As much as I love Pis (I have six or seven around doing home automation, 3D printer servers, etc.), I should point out that just about any cheap Intel with Quic

As much as I love Pis (I have six or seven around doing home automation, 3D printer servers, etc.), I should point out that just about any cheap Intel with QuickSync support will do hardware transcoding vastly better (I use an Intel(R) Atom(TM) x5-Z8350, which is way worse than the current crop of sub-$200 miniPCs).