A Budget Home Theater & PC Setup: 4K, HDR, UHD Blu-ray, and More

Evaluating Display Sources: HTPCs & CE Devices

Home Theater PCs used to be bulky versatile machines that had to support built-in TV tuners, a number of hard disks, as well as optical drives. However, the rising popularity of network TV tuners, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, and OTT streaming have resulted in the a transformation of the functionality that people expect from HTPCs. Simply put, a modern-day HTPC needs to be a flexible and versatile media player capable of handling a multitude of codecs and DRM requirements. The latter is not restricted to the handling of the encoded video. The display output also needs to be secure, while providing enough bandwidth and features to take full advantage of the capabilities of the downstream devices in the setup.

The average consumer often finds the 'it just works' nature of consumer electronic (CE) equipment such as the Roku streamers, game consoles, and standalone Blu-ray players to be attractive. However, for power users, the flexibility of HTPCs (such as the ability to support arcane subtitle formats or specific container features such as MKV chapters, or, even serve as a gaming machine) is simply too much to give up. Certain CE devices such as the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV STB attempt to offer the best of both worlds. However, they are still closed platforms, and often do not have enough horsepower to fall back upon software decode for unsupported codecs.

Despite my predilection for HTPCs, I wanted to bring out the pros and cons of other closed solutions. Towards this, the evaluation of various options for media playback / display sources addresses the following aspects:

• HDR Support
• OTT Streaming (YouTube and Netflix)
• Local Media Playback (via USB)
• UHD Blu-ray Playback with HDR

The first candidate is the TCL 55P607's built-in Roku platform. Our tests were processed with the TV connected to the network using its wired 10 / 100 Mbps interface and Wi-Fi disabled. Firmware version 8.0.0 4142-30 was used.

The second solution in our evaluation set is one of the most popular Android TV STBs in the market - the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV (SATV). Despite having launched back in 2015, the combination of high-end hardware and regular firmware updates have kept it at the top of the media player / Android TV STB market. Our tests were processed with the SHEILD connected to the network using its wired 1 Gbps interface and Wi-Fi disabled. Firmware version 6.2 was used.

The use of a RF remote / controller, combined with IP control using a smartphone app, mean that the SHIELD can be safely tucked away out of sight in a home theater setup.

Moving on to the HTPC front, we have three different PCs, with configurations and driver versions listed in the table below.

Note that we are using a beta driver from Intel that will be released to the public in January 2018. The reason behind the use of this driver will be apparent in our UHD Blu-ray Playback section.

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update was used as the OS for all the tests done using the above PCs. This version is critical for cutting-edge HTPC functionality, as it brings HDR desktop and media payback support into the stable release channel.