2011-11-04, 01:14
Okay, I have been slowly but surely helping a family out with their entertainment needs. I got them an old XBOX years ago running XBMC and last year got them a flat panel TV. I would like to update the XBMC hardware for HD this year and am looking for something low power, low cost, low noise, blah blah.
I have used Zotac Atom\ION boxes for my own hardware with great success (I have 3 boxes total). I am tempted to do this for them but... the AppleTV 2 has caught my eye! It's small and apparently the install isn't super hard judging from the wiki. Now, how capable is that? 1080 I assume with decent bitrates, is the interface decently responsive with a reasonable sized library? Audio over HDMI without crying? Can I slave a USB HDD off of it or must I use network shares? Any serious pitfalls? Uses the standard Apple remote okay?
With the ION boxes I have super flexability - and have had giant PITA issues with HDMI sound from time to time. Since this will be a gift I'd like it to be as bulletproof as possible regarding tweaking, the fact that they are cheap is a huge attraction and I'm tempted to buy more than one! Thoughts? Can I do better with something else?
Thanks!
I have used Zotac Atom\ION boxes for my own hardware with great success (I have 3 boxes total). I am tempted to do this for them but... the AppleTV 2 has caught my eye! It's small and apparently the install isn't super hard judging from the wiki. Now, how capable is that? 1080 I assume with decent bitrates, is the interface decently responsive with a reasonable sized library? Audio over HDMI without crying? Can I slave a USB HDD off of it or must I use network shares? Any serious pitfalls? Uses the standard Apple remote okay?
With the ION boxes I have super flexability - and have had giant PITA issues with HDMI sound from time to time. Since this will be a gift I'd like it to be as bulletproof as possible regarding tweaking, the fact that they are cheap is a huge attraction and I'm tempted to buy more than one! Thoughts? Can I do better with something else?
Thanks!