USB stick-sized PCs

Hardware and technical stuff
1

So I just bought one of these on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MB9TC33/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1500×1466

With coupon, ending up being $130.

Somehow comes with a full install of Windows 10 Pro for that price. Atom processor 4GB of ram, 64GB of storage. Tiny little thing.

I was in the process of updating my HTPC, and saw this deal and decided to go for it. Arriving tomorrow. Excited to see how it does in the HTPC role, connected to my big external storage drive with all the family videos and photos.

Anyone else try one of these before?

2

We have a bunch of whatever the state-of-the-art Intel devices would’ve been about two years ago at my work that we were going to try to use to create some homebrew multimedia signage. Turned out to be severely underpowered unfortunately. We shelved the project and I haven’t really done anything else with them. They were so so so slow with Windows; I think we managed to get Linux to boot but it wasn’t a whole lot better.

3

I would SEVERELY check your expectations if you think you need to transcode your video.

Some of our Synology NAS devices have Atoms. They are sufficient for serving data and stream of pre-encoded video, but they can’t handle transcoding worth a damned.

Diego

4

These pop up frequently on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/

You might want to search there based on what function you want from it. Some mentioned that they are low powered for anything transcoded but could handle other tasks okay. The one you linked appears to be a new model, but still based off an Atom chip.

5

Is transcoding required in most media playback (e.g., playing videos recorded on iPhone via VLC)?

6

It depends on your use case. So entirely on how the video was encoded vs how it is being played back and available bandwidth.

Examples:

  • If you’ve encoded to a format that most players won’t natively play then you’ll be transcoding almost everything.

  • If you’ve encoded to resolutions that are way too big for the available network bandwidth then you’ll be transcoding almost everything.

  • OTOH if most of your stuff is pre-encoded in MP4 at 1080p then you’re probably good for many of the situations that might come up.

Diego

7

Thanks.

Sounds like I might be fine for most/all of what I’m doing. Stuff is mostly bog standard iPhone recorded videos stored on an external drive connected via USB 3.1.

I’d like to stream Netflix/Amazon via the stick, but it’s not a big deal to switch over to my AppleTV.

8

I found these to be too under-powered. Those wanting a HTPC would be better served with a STB like NVIDIA’s Shield.

9

I finally got around to setting this up. So far, I’m really pleased with it. Hooked up to my 4K TV, it’s worked great for playing all my home videos and the digital movies that you get when buying discs nowadays. It’s not the fastest to boot and can’t really multi-task well, but doing a great job of what I intended it for. Does well for youtube and netflix, too, though I primarily use my AppleTV for that.
Amazing that you can get something like this for $130.

The two USB ports are perfect: 1 for my wireless mini-keyboard trackpad thingy and 1 for my external hard drive with all the home videos.