I feel overwhelmed, where do I start?
#1
So, I figure a good x-mas present to the household would be a media center. I look around and it seems xbmc is what most would recommend. There appears to be different versions to run on top of other OS's and then a version that is it's own OS. What would be best for me? My daily use computers in the house run ubuntu, obviously the ubuntu based one caught my eye right away, but then the idea of having it's own OS appeals to me also.

What I'm looking to get out of a media center
-Play dvd
-Play run a torrent client
-Have a remote of some sort, what are my options here?
-Be able to share files on a network, allowing me to sit here and file manage
-Play music in a visually appealing way.
-way to browse and play youtube videos would be a bonus

is there anything else I might not know I want that xmbc offers? I really can't seem to find a list of features.

as for ubuntu vs own OS, I would imagine the file sharing would be effortless if I used ubuntu version, or is it simple with the own OS also? also would I be able to run a torrent client? or would it possibly be more simple to run the torrent client on this computer and just have it save files on the media center?

I guess I'm getting at, before I buy hardware, I want to make sure I can do what I want with the software.
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#2
If you're familiar with Ubuntu, then you've two obvious choices: OpenElec if you want an "appliance", or Ubuntu+XBMC (maybe XBMCbuntu, but not necessarily) if you want it to do more.

Fundamentally, OpenElec is a custom Linux distro that just runs XBMC. It's small, fast, dedicated - yes, you get SMB/CIFS and NFS in there, but running a browser or loading up other daemons is challenging. If that's what you want, then you can go for a simple installation of XBMC onto the distro of your choice (Ubuntu and cousins are well supported) or you can try XBMCbuntu, which is a customised Ubuntu distro that boots either into XBMC or a lightweight desktop environment.

For a remote, you can use a Windows Media Centre compatible unit and lirc for IR control, or many people (myself included) have found that the investment in Pulse-eight's CEC adapter to be well worth it.

YouTube comes in the shape of an XBMC add-on, as do many other sources. Where you're limited here is in the arms race between content providers and clients - many providers don't like people "scraping" videos, so addons break sometimes. Also, if you're interested in anything like Netflix then you're limited to Windows as the client OS because of the DRM, I believe (I don't use it, so not really my specialist subject).

Pretty much any OS platform supports the PVR functions now (I had live TV streaming to my Android 'phone yesterday...), although the choice of OS changes your choice of PVR backend to a certain extent - tvheadend and Myth push you towards Linux, Argus and others push you towards Windows.

Have a search for torrent add-ons if that's what you're after, I'm sure they exist. There are also other, more nefarious add-ons for downloading binaries if that's your thing.

The final thing to immediately think about is where to store your media - is it an all-in-one with your media on the HTPC, do you have/need a NAS, does anything else need to access the files (e.g. streaming music to a 'phone), do you want to have your HTPC on to do that, etc.
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I feel overwhelmed, where do I start?0