It is about decoding robustness/features and GUI experience vs "free" silicon tricks.
Any of those media player boxes (and most ARM boxes, and a lot of Intel GPU stuff actually) use prefabbed silicon designed with certain features that work with video that meets its certain spec. That is the only way it can decode video in many cases, via dedicated silicon. Those features are then "free," as in they don't register a major GPU or CPU hit, but they are limited to compatible video and they can never be more than they are. But they can be a lot as is, as through economies of scale cool stuff that would take a crazy CPU to do in software can be put in dedicated silicon.
What that means in a practical sense is that in some cases a box like a Dune will have a higher PQ because of built in tricks like color correction, deblocking, super-scaling, etc. that your average Intel NUC can't do because of hardware/driver limitations. You play an average scene mkv on both and the media player might look better, because it is doing post-processing that the Intel GPU/CPU doesn't have the power to do in software.
It might seem like these boxes are then clear winners, but that is not the case. The trade-off for that possible higher picture quality is that dedicated box might choke to pieces on a less average video file. Because they lack a lot of extra processing power these boxes, and every ARM box I have touched short of my new iPad Air 2, lack the CPU/GPU power to decode the files in software when it is outside of the spec. That means eventually there might be some file you can't play, and there is no way you can add more power/capability to those boxes. It also means that you never can have an interface like Aeon Nox on a dedicated box, which is why you will never find one in my home. If you are willing to deal with a substandard GUI experience, a computer can replicate every neat "free" silicon trick a dedicated box can do and then some. A higher-end HTPC (like mid-range gaming GPU) with properly configured MadVR beats everything out there. Period.
Personally I use Mini-ITX plus Nvidia in my main viewing areas (as Nvidia on Linux tweaked out can actually beat the 1080p picture quality of most dedicated media boxes), and Intel NUCs in my non-primary viewing areas where PQ matters a little less. If I could only take the NUC vs the box I will still take the NUC, as every married man should. A little PQ improvement over a NUC isn't worth having some file maybe not play (that pisses her off) or having to use a substandard interface (that pisses her off). If I was a single man I would just play every file with mouse and keyboard in MPC+MadVR on some sort of gaming PC kinda like how I did it a decade ago.
Edit: For audio it should all be bitstreamed to the receiver on any platform.
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