Black Friday Sale of the Asus Chromebox now on!
US $114.99 + US $12.91 Shipping
Version with keyboard and mouse for US $149.
Cheapest Chromebox price yet, and for the Asus that's an added bonus!
CamelCamelCamel.
Depends on the framerate, but I'd at least go with a Haswell-based i3.
The Celeron is a Haswell CPU. From the KODI forums, they can handle 4K. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=202201
Yes, if your 4K content is mainly 23.98 fps, the Chromebox should do fine, particularly if you run Linux + Kodi (formerly known as XBMC).
Would this be better than those Android TV boxes? like say the Minix Neo X8H (edit the X8H Plus can do H265..that sound significant)?
Can't say for absolute certain without looking up benchmarks (which I can't be bothered doing), but yeah I reckon. ARM performance isn't great on Chrome devices as it is, and the SoC in that box is not very good at all.
From the ASUS website: 4k UHD playback support with Intel Core i3 SKU only.
Likely refers to unmodded units. If you run Kodi on it, you will have modded it.
for what 4k content? nothing wrong with 1080, 4k is still a gimick.
4k desktops are not a gimick
Been using this unit for over three months with Crouton/Ubuntu. Only switch over to the big rig to play games. A second one would make a fine media player for the TV. My first cost me $200 AUD. With the lousy AUD right now, even with this steep Black Friday discount it comes to $161 AUD. Still a fantastic price though.
FYI, the box pulls around 10 watts at full speed. Veeery dainty power sipper.
regarding to your last line.
does this mean the unit is very power conservative or power hungry? :x
Also - if you're getting one of these for modding purposes, (IE XBMC/Kodi), you will probably want to get a IR receiver. Best of the bunch is the FLIRC. Completely programmable. Amazon also ha them at a killer price.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BB0ETW8/ref=pd_luc_rh_to…
I use one with OpenELEC + XBMC 13.2 and it's great. Used the FLIRC to refine the remote. Got all the buttons I need programmed in now and it's even got WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor!)
Using Flirc with my bedroom unit, together with a backlit Xbox One remote. My Asus Chromebox is VESA mounted with the Flirc directly plugged in. It's completely out of sight and it still works without issues. Good product, excellent Black Friday price for people with a US shipping address.
Just dropped even lower! $114.99 + shipping.
Good thing I was umm-ing and ah-ing about buying it :p
Chromebox cant be shipped to Australia?
Really? I bought my first in August and it arrived in about 4 days.
I bought my second this morning. Both using my WA residential address.
So what's the basis for your concerns?
Amazon is out of stock, so the link automatically redirects to the next least expensive, which doesn't ship to Australia. It's only a few bucks cheaper than the M115U which still is available.
Edit: Probably just a glitch. Shows as In Stock again.
Oh wow. Back up to $146 USD. I got in just in time.
Ordered one last night, just had a chat and got the $5 off this morning.
How do you do that? Is it easier than cancelling and re-ordering?
It was pretty easy, just went to help->need more help->contact and chose chat, then said my ordered item had changed price, took about 5 mins. Maybe easier to cancel and reorder.
Can these run regular linux? Looks like easy enough. Would make a good little firewall type appliance (although would need an extra USB NIC)
There's a guide on the Kodi(formerly XBMC) forums detailing how to dual boot ChromeOS + OpenELEC, ChromeOS + Ubunto, and standalone boot of pretty much any x86 OS by the looks of it.
Of course, but major overkill. If you just want a firewall, get a router supported by OpenWRT.
Well actually I want a little more than a regular router I guess. Unfortunately whilst my current router (Asus RT-N56U) is quite capable, it has a chipset that isn't really supported by OpenWRT/DD-WRT etc at least for now. I want better QoS in particular, a basic webserver would be nice too. I used to run a full ClarkConnect/ClearOS firewall on a separate machine so that's what I'm thinking.
I got a TP-Link Archer C5, it's identical specs to the TP-Link Archer C7 except with the slower 802.11ac spec. Running OpenWrt on it and it's performing great.
I wish these had optical. Would be a good xbmc box for me if it did
I have a little thumb-drive sized USB optical-out device, but they don't seem to be made any more. Only the bigger card-pack sized ones with lots of i/o.
Cheers. Something like that would be cool. Requirements - xbmc, optical for passthrough DTS, ethernet, not sluggish like Raspberry pi and not stupidly priced. Seems too hard to find south of $200.
Already have a a mini-itx board and spare ram. Tempted to pull the pin and just build a dedicated htpc.
Back up to USD $146. It's redirecting to a different supplier that won't deliver to Australia.
EXPIRED - up to USD 159 now.
edit: Shonky, you click on "63 new from $…" to see list of suppliers, then click "add to cart" for the Amazon entry.
Nice to see that once in your shopping trolley, you still get the lower price after they increase it.
With other shops, if you go looking for more items to add, and the price goes up before paying, you miss out.
Yeah, back up to US $159. If you don't mind the keyboard and mouse, you can just pay US $149 for that.
Down to us$134 again. I rate it a buy :)
And anyone who got this, don't forget to claim for free 2yrs x 1TB Google drive storage by 31st Jan.
I assume this would not be future proof enough to handle 4K video at this price.
Can anyone recommend a minimum spec/model that I can keep for a few years and load up with 4k video files?