It’s always interesting to find out how people use their devices, and I recently discovered Google+ support Polls as Droidmote posted a poll to find out whether people used Wi-Fi or Ethernet with their mini PCs, and I followed up with polls about video and audio outputs. Around 50 people have answered to each poll up to now, so even if it may not representative, let’s have a look at the results so far.
About half of the people are connected via Ethernet, and the other half are using Wi-Fi after 43 votes. Wi-Fi is normally more convenient, but may not be as reliable, and for users playing high bitrate videos Ethernet is a must, unless you find buffering enjoyable….
After 58 votes, most people still connect their mini PC to a Full HD television via HDMI, with a few connecting it to a 4K UHD TV, and nobody using composite or component video outputs. This results was to be expected, as HDMI has been around for many years, and 4K UHD are still pretty new, often expensive, and availability of 2160p content is limited.
The audio output poll surprised me however, as I did not expect that so many people were using AV receivers. 44% of people simply connect their box to the HDMI port to get audio via their TV, but a combined 41% own an AV receiver mostly connected via HDMI (27%), optical S/PDIF (12%), and one person out of the 41 who voted so far is connecting their device via coaxial S/PDIF. Finally 15% connects their device to external speakers / TV via the AV port, and one member of the community mentioned he used a USB connection to an AV receiver with his Android mini PC. If this small sample of users (41) happens to be representative of buyers of Android/Linux mini PCs / TV boxes, manufacturers should really make sure pass-through audio is working as expected.
The polls are still open so feel free to vote if you have a Google+ account. Simply click on the pictures above to open a new window, and vote.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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” manufacturers should really make sure pass-through audio is working as expected” — you mean receiver manufactures correct? as long as the minipc can carry audio in hdmi it should be fine on its end, the receiver with hmdi-audio-pass-through is a bit pricier.
@xxiao
I meant the mini PC manufacturers, because I’ve seen many people complain about audio pass-through not working.
Maybe you could post your own poll?
@Harley
Two of these are actually mine, and they are still open. Or do you mean another type of poll?