else, ill update later.
