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Intel NUC 1080p/Blueray

Can the Celeron 847 NUC handle 1080p h.264 or Blueray video? I'm sure the i3 version can but this system would only be for occasional video use so it doesn't need to be too extravagant. Looking at Newegg reviews I see one person that says it can't play HD and another that says it can. I tend to take the reviews with a grain of salt anyway.

I'm not an expert in this area, but Celeron probably is not the best choice for 1080p. It might work at low bit rates. The i3 or i5 would be a much better choice.
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"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.... We are far too easily pleased." C.S. Lewis

While I couldn't find anything specific about 1080p h.264, etc. support, it is supposed to support up to 2 displays with HDMI support. I think the more memory and faster disks you can through at this thing would determine how well it worked. Intel does bill it as a media server product. What OS would you use if you bought this?

I highly doubt it. If you use a less CPU intensive encoding it can probably do 1080p, but not with h.264.
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Wacky Races 2012!

I would likely use Windows 7 or 8 with Media Center or VLC. The device would be used as the primary disk player (DVD/Blueray) in the living room so ease of use is paramount in that environment. Might consider something like XBMC or MythTV or some other specialized setup if it would help with overhead (but can still be easy to use).

Not all of my video files are high bit rate h.264 stuff, in fact most of it is older DVD/TV based Divx rips but anything new I get/make would be h.264 based. Also, most of our existing disk collection is DVD but we do try and get Blueray when we can since we do have that capability.

Disks would be mSATA based SSD since that's all it can take (not gonna hang USB drives off it). Files would be accessed from a network server via Gigabit. I could of course add more memory as needed, how much do you think I'd need? I have 8GB in my desktops and they're fine for that so I figured 4GB is enough if all it ever really does is play video files. I wouldn't go less than 4GB though.

I have an Intel Pentium D 3.20GHz PC, and it cannot play 1080p files off yotube. Looking at these passmark scores, the Celeron 847 is barely better. While there is more to playing video than just these scores, I'd be very surprised if that Celeron could play them acceptably.
»www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu···+1.10GHz
»www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu···+3.20GHz
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Wacky Races 2012!

I was reading this article the other day:

quote:

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Intel Celeron 847 for Atom: MSI C847IS-P33 Mainboard Review. Page 6
[04/28/2013 01:17 PM | CPU, Mainboards]
by Ilya Gavrichenkov

Atom (Cedarview), E series (Bobcat) and Celeron (Sandy Bridge) processors all feature hardware engines for accelerated decoding of HD video in popular formats. That’s why every tested platform ensures smooth playback of 1080p video without dropped frames. There is only one exception. The Atom D2700 can easily play video in H.264 and MPEG2 formats but has problems with VC-1, dropping frames. The AMD E-350 and the Celeron 847 are blameless. We tested their Radeon HD 6310 and HD Graphics cores before and found them capable of decoding HD video, even in 1080p/60fps format, without any flaws.

However, as higher resolutions and bitrates get more popular, inexpensive processors may find it difficult to cope. So we use in our next test a widescreen 4096x2048p@24fps clip encoded in H.264 format with a bitrate of about 22 Mbps. Played via DXVA with enabled hardware decoding, we have dropped frames. And the number of dropped frames depends directly on the CPU's capabilities. The diagram below shows the average number of displayed frames (up to the maximum of 24 fps) when the test video is reproduced in the software player Media Player Classic – Home Cinema version 1.6.6 with K-Lite Codec Pack 0.9.8 and with video decoding (including UHD) enable via LAV Filters.

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I just checked with some our media folks, and they claim a Sandy Bridge Celeron should be able to handle h.264.

Based on Octavean's data above though, it probably entirely depends on bit rate and resolution.
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"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.... We are far too easily pleased." C.S. Lewis

Hmmm so in other words, the Celeron will likely do it, though it may stumble with high end files and is sure to stumble in the future. Sounds like I need to look at the i3/i5 options instead. Might wait and see what the Haswell variants bring to the table. Thanks everyone!

Yes I know it's lacking CPU upgrade capability. That's not an issue to me as I usually don't upgrade the CPU anyway. I've looked at building a SFF computer with stock components (mATX board and such) that could be upgradeable but it's going to be as much if not more than the NUC. Plus, the case I picked is just a little too deep for the entertainment center which means to get a smaller case means Mini ITX which again leads me back to non-upgradeable CPU usually.

Anybody know of a good mini-ITX board and a fanless Core i3? (Ivy Bridge probably - I don't think the Haswell ultra low voltage parts are out yet) I think that would work well in this situation, and be *quiet* This might be a good solution for my plex box I was thinking of as well.
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"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.... We are far too easily pleased." C.S. Lewis

I used an E-350 system as an HTPC for a little while, it played all of my 1080p files via XBMC very well (one peaked at 60 Mbps for a second or two). It only choked with 1080p Flash stuff.

As long as you're using a player that takes full advantage of DXVA and you keep post-processing to a minimum, it should be fine.
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KI6RIT

»www.newegg.com/Product/Productco···24%24%24

this is the Corei3 version of the unit

Core i5 version of the unit includes Core i5 with HT
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···56102035

I would be more concerned if the GPU chip and size of the display could support it, rather than the CPU only...

Remember.... It's the weakest link that will 'get' you, and that weakest link could be the BR playback, CPU, GPU, hard drive if being played back that way, or other processe(s) going on at that time!
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Looking for 1939 Indian Motocycle

It's a NUC, the GPU is the CPU. It's one of the APU type units, there's no discrete GPU. That said, it appears to be their lowest end GPU in the Celeron and does not include the Clear Video offload decoding thing. »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_Graphics. The i3/i5 variant does include that and honestly would be the better choice all around I think.

Hey! They're on sale, cool. They were ~299 and ~399 for the i3 and i5 respectively (not interested in the thunderbolt version as it lacks a wired NIC).