[ronbaby]

I'm just wondering is anybody has been compiling a list of all hardware for which there are actual user reports.

To be clear, I'm not talking about what is or isn't officially supported. I'm talking about what people have actually tried and found to either work or not work.

It appears to me that there are quite a lot of user reports in these XBMC hardware fora, and I'm just thinking that it would be Nice if all of that information was compiled into a big table or something... you know.. so that folks new to XBMC and/or those looking to acquire new hardware could just look up the bit of hardware they are considering and see what other folks' experiences have been with that.

I'm thinking that it might even be possible to get people to cooperate in submitting evaluation reports where they would test their hardware with some very specific test files, you know, so that the table could contain very objective test results, rather than the kind of subjective results that I seem to see in a lot of places... you know.. like when people say that hardware "X" will or won't playback 1080p but then they fail to qualify that statement any further.


P.S. Yes, I am aware that as of today, there are about eight gazillion different kinds of hardware out there on which XBMC could run... either theoretically or actually. What I'm asking about and/or suggesting isn't a massive project to test the entire universe of such hardware but only to compile data that is, for the most part, already being contributed from/by XBMC users about what works and what doesn't, and to make that available in an easy-to-search/navigate format.

[Ned Scott]

The hard part of that is that people seem to have different experiences with the same hardware. Sometimes people think the hardware sucks when it's a software issue, or sometimes something will run better under linux or windows, etc. Or even they disagree on acceptable performance, like some people love using their Raspberry Pi's while others say to stay away from them.

Perhaps it would be easier to make a more narrow "safe list", since new users are the main target? Basically, hardware that most people will agree about and doesn't require any special tweaking.

[ronbaby]

The hard part of that is that people seem to have different experiences with the same hardware. Sometimes people think the hardware sucks when it's a software issue, or sometimes something will run better under linux or windows, etc.

Yes. But what I was sort-of suggesting/proposing (if it doesn't already exist) was just a way of organizing all of the various user experiences that are reported, you know, to make it easy (or anyway, easier) to find a bunch of user reports that all relate to the same hardware and OS combination. It is absolutely the case that different people's experiences are going to be different... for whatever reasons... even under the exact same hardware+OS combinations. One might say that in such cases, some of the experience reports are in some sense more "correct" than others, but I did not have it in mind to make any judgements about who is right and who is sharing bad/incorrect information. Just like on these XBMC fora, there is always going to be a spectrum of experiences for any given hardware+OS combination, and that's OK. It would just be nice to be able to punch in, say, "Blato 9000" and, say, "Knoppix" (or whatever) and see all user experience reports for that HW/SW combination.

Or even they disagree on acceptable performance, like some people love using their Raspberry Pi's while others say to stay away from them.

Right. Well, that's why I suggested maybe having some "standard" test files. People could play those and if the audio cuts in and out, or if the video stutters, then people could report that this is what they have seen for (say) Evaluation File #5.

Perhaps it would be easier to make a more narrow "safe list", since new users are the main target?

That would be an excellent thing to have also, but again, what I am talking about is what does work (or what can be made to work) which my own experiences with XBMC so far seem to indicate is a lot more than just what is "officially" supported.

Just to give you a couple of examples, I have Radeon X600 cards in a couple of machines here. Now according to what is officially supported (by the XBMC project) those won't work with XBMC. But what I have found is that in fact they do work, and quite nicely even, and they can even be used for playback of some 720p and even 1080p content as long as the bitrates aren't too high. Similarly, I also have a 2 and 1/2 year old laptop that has a Core 2 Solo CPU with integrated 4500MHD (Intel) graphics and going by what one can read online (both in the XBMC fora and elsewhere) about the 4500MHD, this CPU/GPU combination should be almost entirely useless for playing videos with XBMC, but my personal experience is that in fact this also works quite well, and I was even able to use it to play the (high bitrate) "birds" test file that's provided here and I got -zero- stuttering when I did that! (And that was both when I was outputting just to the built-in 1366x768 LCD and also when outputting via HDMI to a 720p plasma.) But trying to play a small segment of a ripped/decrypted Blu-Ray (Inception) on this same hardware resulted in some very apparent and frequent frame dropping. Still, if someone wanted to buy a cheap machine that would only be asked/expected to handle StdDef material, then this hardware would be more than sufficient, I think. (It has performed flawlessly on all StdDef material I've asked it to play and even a good deal of non-VC1 720p and 1080p material too.)

Just one more data point to reinforce what I've said above and what I'm getting at: I briefly had access to an HP 8530p laptop with an HDMI output port. The thing could play everything I threw at it, but for the life of me I could never get it to send anything other than 2 channel (L)PCM audio out the HDMI port. If someone wanted to get a "media player" hunk of hardware that was really inexpensive, which could double as a regular laptop, and which (with XBMC) could play just about any file, then getting a used HP 8530p or 8530w or 8510p or 8510w laptop off eBay would be good choice (in my opinion) as long as the buyer didn't feel the need for anything other than 2-channel stereo audio output.

Obviously, there are already tons of these kinds of user experience reports here in these fora. But they are mixed in with everything else, and are often more subjective than objective, and so I was just thinking that it might be Nice to try and build up a collection of more objective user experience reports, and organize those so that one could just enter one's hardware and OS of interest to be taken right to a set of experience reports about that exact combination.

P.S. My interest is not entirely academic. I've been looking at Acer Aspire Ones (models AO722-xxxx and AO725-xxxx) on eBay and I'd love to know if the C-50/C-60 sub-flavors of those can bitstream 5.1 DD/DTS and I'd also like to know if the C-50/C-60 in these things has a prayer in hell of keeping up with Lawrence of Arabia (Blu-Ray).

[GortWillSaveUs]

I love your idea,..but I think the hard part will be matching all the disparate components with each other.
In other words,...CPU1 works with MB2,..but not with RAM5,..and will not fit in CASE3.
Don't get me wrong,..I think this could be a good thing,..just a "Herculean effort".

The other problem is that this can be pretty overwhelming to a new PC builder. Heck,..it can be confusing to anyone.
I have truly appreciated Eskro and Beer's examples where they list their parts,...and state that it works with XBMC (and everything that implies).
These two gentlemen (as well as others) have posted videos showing their systems in action.
These type of examples help in that, you're not confusing someone with the many types of RAM, or MOBO types,...
Many many people have built the A6 Build and simply are blown away in that it does everything it should.

It bothers me to see someone new come to these forums, state that they're going to build an A6 system,..only to be to thrown 50 different other options.
Look,..I'm not saying that those 50 systems aren't just as viable,..or even more so,...I'm just saying, this can all be a little too much for someone that could be enjoying a system now.

[Dougie Fresh]

I don't think you'll even get agreement on how to organize this or if it's viable/useful.

For myself, I have a few different combinations that I know are "tried and true" because I've built them for so many people. Each one serves a specific purpose from nettop to HTPC to gamer and a whole bunch of other dimensions. Those became the barebones systems that I offer. To get there I had to try all these things out myself, test them, build them, etc. It took a lot of work to see what fits, what doesn't, what runs too hot, what's too slow, what's easy to find out there, etc. Then, even that proves controversial when you post your results as you'll find plenty of people who'll dispute your findings even though they've never built it and used it themselves. It goes to what Ned says above, for every post that says "I built an i3-3225 and it worked great" you'll get "Intel sucks", "that's overkill", "you're just a biased fanboy", etc.

What makes it trickier still is that everyone has a different idea of what an HTPC is. Some just want to watch movies from a hard drive, some from a server, some from the Internet (which if it's Netflix HD means different hardware than can handle the former), live TV, gaming, music. Some want silent which could mean "not very noisy" or altogether fanless. Some want really small, some want AVR-looking, some don't care and will sit a tower next to their TV. Some want as cheap as possible, others want the best bang for the their bucks, others want the best no matter the cost (and best is subjective).

What "works" varies widely by what the requirements of the user are. That's whay I always try to start with that first.

What you're proposing would be better suited to a blog or wiki.

[GortWillSaveUs]

++1 to Dougie ^^^

[Beer40oz]

Yes +1 for Dougie... it really just comes down to read and try.... what makes you happy. Someone likes this case someone hates it... it's all preference... mostly all builds are capable of doing everything.