The Zotac ZBOX CI660 nano Fanless mini-PC Review: A Promising HTPC Platform

HTPC Credentials - YouTube and Netflix Streaming

Our HTPC testing with respect to YouTube had been restricted to playback of a 1080p music video using the native HTML5 player in Firefox. The move to 4K, and the need to evaluate HDR support have made us choose Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample moving forward. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode. We evaluated the CI660 nano in SDR mode.

Since the streaming was done in SDR mode, the VP9 video stream with Opus audio was played back.

Various metrics of interest such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first four minutes of the playback of the above video. The numbers are graphed below.

The average power consumption for YouTube playback is slightly south of 20W. We see the GPU / D3D Load around the 40% mark in the initial stages when the lower resolution stream is decoded and upscaled for display at 4K resolution. The at-wall power consumption is correspondingly higher around 35W. However, once the 4K resolution stream starts getting decided, the media engine / decoder usage settles down around 50% and the D3D loading is no longer a significant factor.

The Netflix 4K HDR capability works with native Windows Store app as well as the Microsoft Edge browser. We used the Windows Store app to evaluate the playback of Season 4 Episode 4 of the Netflix Test Patterns title. The OS screenshot facilities obviously can't capture the video being played back. However, the debug OSD (reachable by Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D) can be recorded.

The (hevc) entry corresponding to the Video Track in the debug OSD, along with the A/V bitrate details (192 kbps / 16 Mbps) indicate that the 4K stream is indeed being played back. Similar to the YouTube streaming case, metrics such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first three minutes of the playback of the title. The numbers are graphed below.

In the steady state (4K decode and playback), the power consumption is around 18W, and the media engine / decoder load is around 65%.