A Budget Home Theater & PC Setup: 4K, HDR, UHD Blu-ray, and More
by Ganesh T S on December 26, 2017 8:30 AM ESTYouTube Streaming
Our HTPC testing with respect to YouTube has been restricted to playback of a 1080p music video using the native HTML5 player in Firefox. However, the shift to 4K and the necessity to evaluate HDR support have made us choose Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample moving forward.
The TCL 55P607's Roku platform has a YouTube app. Our sample stream played back the 4Kp60 HDR version encoded in VP9 Profile 2 along with AAC audio.
4K YouTube HDR on the TCL 55P607
The NVIDIA SATV also has a YouTube app. However, accessing the sample clip resulted in the fetching of the 4Kp60 VP9 version without HDR. Further research revealed that the Tegra K1 X1 SoC in the SATV does not support VP9 Profile 2. Google's refusal to use HEVC for the HDR videos on YouTube mean that SATV owners can forget about HDR in YouTube streams.
4K YouTube on the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV
On the PC front, the KBL-U systems support VP9 Profile 2 decoding. Using the recommended browser (Microsoft Edge) allows us to play back the HDR stream after putting the desktop in HDR mode.
4K YouTube HDR on the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U using Microsoft Edge
The Zotac EN1080K, however, does not have VP9 Profile 2 hardware decoding. Our sample clip played back the 4Kp60 VP9 version without HDR even with the desktop set to HDR mode and streaming HDR videos enabled.
4K YouTube on the Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN1080K using Microsoft Edge
We also tracked the power consumption (using a Ubiquiti Networks mPower Pro) of the various playback devices while streaming the YouTube sample clip.
| YouTube Streaming - Power Consumption | |||
The Roku power numbers also include the display itself. So, it is not really fair to compare it against that of the other players. Disregarding the Roku data, we find that the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U is the most power-efficient of the lot with respect to YouTube streaming. If the display power consumption were to be considered in addition, it is likely that the Roku would emerge as the winner.
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rapster - Sunday, December 31, 2017 - link
Definitely. My media cabinet alone was $3k and is the budget option compared to the built-in at my last house. I really don’t get the budget complaints unless we’re dealing with kids, and thought the piece addressed quite a few things that caused me grief. Wish I read it before my last build.ganeshts - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Most speakers were re-used from my previous setup, and as such, not a part of the initial purchase list. I assume most users who upgrade can reuse existing speakers. I provided a suggestion in the concluding section.NeatOman - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
I'm still content with my current setup of a plasma connected via HDMI 4:4:4 and true 8-bit to a Pentium G6950/H57/4GB w/60GB SSD that's as quiet as a cat fart. The sound IMO hasn't improved much at all unless you are going full ATMOS, my 10+ year old setup is "limited" by 5.1 96k/24-bit audio :-/ (limited by the human ear as well lol) and the speakers (that cost under a few hundred dollars) haven't really gotten any better in the last 10+ years despite what people claim (marginal at best).Plasma still has better colors than the newest quantum/nando/hyper whatever LCD/LED TV's, although due to light/color bleed either from the panel itself or just having the lights on it's blacks aren't as good on my 6+ year old Plasma. And since i only use it for movies there still isn't any noticable burn in.
But I'm definitely going to replace the PC with something Intel powered that can handle HDR10 and 4K streaming (DRM) that i believe is anything iX-7xxx and up when i get a proper OLED TV.
beisat - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Netflix on PC is never 24p - neither on Edge nor UWP App...just keep that in mind if you ever consider using a htpc on a tv...Orange14 - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
I agree with others as to some of these setups not qualifying as budget HTPCs. In addition, the major fault is to assume that nobody runs cablecard tuners anymore. In my case, I still watch a fair amount of sports that requires such a set up. I've been building my own HTPCs for over five years now in a variety of different configurations. Unless one really needs the setup for gaming, the hardware requirements are modest.euskalzabe - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
I'm so surprised to not even see a mention of Windows 10's horrendous HDR support. I use a HDR10 supporting TV as a monitor, with a GTX 1060, and the second I enable HDR on the desktop everything looks awfully washed out. Many have commented on this problem online forums. Sadly HDR on Windows 10 is, currently, unusable.Aikouka - Wednesday, December 27, 2017 - link
If you enable HDR in the resolution options in Windows, it will leave HDR on *at all times*. The problem is that it makes *no attempts* to adjust the content. So, it will effectively display SDR content in HDR, which doesn't turn out well. Although, I didn't notice nearly as many issues on my Sony TV as I did on my TCL TV (the Best Buy variant of the one in the this article, the P605). I wonder if that's due to the Sony TV's features including adjusting SDR content to try to make it look more like HDR?reiggin - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Not to pile on for the sake of piling on, but as others have said, this article just doesn't meet the stated objective of the headline. It's not a budget setup. It actually fails on two points -- it's neither "budget" nor "setup." To imply that it is a setup would imply that it's fully baked out. It's missing several crucial pieces of info on the speakers/audio quality (only noting the receiver and a set of surrounds is missing so much detail). And it's also missing basic details on how the whole system is configured, intended use, impressions other than technical ones, etc.All in all, this article really disappoints. It's subpar on the quality I've come to expect from Anandtech. There are glaring typos throughout that should be caught with a basic spell check. The structure of the article itself seems to bounce around. Heck, even the introductory first page just seems to be a hot mess.
I think in the end the best (admittedly unsolicited) advice that I could give is to just leave the home theater reviews to AVSForums or some other more experienced site and instead stick to reviews of individual hardware components.
Chyll2 - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Subpar article. I rather see this in a personal blog not in this site. One of the worst "budget" article I saw in a whilemr_tawan - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
On the HTPC front, I guess you went for Core i5 HTPC just for SGX that's required by PowerDVD. It looks like all 7th gen Core CPU supports SGX (unlike Skylake which the lower bound is Core i5), so maybe Core i3 NUC works as well in this regard?