New ZBOX mini pc - enough power for hi bitrate streaming?

[Temujin]

Just saw the news releases and reviews for the new ZBOX:

Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus mini PC

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/13/zotac...50-apu-ge/

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22779

These little guys have intrigued me for some time but I always questioned if they'd be powerful enough to stream from multiple attached usb drives & networked drives and the hi bitrate mkvs and blu ray rips.
Also will they do the full DTS-HD 5.1 and higher surround audio setups? I thought those little boards and the hdmi port couldn't do full lossless audio, but that may have changed with the new chipsets and mobo combos now.

Anybody own one or know how these guys perform?
I like how my a-210 handles everything i throw at it , but am just looking at options that may have a slightly easier setup/maintenance routine for down the road.

[Jerome]

Fanless???

[Temujin]

Think it has a small fan it, one of the open box pics I saw shows it.

[chris57]

Please post anything about HTPC in Off-Topic. This is the NMT forum not a HTPC or general media playing forum.

[Temujin]

Apologies, thought General was appropriate did not see the Off-topic, my bad

[halfelite]

I have the amd e-450 have not played much with it I got the asus board of it. I can tell you one thing they run extremely hot, people on forums are clocking 70c on them and higher, Still not the best choice for a media player if you are looking to make it a media player bump up to the A6 3500 APU, will get much better results

And the issues with bitstream of audio is they are all hacks/work arounds, To get true bitstream out of an htpc it had to run windows 7, had the correct drivers the cpu had to support it to make the encryption channel with the newest ffmpeg you can bitstream truehd, and with the new audio engine in xbmc you can bitstream dts-hd

[Temujin]

Oh good info, thanks! I don't need a heater on my home theater setup lol

Will that cpu/mobo comboa actually do the full lossless audio though? Those APUs are a little more versatile from the previous htpcs.

[accident]

(04-13-2012 06:35 PM)Temujin Wrote:  Will that cpu/mobo comboa actually do the full lossless audio though? Those APUs are a little more versatile from the previous htpcs.

This is not easy to answer. You can't go by hardware specs for this and I'll try to explain why..

Protected media with hd audio requires the sounds and video working togethers to get them onto the same cable (hdmi) the way the technology and licensing to use it requires. But this already requires software that can support this which also have licensing fees and such with it.. generally it's the pay products that can do it..

Now, at the same time, there have been people working on reverse engineering it to work without licensing. It's very new with some troubles.. It's getting better but it's a project to make work. So programs like mythtv, xbmc, plex, etc are starting to get hd audio to some degree (but it's not fully available like pches with licenses and hardware to do it)..

So before you pick your hardware. use whatever you have now and play with the software out there.. find what you like, find out what your HD audio options are with that software.. This is not the best forum to ask about it.. your really going ot need to get onto the forums of each software to see what options you have.

SIDE NOTE: The big reason I stopped using htpcs is because of the heat and the added costs for heating and cooling when I had them instead of embedded hardware.