SBC Media Player Group Test
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- Video playback tested on eight single board computers, including the Raspberry Pi 3 B+, Rock64, LattePanda Alpha, Asus Tinker Board, Odroid XU4, LattePanda V1.0, NanoPi M4, and the Khadas VIM 2.
All SBCs are shown playing the same local 1080p 30fps file, and then streaming the same file via RUclips. But which one is the winner?
My review videos of each of the SBCs on test are available as follows:
Raspberry Pi 3 B+: • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
Rock64: • ROCK64 4K USB 3.0 SBC
LattePanda Alpha: • LattePanda Alpha: Wind...
Asus Tinker Board: • Asus Tinker Board
Odroid XU4: • ODROID-XU4 Octa-Core SBC
LattePanda V1.0: • LattePanda Windows 10 ...
NanoPi M4: • NanoPi M4 : RK3399 SBC...
Khadas VIM 2: • Khadas VIM2 SBC & Andr...
More videos on SBCs, as well as broader computing and related topics, can be found at: / explainingcomputers
You may also like my ExplainingTheFuture channel at: / explainingthefuture
#SBCMediaPlayer #RaspberryPi #Rock64 #SBC #ExplainingComputers
Now we're watching RUclips on RUclips
I was just thinking the same thing.
I am reading a comment in a yt about watching yt in a yt
In the future you will be able to watch RUclips on RUclips, on RUclips. On the Moon.
What a brilliant example of software and hardware codependency.
This beautiful mixture of OSes, CPU powers, SBC's differences and similarities produce such {un}expected results!
Pure joy to watch.
Thanks Chris, great video, great experiment!
Thanks Elvira. Always good to hear from you here. :)
ExplainingComputers
My fingers just fly on keyboard when it comes to commenting EC channel content.
It is worthy.
Love me some SBC. And Chris. Your the only guy that tests all the ones I care about. I have learned about more SBC for you then anyone. And bought some.
Hi Chris, I hate to offer more advice, but for those tests that showed no video using VLC on the local file, using the Linux desktop, it may simply be that VLC is choosing the automatic video output. Try changing to, for example, X11 Video Output (XCB), and re-testing. I can't guarantee improvement, but the symptoms are exactly the same as I've found in VMs, and this trick worked. If you then get good video, but stuttering audio, forcing the audio output (I usually choose pulseaudio) will fix that, as well.
Good tip, thanks for sharing.
I have found mpv to have better performance video playback.
VLC is still cool to have YT stream support out the box.
Thanks again for all of your work! It seems sometimes you are reading my mind, or peaking over my shoulder for projects that I'm working on.. Great timing!
Thanks for the video. Let's do a quick analysis of the results.
RPi 3 Chromium performance can be improved by enabling hardware decoding. This can be done by tweaking browser configuration flags.
The original Panda struggles in YT likely due to underpowered CPU.
Judging by their video playback performance in Linux, Rockchip SBCs probably lack not only hardware decoding but accelerated OpenGL support as well (if OpenGL was working, that CPU should be able to handle 1080p decoding in software). Not a surprise here. Rockchip, like many other ARM chipmakers, cares little about Linux outside of Android.
OpenGL support is probably fixable, but without hardware decoding, it's not worth the hassle.
Whenever I see a MALI GPU I know, this board will be for non media workloads only.
Thanks. No Stanley the knife or Mr. Scissors opportunities in the video is understanding. You will get 'you should have" or "you could have...s" from those with a bias. Good comparisons all in all.
Very interesting report. I now use my Lattepanda Alpha as one of my main desktop computers. It's setup in my living room as a entertainment system. I find that it's to expensive to be used development board but rather as a small PC.
I was running a load of Passmark benchmarks yesterday, and found the LattePanda Alpha beats the i3 I am typing on now, and which I run my business on! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Amazing!
Dale, since you bought the Alpha for the same price as a good PC, may I interest you in a water front property in Florida?
PirateKitty Sorry already picked up 2 lots at 1/2 price what a view! The PadaAlpha is extremely expensive SBC but it also is a very cool small form factor device. One day I will put it into one of my robotics project but for now it's just a conversation piece running Windows 10 Pro. Can't wait until I get my pixiglas case built so everyone can see it clearly an ask the question " you paid how much! " 😂
Great comparison testing! I've heard others talk about video playback performance mostly in terms of hardware specs, so it's great to see a reality test with all the nuances of OS and settings. Thx!
It might be worth noting that on the raspberry pi 3b+ (or even the 2b) will play 1080p absolutely fine, also streaming from youtube, when running Kodi on it. My guess is that the integration for hardware accelerated playback through chromium is probably what's letting it down in the test.
Good point, though in my experience Kodi on the Pi always plays at 720p (it accesses the same stream as VLC shown in the video), even if output is set to 1080p.
I just thought I'd point out that at 7:40 the video is not playing back at 1080p, the "auto:1080p" option simply means that it is currently buffering at 1080. There could still be a few seconds of data that is already pre-buffered at 720p, and it will finish playing that before switching over to the 1080p buffer. The actual current playback resolution is shown in the stats for nerds as the first value after Current / Optimal Res. In your case 1280x720.
Good spot -- a clearly missed the menu selection there.
Thank you for the large amount of time and effort in producing this video. Was very enlightening.
Very informative as per usual and well presented. One small point though regarding variables. On the RUclips tests there was bluetooth active on some demonstrations and apparently not on others
Good point, I should have disabled that.
I watched this on my raspberry pi, 1080p RUclips Kodi , it works fine, I do recommend the pi.
Great feedback -- thanks for sharing. :)
I too using raspberry pi as I support Linux and I don't have a more powerful computer
@@AnilArya51 Strange comment, would you prefer a slower one?
Odds are tho that you were looking at it using libelec on kodi...and that's a truly minimal use of resources. If you load rasbian instead you might notice a different result. Often times I'm on the phone and cast the yt vid to kodi on the RPI screen... It looks great. But if I done that in rasbian I'm sure there is a price to pay in performance.
But having said that if its a measurement of media player output then why would anyone want rasbian on their living room screen?
@@twmbarlwmstar hey bro then get me a Windows 10 pc , can I ask it to anyone
The answer is no recent flood distroyed everything in Kerala state of India and only left is my rpi 3 b
And I am a student of 16 yrs and I cannot afford to buy even older version of latte panda
Thanks for this. This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for when planning to make my android media player.
Thanks Chris, geeky benchmarks mean nothing to a simpleton like myself, but this real World testing is excellent.
I am glad that somebody understands what I was trying to do here! :) I always favour real world testing to show how a product actually works (or not!).
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks for these practical real-world tests. If there was anything missing at all, it would have been to show an estimated CPU Usage benchmark to also show how the video playback stresses the various CPUs.
I always love your videos Chris. I have bought a Psion Series 7 (and loving it) and now I want to try out building a SBC. Thank you for inspiring me.
This was a nice comparison, and I'm glad I watched it.
To share a bit of my experience I started with a RasPi 3 because I didn't know a lot about SBCs, then I got into it and learnt a fair bit about those, and about all the bottlenecks of the RasPi. I was disappointed that it struggled to playback 720p youtube at the time and 1080p with vlc was nowhere to be seen. So I started studying every option and while I was not looking for something specific and my budget was limited, spending some time watching your videos and seeing the specs for 45€ lead me to get a Rock64. At those specs I thought it could be a light desktop machine for when I just need to browse the web and watch videos. I was quite disappointed by the experience on debian/ununtu mate with no hardware acceleration, especially given that at work we got a Tinker board for some project and Tinker OS was doing pretty well. However I also tested it with android, using it more as a media player like this, and this worked really nice, so nice I was actually surprised given how slow it was on debian. At that time I was doing an internship and bringing my laptop to work, and sometimes by pure laziness I left my laptop at work and just watched movies and youtube videos on my Rock64, which was great for this kind of use.
So I can confirm that the Rock64 is a great experience when used as a media player, but you shouldn't consider it for use with a desktop OS. The android version provided reads NTFS external hard drives fine, which is great with the USB 3.0 port, and considering phone android doesn't read it. And the playstore is a nice touch, even though a lot of apps won't be available for this board. One drawback I have to point is the keyboard switch to my french layout didn't stick when rebooted if I remember correctly ... and the youtube app didn't support mouse cursor and typing in the research bar, so you would actually be better using the youtube plugin for Kodi.
Useful post, thanks for sharing.
This is just amazing how SBCs have become. Everything a giant tower PC can do is now done by a tiny SBC that uses 95% less power. Great video ExplainingComputers! :D
Edit: I may want to invest getting a LattePanda Alpha (or the original), Raspberry Pi 3 B+ or Khadas VIM2.
Very nice video Prof. Chris!!
Excellent comparison of the different SBC boards! Thanks so much for these very well done videos!!
Great Video ,, Really enjoyed that one. Just a pitty Mr Scissors never put in an appearance.
Nothing to open this week . . .
Thank you Chris, I really expected some of these SBCs to perform much better. Real world testing all the way :) Hope you have a great week ahead: Thumbs in the air 👍👍👍
Retro Arena's Odroid XU3-XU4 image can install Kodi, and RUclips addon is supported. I was able to run a stream of the new Star Wars Jedi trailer for the new game at 1080 @ 60fps, and it ran as smoothly as it does on my i7-8700k with 1080 Ti desktop.
WOW! From my perspective, surprising results. Really appreciated this video. Thanks!
Как всегда отличное сравнение. Сам пользуюсь LattePanda Alpha и вполне доволен. Спасибо за проделанную работу.
A very nice test, thanks for all that work you put in your videos.
Excellent round-up of SBCs and their ability to playback video. Your video, as always, is provides an excellent comparison of products with thoughtful methodology for testing. I was considering Khadas VIM for a simple media player, but perhaps I need to look more closely at Rock64. Keep up the excellent work you do on RUclips.
The VIM2 is a great out-of-box solution. I did not expect the Rock64, running Android, to end up being my recommendation here -- but the results spoke for themselves.
Another commenter mentioned the XU4 being quite good with Android TV. I only mention it since the Vim board seems to be closer in price, so it may be worth considering. Rock64 is interesting option with features like USB3 at that price level.
Certain videos have HD at 60fps, using H264ify, there is a setting to force the video to run at 30fps which is much more conservative.
Congrats on 400K
Thanks. :) It has been a good afternoon.
I've found the combination of OS, software, and drivers to be a big decider on whether an SBC is usable or not. With the same hardware, a poorly configured system can be a real dog performance wise. It's frustrating when a device has the capacity to do the job but the developers have either quit working on updates or you have to dig excessively to find a solution. Learning to recompile the kernel has helped a bit with GNU/Linux but getting up-to-date Android source files is more challenging. The fun never ends...
Agreed. Lack of essential drivers and apps can be a showstopper. Target market is "the makers", those who are willing to take on the challenge of completing the system integration towards making a usable solution. Having a primary, well-supported OS and drivers for each of the boards interfaces is a must. I'd also look for integration of a universal app store as an indication of a viable ecosystem. Those boards that have Android as a primary OS but no Play Store are a half-baked solution.
I wonder how much time Chris has spent to produce (make + edit + upload) this video. Maybe a whole day? Whatever it is, the effort is very appreciated.
About four days! :)
Remember, not all of the boards worked well out of the box. Chris mentions that time was spent trying to get boards to a state of readiness. That's where the hidden effort comes in, doing the software integration for these SBCs, especially when not even the OS is onboard from the factory, and the OS alone brings the board to its knees with limited hardware resources.
The Latte Panda Alpha costs almost more than my desktop and laptop combined Thank you for the video! This is just the comparison I needed. BUT, I would of also liked to of seen gaming performance too.
Great video and very informative as always Chris 👍
I had to smile at your blue heatsink comment. There's definitely something oddly appealing about heatsinks.
Single board computers have gained a lot of ground in the last few years. With the LattePanda Alpha at around $400 that can replace a tower computer. Can't wait to see what will come in the next 5 years.
Excellent work, as per usual. Do you think Raspberry Pi's will ever sufficiently catch up to modern browser-based graphics demands? Is streaming 1080p something they're earnestly working towards?
A Pi 4 may do this. Even raising the RAM to 2GB would probably help a lot.
Considering Local OS, Raspberry Pi 3 B+ has nailed it. I'm impressed how it can work 720p better compared to other powerful boards at 1080p.
Another great video ! I just play down converted 2k videos to mpeg1 / vcd on my 2016 chip pocket pc ! Looks outstanding !
Chris,
I love your channel and watch all your teaching videos.
I do t comment much but, I must say you have to give the nod to the Raspberry Pi 3B+. It was the least expensive and plays great in 720p. I guess I can’t tell then difference between 720 &1080 anyway.
Especially if I use a 32 inch monitor or display
Agreed. I did give a nod to the Pi 3 B+ -- great (as always) in terms of value. And 720p is fine for most people most of the time! :)
Seems I guessed the winners! LattePanda Alpha and Rock64. Feel proud!:) Brilliant and of great interest video. I admire such tests. Thanks!
An idea for future videos:
I have considered to build a TV system based on a Raspberry Pi or similar product.
That should include terrestrial and satellite receiving together with the ability to record any programs that can be received from free programs transmitted from the above.
Internet access would a natural necessity.
I would use a standard TV receiver with HDMI input to display the video and audio.
Finding the proper USB receivers for terrestrial and satellite antennae has been a problem, but the necessary software has also been a bit of a problem to find.
--
Would you consider to make a video about this?
Regards from an 64 year old Danish electronic engineer.
Keep up your good work
Bloody lovely. I'd still take the Raspberry Pi over any of the others due to price, community size (and therefore massive support), and the inbuilt WiFi.
For 35 dollars, it's an absolute beast. The Raspberry Pi foundation are British legends.
I'm watching this from Odroid xu4 with UbuntuMate at 1080p with 0 dropped frames :) . I didn't see the h264ify extension exposed in browser. Was it installed? And about the player fair test would be using the SMPlayer as it is HW enabled. VLC has issues for a while now.
Very interesting. As thought I enabled h264ify everywhere, but would have to check. I did a lot of installs to get the Odroid working, so maybe I missed it in the end. Glad to hear that the board is working well for you -- and playing EC videos! :)
i remember i had to use OMXplayer from the commandline to even get acceleration at all a couple of years ago
i also had this logitech cam with a h264 hardware encoder in it (c920, it got good and warm doing so too),
so theoretically you could just grab the stream and pipe it to a player
theoretically.... it was dependency hell, and the camera had a tendency to sometimes botch keyframes and confuse the software,
took me 2 full days to get going after all the software was already in place, and even then i never got the latency to my liking, somehow reducing buffers and lookahead and all that jazz didn't get me anywhere, i think it still ignored a lot of those settings because it was so heavily under development.
and since that endeavour didn't end up too favorably, my plans of having a streaming box for games kinda fell in the water too,
i wonder what the options are for AMD's new relive streaming functionality though, maybe there's a way to tap into that stream,
with some testing i found the latency even better than steam's solution (not surprised, it can probably copy the buffer quicker on a driver level than any 3rd party using an extra layer of OS hooks, maybe even long polls)
Watching from my XU4 as well. I saw the same thing. I have a few of those boards and it seems like drivers and codecs wasn't installed. In VLC I changed the driver to X11 and that fixed everything for me with all my boards. Why no Odroid C2 test it can run 4k.
Having just bought my first rasp pi I now realise I need at least another one. Will this self-induced torment never end ?! I hope not
...at least! I have 4 already! Just love them!😀👍
@@xPowerdriverx if you don't mind me asking, what do you use them for?
I actually have eight - 5 currently working as follows;
1. Running Kodi connected to a TV
2. Headless Samba, HTTP, scanner and media server
3. Running PiHole (An advert blocker)
4. A zero running aircraft tracking software
5 As number 4
You can never have too many RPis. However much you think you have enough, you will find a reason for another.
@@stephenhargreaves9011 I pondered for months on the pros and cons of buying a 3d printer. The major concern I had was what will I use it for? I could not really think of that many uses until I bought one. Now I am finding solutions to problems I did not know I had. So I assume the same will happen with Raspberry Pi. Since buying this one to monitor the printer I have realised," Ah yes it can do that and wow yes that too!"
Great video as always Mr. Barnatt! I really like your presentation style. The unexpected results were exciting as I figured performance should've been quite predictable. Like most comments, I must include a slight nag: throwing in a Pi Zero-W would've been neat, especially assuming the 3B+ optimizations also help the slower and smaller part.
windows 10 AND using chrome on 2GB of RAM? what are you, some kind of monster? this is basically my go-to source for everything SBC's, i have a few pi's i play around with but now looking for something i can velcro to the back of my kitchen TV for media (currently using a laptop, takes up too much counter space, tired of the cables going everywhere) so of course i enjoyed this video, thank you for making it (and the related review videos), now i know im most likely going to go with the LattePanda V1.0, gotta have that USB 3.0, thats the only reason it won out over the Khadas
So many SBCs now-a-days all great in themselves, but Raspberry Pi is still the best.
I have to agree. It's a good price, and considering the amount of support from the pi foundation and general open-source/free software community, I think it's the best value even if it isn't the best for streaming video.
@@gabriel38g you are absolutely right my friend, I sometimes even use it as a secondary linux desktop.
I feel that Raspberry Pi and Chip are still the definitive SBCs with Pi being the best as they do what they are suppose to do in the best price.
Why have an excessive 2-4gb ddr~THREE~
and USB~THREE~
when you can get a Raspberry Pi instead
Nah its the worst, but its the beast that started the trend. Without the Pi we wouldn't have all the other copy cat boards. Which I personally prefer. Pi 3 is just not good enough, but it started the trend. So for that I am thankful.
I think it has the best support however I really wish they had a $100 to $150 version with a better CPU and GPU. My Pi3+ does work as a media player but it is not excellent at the task especially when viewing high bitrate content streaming from wifi.
Actually the Tinker Board did not seem to go into 1080p when you said it did for RUclips (7:50). "Current" flashed up to 1080 then dropped immediately back down to 720p. And It was still dropping a lot of frames at 720p.
You are correct -- I must have missed the menu setting (or it did not register it). And as you say, dropping frames at 720.
As a relative newcomer to your channel I am really enjoying your videos mate - thank you.
Thanks for your kind feedback.
I love these comparison videos! I'm thinking that the software optimization is actually more important than the hardware, although better hardware can overcome mediocre software. Arguably, the slowest hardware in this test was one of the best performers because of optimised software. If all distros were reasonably optimal for the ARM video hardware, all these tests would show only hardware differences, like memory capacity.
It would be interesting to do this again. A lot has changed since then. Also Firefox has improved for video playback. To include that would also be very interesting.
Noted!
Thanks Chris for this great comparison.
Fantastic video ...Most people I know either use a Raspberry pi or a 'hacked' fire stick as media players....let's just hope the rumours about raspberry production moving abroad aren't true.
Good software matters a great deal with video playback. On raspberry pi 3 running kodi on libreelec you can play 1080p h.265 24 fps with the built in software decoder. It can't handle very high bit rate files but even a bluray file compressed in handbrake's h.265 preset will play fine.
Good video, just two points:
At 7:52, its not playing 1080p, its doing 720p
And i dont know about the youtube apps on these devices, but on my phone, tablet and smart tv you just have to go to the youtube setting to enable stats for nerds.
Dropped frames etc. can be shown on android as well.
Very good spot on at 7:52 -- I clearly missed the 1080p menu entry.
This video could not of been uploaded at a better time as I am In the market for a new SoC board for running dietpi. As my current install of pi-hole is using up 95% of the RAM on my raspberry pi B+. Thanks for the video Chris.
The stats for nerds also shows the viewport. What I get from that is that you are actually comparing apples and peers. When the viewport EQUALS the video resolution, the CPU has less work than when the viewport is smaller. I tested your example video on my old laptop and it needs to scale down to 1366 x 768 (some odd resolution here). The HD 720P runs nice and smooth (I am on 1GB LAN, no wifi) from YT (win 7, FireFox), when I up the resolution to 1280x1080 I start to see frames drop (quite a lot). This is because we are testing as well video output AS WELL calculating the reduced size of the video.
Do you have any idea what would be the impact for doing these calculations? Because imho it makes all the difference.
Never the less a great video, I do understand how much time is needed to do all of this, and it is really appreciated! Thumbs up by all means.
The viewpoint stats take account of browser or OS scaling. All playback here was at a native resolution of 1920x1080, regardless of what the Stats for Nerds chose to show.
Glad you placed the Nano Pi M4 in there (it's the SBC I've been seriously considering for 4 months) as I'm now aware of it's unnecessary issues. I won't be buying one now! Why didn't you include the RockPRO64? You could have compared it with it's smaller brother/sister along with everything else.
The RockPro64 was not there due to software support. Great hardware, weaker software . . .
@@ExplainingComputers You don't think the hardware is of sufficient quality to make up for the software issues, allowing it to outperform the non-PRO unit? Software is the easier fix once the device & OS maker's are informed of the issues. Although your point was to display where things stand at the second you filmed the episode (you didn't say you had, but I hope you updated everything [sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade, sync, sudo sync, sudo halt, power back up] before making the film).
What kernel are you using for the Rock64? Running the recent Recalbox (beta 3.1) and 60fps 4k video on Kodi is perfect. I suspect you are using a very old kernel.
This may be true. I have not updated the kernel from the image downloads on the Pine64 website.
I got fed up with my nanopi, almost okay performance in Kodi on Ubuntu, nothing seemed to work all that well, so when I sold it on eBay I was very happy.
While playing RUclips videos on the raspberry pi using chromium, I notice the green Led flashing. Although there are more than 512 MB free ram, the Pi makes use of the swap file for some reason, thus the frame drops.
Informative and entertaining video. Thanks.
The tinker board work perfectly in android , with kodi you can play 4k h265 @30fps and with newpipe you can play RUclips video at 1080p 60 fps with absolutely no drop ever. It’s my media box for Netflix RUclips prime video and kodi . The only downside is that netfilx and prime video wont stream at 1080p because it’s not a approved peripheral in their database for high resolution streaming (a problem that most SBC have in android). The thinker board is the best value board here, far better than the VIM2 in terms of specs and you get similar result in the android. So yea you should test the thinker board in android, where its shine. You are right to say that the software is the weak point of the TB. anyway nice review, I really like SBC.
I was surprised at the Tinker Board in these tests. I'm sure I've had better performance previously, and struggled to get Android to run last week.
(Side comment). Are you planning on giving a review to the Orange Pi 3? Seems very interesting, though I am not certain if Orange SBCs have a decent software support.
I may well do this. Though the last Orange Pi I looked at had terrible software spport.
Great video, thanks for your efforts. Just wish you had tried the Android OS on the Tinker. My Tinker will be arriving on my doorstep along with a Pi 3 B+ in a couple of days with the intent of getting a Kodi box out of the deal. I've never played with SBC's before, but have had Linux based machines for many years and I use Android phones and tablets so I am familiar with both. I will test both SBC's myself and decide which one will be my media center and which one will be the toy. I had a Android TV years ago, and my TV is the dumb one, so I miss having that computer hooked up to it. Instead of buying the current crop of Android TV, they don't even call it that anymore, but I've decided to "tinker" with a home brewed solution. Your videos on RUclips are a great source of information. I appreciate that you tell it like it is according to your test results. I saw some grumbling in the comments about you favoring the Tinker in the past, but you really don't play favorite to any one platform. Keep up the great work.
Nice to see some high quality content!
hi friend, do you know sbc include nand tsop48/only pin tsop48 with minimal 1GB RAM?
except orange pi R2, orange pi zero 2.
Great Video - and also a great timing for it!
I (re-)watched a lot of your SBC videos in the last days, because I wanted to upgrade my Raspbian Pi with a more powerful device - just for some kind of "personal scientific explorations" with other SBCs :). During the tour through your great review section, I really liked the Tinker Board (S), the NanoPi, the Odroid and the Rock64. So.... I'm a little bit shocked about this results, because this is something I wouldn't have expected, just with the hardware specs in my mind.
Many thanks for this not far from realife usage tests! I guess, I stop my plans, until we know more about the pi4.... or pi² or however its name will be.
Addition: Did you know, how hard it is to get your hands on one of these SBCs (except for the Tinker and Raspberry Pi) in Germany? That's more horrifying than the test results in this video :D
Small size and low cost are key, but two other criteria are fundamental for media player purchase decision: power consumption and noise. Power consumption is more of a concern for an always-on media server. I suppose all of these boards operate with such low power draw as to not raise a concern, but I would give bonus points to a board that could stream 1080p at 10 watts compared to 50 watts. Some of the boards include a fan, and I'm thinking the fan gets a workout when streaming 1080p, so noise could be an issue. Related to both power draw and noise is thermal performance. Do some boards get so hot under this test as to threaten the health of the board?
I would be more interested in exclusive SBC Media centres eg: running libreelec as sbcs are the perfect platform for dedicated media centres. You could look at the perfect remote to go with it too like the ps3 BD remote. PS: Love what you're doing here Chris!
Are you posting the "Ryzen Budget PC Build #3" later today? I just saw you uploaded a video today and expected it to be that.
The third Ryzen video will post next week - Feb 17th. I didn't want the series to dominate the channel too much.
@@ExplainingComputers I'm doing my Ryzen build too, looking forward to the next instalment.
My Ryzen build is currently on hiatus, due to my last place of employment going into administration, and all employees being made redundant.
@lmcgregoruk I hope things work out for you.
+ExplainingComputers
Chris, With the TinkerBoard, the Android distro has never been troubling and 1080p works great in RUclips from a browser or the app. Something to consider and try out for a future video.
I think single board computers will be the next big thing
Eres genial amigo,un abrazo desde San Jerónimo Antioquia colombia
cool !! just on time back form a computer fair Here in Antwerp city, always like these fairs to find new or old hardware stuf.......nice sunday !!
I use 3 raspi as media center in my house. Libreelec. Streaming from Emby, RUclips and IPTV. Only thing that kills them. H265.
You didn't display the stats for nerds with the first Android desktop. Although it looked plenty fine. I'm always fascinated by your videos. Thumbs up!
I'm not sure about the sbcs chosen for this Group.
With the abundance of Fair to ReallyGood sbcs for $30-80 to choose from... does a $400 board really belong in that group?
I explained at the start of the video that the LattePanda Alpha was there to provide a baseline (and it is also there because it has featured a couple of times on this channel, so links back to previous videos). I have about 30 SBCs to choose from and that I have reviewed here previously -- not all of those in the world! :) There are always practicalities to consider . . .
RE Nano Pi M4. Friendly desktop (Ubuntu) uses hardware acceleration in local and RUclips playback. No issues. Android 8 also works and you do have Play store. Armbian does not have acceleration except using a command line player which does. It's all about software utilisation of the board. If the graphics chip is not used, then all SBCs exhibit dropped frames.
TUT, TUT! Explaining Computers! You should follow this up as the Nano Pi is a very capable SBC and Friendly do support it's hardware with their OS.
That's very good to know. Could you tell me which one of the 3 kinds to use (they don't explain what is what: eflasher, typec, sd). I'm interested in flashing on a microSD card, and use it as a live system, as with Raspbian. Do they have that? And what is the difference between friendlycore and their lubuntu version? They don't have such information on their site... quite difficult to understand what to download for their devices.
Hiya, the friendly core has some tweaks like chromium supporting hardware acceleration. I've not explored much, but it runs all the programs you'd expect such as libre office. Not tried lubuntu.
Programming sd is just like the pi for linux. If you then want to use emmc, for Linux or Android, then you flash the sd, boot it and it then installs to emmc. You can also install Linux direct to emmc via a little sd adaptor.
I was kind of disappointed but not realy surprised about the Raspberry Pi 3 B+. That is because, and I'm assuming here, it wasn't created primarily for high performance multimedia play back. I hope it is something that it is addressed on the next generation of the Raspberry Pi.
Thanks I ordered the B+ board just the other day.
I think all browsers for Linux should integrate mpv instead of whatever they are using. mpv is so easy to integrate, and it's really fast. And they could contribute to mpv instead of spending time with whatever slow media playing code they are using.
Conclusion: the sub 100 dollar sbcs are not quite there yet at 1080p...
I love your Channel and am a subscriber, but a 4K H.265/H.264 stream would be a much better comparison. If you wanted to add difficulty, you could run a complex audio (5.1 for example) in a video clip too
Chris, this isn't exactly on topic but do these SBCs use TTL or CMOS voltage level ranges on the GPIO pins? Thanks.
It varies across the boards: most have 3.3V GPIO voltages. LattePandas higher as I recall. I think 5V. But may be wrong!
A fine video that must have required hours of work. Much appreciated.
Hi Chris. One question though. Can any of the other lower points sbc run kodi? If so, will that make a bigger difference since that is an OS designed for media?
Many will run Kodi, though in my experience the Kodi RUclips stream is limited to 720p, regardless of the settings.
Hi Chris,
Thank you for yet another interesting video.
Could you maybe explain the differences between the several platforms and maybe foremost the different players. Some commenters report very good playback using Kodi and others or even just a setting in VLC.
I’m very curious why there are such huge differences. Is it just drivers?
On the Android versions, couldn't you have opened RUclips from the browser to test the online video performance?
Very good point! :)
Thank you Chris very enlightening as I have often thought about buying an SBC as an alternative to a mainstream android TV box.I would have thought media playback was a basic function but apparently not and because I often think in reverse logic does this not make the cheapest android TV box (price comparable) the better SBC as they often offer better value as they have larger amounts of RAM and other hardware features such as a case, cooling solution and power adaptor. The only issue I see is hacking the box to install a different OS which does not seem that hard.
YET another video, great work!
Thanks.
I still think the test wasn't fair since some boards didn't have the right software support so they mostly render via software mode.
Do you think I should wait for the raspberry pi 4 or should I jump on a 3 B+?I really want one and was watching your 3B+ video and thought about what you said (maybe I should wait for a Pi 4 in this year). Idk 😐, I was thinking of getting one and using it to its full potential.
The 3B+ with the latest Raspbian is a very nice SBC . . . and is avaialable today!
Highly entertaining 😊 I figured the rock 64 would do well in Android. It is a very smooth lite OS. Would be perfect for a media center.
Not going to read through 500 replies, but really since you included the Alpha then you should have included the Shield TV. At the end of the day the Alpha is NOT an SBC and if you fall for the marketing of it then the Shield TV is an SBC at it's heart as well. It will also kick the snot out of the lot and can be had as most know now on sale for 150-170 USD. I would take it any day of the week over all that you tested especially since it can decode 4k easily and supports ATMOS.
The LattePanda Alpha is an SBC (everything is on one board!). And I don't have a Shield TV to include.
The Lattepanda Alpha and Khadas VIM 2 are definitely front-runners in the desktop-replacement class. I'm stoked to see your review of the Udoo Bolt (Ryzen-based SBC) when it comes out!
Was the lattepanda current on the video drivers?
I had to update the video drivers which fixed a lot of issues with the board.
As far as I am aware, yes. It had just spent two hours picking up Windows updates too! :)
Chris you need to do a raid set up with raid 5 with the new NanoM4 SATA hat with 4 drives to see its performance.
Great job 👍 loved the video and thank you for the class.
I am SHOCKED!