For home theater PC (HTPC) “small” is another word for “compromise”. Thankfully, the amount required by our miniscule content consumption devices has decreased exponentially over the last few years. There is still a price demanded however, tiny systems require slower mobile integrated processor graphics (IPG) to drive them. We have to choose between size and performance; it is simply not […]
Read more
I can’t claim to be the first to notice when HEVC decoding popped up in a recent Intel GPU driver update for Haswell (HSW) systems, and I was prepared to write it off as a mistake until an off-hand remark about the feature coming in a future driver update came up in conversation with a source well positioned to know. […]
Read moreI was really excited when I found out Intel had placed the HDMI-CEC enabling Custom Solutions Header (CSH) on the D54250WYK NUC. It was exactly the kind of feature that belongs on this near-perfect mini-HTPC. Unfortunately, as we can see in the gallery, something isn’t right with its ability to maintain 3.3V under load. What this means in practice […]
Read more
When Intel brought out their Haswell Next Unit of Computing (NUC), inclusion of features like SATA made it clear that they had bigger things in store for the little system. They were honest that some of this promise will require 3rd party case OEMs to fully realize, but Intel quickly announced that they would be creating their own chassis with […]
Read more
For home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts the news that Intel was leaving the retail motherboard market cut deeply. After all, many of the features we have come to expect, like an Intel network interface card (NIC), consumer infrared (CIR), and outstanding stability along with innovations specific to our market, such as the custom solutions (aka HTPC) header, looked likely to […]
Read more
If you saw the recent Intel Haswell NUC D54250WYK announcment and thought “hey, that would make a pretty slick HTPC” – go ahead and sit down. Not only does it have all the good stuff like IR, SATA, USB 3.0, etc. that we mentioned before. It also has the HTPC_HEADER on board. Unfortunately, there isn’t space in the stock chassis […]
Read more
Looks like the NUC is getting a Haswell update, and it’s not just the IPG (i5-4250U with HD 5000) that changed with the updated system also getting IR, SATA and four USB 3.0 ports. With all that good stuff and a fast 2.5″ hard drive and/or slim-line Blu-ray drive this could be a killer fullsize HTPC replacement given the right […]
Read more
As many in the home theater PC (HTPC) community are aware, madVR produces an unparallelled level of flexibly and performance. Producing results that rival some of the best dedicated video processors available in the market. It was not that long ago that utilizing this advanced video renderer was limited to those with a high-end discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) and […]
Read more
For home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts, the 4th generation Intel Core “Haswell” family of processors has been greatly anticipated. Expectations have been set both for its GPU performance, and that the long-standing issue with refresh rate accuracy will finally be put to rest. Unfortunately time with the new integrated processor graphics (IPG) was limited to just a few hours, but […]
Read more