2011-01-22, 20:38
Hi folks, as usual I'm a long-time lurker first time poster...
I've been running XBMC for a while on an full-sized PC in the family room (AMD something with HD3300 integrated graphics). I recently upgraded to 10.0 and made the switch to the Aeon skin. Now everything is beautiful but sadly slow and Blu-Ray rips are choppy. So I need to move this htpc to the bedroom and get an upgrade... (Yes, I could get a discrete graphics card but it wouldn't be as much fun now would it?)
The only thing that I will be using this new PC for is watching HD video with DTS audio (HDMI out to the receiver). Some will be from Blu-Ray rips and the rest will be 1080i content recorded on another HTPC using BeyondTV. No gaming required. All content will come from a media server across a gigabit ethernet connection.
I want something that looks like it belongs with the rest of my home theatre gear and is fairly small and quiet. I like the look of a lot of the Atom/Ion pre-built systems like the ZBOX.
But while I'm pretty sure that a ZBOX could handle all the playback that I need I'm unsure as to whether or not it is powerful enough to do all that and have Aeon running with all the bells and whistles.
So do I need a custom build or can I use something like a ZBOX? My budget is flexible, but I'd like to keep it under $600 (otherwise I might get that ASRock sytem that poofyhairguy has linked to a couple of times).
Any advice guys?
I've been running XBMC for a while on an full-sized PC in the family room (AMD something with HD3300 integrated graphics). I recently upgraded to 10.0 and made the switch to the Aeon skin. Now everything is beautiful but sadly slow and Blu-Ray rips are choppy. So I need to move this htpc to the bedroom and get an upgrade... (Yes, I could get a discrete graphics card but it wouldn't be as much fun now would it?)
The only thing that I will be using this new PC for is watching HD video with DTS audio (HDMI out to the receiver). Some will be from Blu-Ray rips and the rest will be 1080i content recorded on another HTPC using BeyondTV. No gaming required. All content will come from a media server across a gigabit ethernet connection.
I want something that looks like it belongs with the rest of my home theatre gear and is fairly small and quiet. I like the look of a lot of the Atom/Ion pre-built systems like the ZBOX.
But while I'm pretty sure that a ZBOX could handle all the playback that I need I'm unsure as to whether or not it is powerful enough to do all that and have Aeon running with all the bells and whistles.
So do I need a custom build or can I use something like a ZBOX? My budget is flexible, but I'd like to keep it under $600 (otherwise I might get that ASRock sytem that poofyhairguy has linked to a couple of times).
Any advice guys?
