Confused with Streamers

parambir

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Dear friends

This is my first post on this forum and I am really looking for some help. With great efforts I have been finally able to put together my 5.1 Home theatre though it may not be half as great as most of you guys out there. I have Yamaha RXV-361, Sanen towers, Sony Sub woofer and Polk Audio centre CS-10 and Polk Audio surround OWM-3. Now my Receiver is good though a bit old since it does not have HDMI input only SPDIF.

My AIM - I want to play 5.1 music through a source that can feed 5.1 to my Receiver. I have been looking at a large number of streamers such as PROBOX2 EX+ and Minix X8-H. They all have SPDIF out for sound as well as HDMI for video/audio. They even have a USB port to connect external HDD to play media from.

Now the big question - Can I play my 5.1 music or DVD video with 5.1 audio stored in HDD through these boxes where video goes to TV through HDMI and audio goes to Receiver through SPDIF.

Anyone who has actually used these streamers can throw some light, I will be highly grateful.

Regards and Thanks
 
Minix X8-H has a setting where you can set the audio output to both HDMI and SPDIF. This will meet your requirement of Video on TV and audio on your receiver.

With Kodi, you can play your music and videos with 5.1 without any problems.
 
Minix X8-H has a setting where you can set the audio output to both HDMI and SPDIF. This will meet your requirement of Video on TV and audio on your receiver.

With Kodi, you can play your music and videos with 5.1 without any problems.

Thank you Gopichand for your input. Is there anyway I can call you and clarify further doubts? Either you can pm me your contact number or mail me at [email protected] Will be grateful

Thanks
 
There are many streamers and almost all the Blu-ray players can do this for you. For the similar cost of Minix, I guess you can setup a HTPC instead, which is more versatile and robust.

Dont get your hopes too high on 5.1 music unless you know what you are doing.
 
There are many streamers and almost all the Blu-ray players can do this for you. For the similar cost of Minix, I guess you can setup a HTPC instead, which is more versatile and robust.

Dont get your hopes too high on 5.1 music unless you know what you are doing.
Can you elaborate on this please? And the part of setting up HTPC
 
Now the big question - Can I play my 5.1 music or DVD video with 5.1 audio stored in HDD through these boxes where video goes to TV through HDMI and audio goes to Receiver through SPDIF.

Anyone who has actually used these streamers can throw some light, I will be highly grateful.

Regards and Thanks

Yes Minix will let you play 5.1 DD DTS music via your receiver connected either via HDMI or spdif .... However I dont know about you, BUT music in 5.1 only sounds and feel better with video or movies running with it ..... for normal music listening 2.0 is the way it should be.
 
I do have some country and metal music in 5.1 and would like to listen to it through the streamer. But will probox2 ex+ also let me play dvd video with video outputted on hdmi and audio on spdif?
 
I have the minix that you have mentioned and a bluray player from pioneer both are capable of sending video to tv or projector and audio to reciever. The only caveat of sending audio over optical or coaxial digital is down sampling of DTS HDMA and DD HD to DTS and DD.

You are correct in saying that the quality of music with respect to Soundstage is the best with multichannel audio when the source material is recorded in multichannel. This has high sampling rates however such material is rare. I had a few DVD that came with a high end audio card and sounded great.

Rset of the 99.9 percent of music is just stereo.
 
Thanks everyone. Everyone is talking about minix but can I have views about probox2 ex+ too. Suppose I upgrade my receiver with the one that had hdmi port then how will the system work. From the streamer the hdmi cable goes to receiver and from hdmi out of receiver it goes to tv? Receiver extracts the audio and sends video to tv? Sorry for sounding naive.
 
yes you are correct ....... if you purchase an AVR, the HDMI from your streamer out will go to AVR HDMI in, and from AVR HDMI out to TV HDMI in. Set you streamer to bitstream audio and you are done.
 
Hello friends. After having going through the suggestions and inputs from you all, I have upgraded my Receiver to yamaha V671. Now I have enough HDMI ports. I was about to place order for Minix X8-H plus but found Minix U1 also launched and with good reviews. I was wanting to know if anyone of you have used it and is it better than X8? My requirement is simple. I want to be able to play 5.1 audio through my Yamaha as a true 5.1 and incase of DVD videos play them on TV with audio to Receiver. I know I will need to connect Minix to one of the HDMI IN ports or receiver. Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
Hello friends. After having going through the suggestions and inputs from you all, I have upgraded my Receiver to yamaha V671. Now I have enough HDMI ports. I was about to place order for Minix X8-H plus but found Minix U1 also launched and with good reviews. I was wanting to know if anyone of you have used it and is it better than X8? My requirement is simple. I want to be able to play 5.1 audio through my Yamaha as a true 5.1 and incase of DVD videos play them on TV with audio to Receiver. I know I will need to connect Minix to one of the HDMI IN ports or receiver. Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Whats the price difference, if it isnt much then U1 else X8H-plus, X8 is a trustworthy product, and does DD/DTS decoding. U1 does DTHD Pass through, so both would allow you to have 5.1 audio. U1 will also do 4K@60fps vs 30 on x8, but that hardly is a feature I will bank upon, but non the less for a new user if price diff is negligible then U1 else I would recommend X8
 
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One more thing, I do not know about Sanen towers, however, I would recommend that you change the towers to Polk audio of the same series so that you have the same "voicing" with all the speakers. I understand that you are not looking for such advice here, but that is the first thing that struck me when I read your post.
 
That is in the pipeline but just picked up couple of stuff including RM8 rear speakers. So budget constraints. But yes advise taken

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk
 
Wow excellent building up of a system. I am using a Philips bluray player which bitstreams content over HDMI and Coaxial. Connections and functionality are quite straight forward and simple. I have connected a 1 TB hdd to its USB for music and videos.

The only format it does not support is .MKV

MaSh
 
Whats the price difference, if it isnt much then U1 else X8H-plus, X8 is a trustworthy product, and does DD/DTS decoding. U1 does DTHD Pass through, so both would allow you to have 5.1 audio. U1 will also do 4K@60fps vs 30 on x8, but that hardly is a feature I will bank upon, but non the less for a new user if price diff is negligible then U1 else I would recommend X8

Well cost is actually not a factor. U1 is just about $10-12 cheaper. But the point is actually about feature and future proof (Not a good parameter since evry now and then something new is coming up). But then the main advantages/strengths of NEO U1 over NEO X8-H Plus are:
- 4K 60fps, compared to NEO X8-H Pluss 4K 30fps
- Support for up to 10-bit colour format, compared to support up to 8-bit colour format
- Inclusion of HDMI 2.0, compared to HDMI 1.4
- Inclusion of 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi (meaning both internal and external antenna), compared to standard 802.11ac Wi-Fi
- Android Lollipop 5.1.1 OS, compared to Android KitKat 4.4.2 OS
- Bluetooth 4.1, compared to Bluetooth 4.0
- Lower price

Seeing the above it does make it a viable option. Though my doubt still remains unclear.
 
There is not enough 4k material at 30 fps let alone 60. The only ones I have is the big buck bunny free download clip. The regular ac wifi network on the 8h plus was sufficient to smoothly playback 4k clips from my nas connected to netgear r7000 through 2 masonry walls to the minix plus, you can hardwire too.

Hdmi 2.0 is definitely futureproofing. The U1 looks good on specs but you should check if it works fine too.
 
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