More powerful "Tiny Boxes"?
#1
I have an Acer Revo 1600, Pivos Xios DS, and AppleTV2. The Revo by far has the best performance as far as navigating XBMC menus smoothly and quickly with it's atom cpu. I love the form factor of the AppleTV2 and the Xios DS, but both are still lacking in CPU power. HD playback is great on both devices, but General XBMC navigation usage has a lot left to be desired, as well as fancy skins, quick loading fanart, etc. These two devices are both just to slow for optimum user enjoyability. I love the speed of navigation on the Revo vs the Xios & AppleTV2. I have avoided the Raspberry Pi simply because using fanart, etc. is not recommended on it. The playback capability is great, but general usage has a lot to be desired. It's the same scenario as people that complained about Windows Vista being a memory hog etc. when it first came out............and the "solution" was to use "windows classic mode" and turn off themes. What's the point of upgrading then? I am waiting for somebody to make a tiny box like the XIOS that has enough processing power to run the high-end XBMC skins with snappy navigation etc, as well as playing back HD content. As soon somebody gets one of these on the market and it's affordable ($99 - $120 price point), that will be the ultimate XBMC box. Others thoughts on this?

-hogfan
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#2
Yeah I still use an Acer Revo 1600 in my bedroom. If anything new comes out it has to run at least as good as this for me to consider it. I know there are a handful of android devices coming out so they might have the CPU to run the skins smoothly. I also know Sigma has hardware running XBMC now, but I don't know how well it runs. I think next year we will hear some good news on this relationship with Sigma.

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#3
you looked at lenovo q190?
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#4
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#5
ODROID U2 for PRESIDENT of the world! Not to be confused with the ODROID X(2) (which is also awesome). Starts at $90 USD, hardware decoding for h.264, software decoding that should handle most 720 videos (other hardware decoding codecs should be possible for 1080. It's a licensing issue right now), tiny as hell, and it's one of the most powerful ARM boxes that you can buy.

Oh, and world-wide shipping starts at $30 USD. There's also a slightly less powerful version (but still way powerful for an ARM box) for $70.

http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/p...5341370451

http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/p...5341359084


Look how smooth that GUI is:
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#6
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#7
(2012-12-02, 08:23)Ned Scott Wrote: ODROID U2 for PRESIDENT of the world! Not to be confused with the ODROID X(2) (which is also awesome). Starts at $90 USD, hardware decoding for h.264, software decoding that should handle most 720 videos (other hardware decoding codecs should be possible for 1080. It's a licensing issue right now), tiny as hell, and it's one of the most powerful ARM boxes that you can buy.

Oh, and world-wide shipping starts at $30 USD. There's also a slightly less powerful version (but still way powerful for an ARM box) for $70.

http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/p...5341370451

http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/p...5341359084


Look how smooth that GUI is:

Good info thanks! Looking forward to reading about them.

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#8
I am psyched about this box! will just need a prettier case and it will rule. No hardware acceleration at this point? Or just no support for other codecs?

-hogfan
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#9
Greetings fellow hog fan!

I'm still running the Revo 1600 myself. Though I just use the default XBMC skin. Shortly after purchase, I installed an extra gig of RAM, as most XBMC tutorials said to do. I later replaced the internal HDD with a cheap 32GB SSD, which fixed the fanart/poster loading issue.

I'm going to be testing the new Intel NUC this week to see if it will be a suitable replacement for the Revo. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6444/intel...g-hands-on

Downside thus far is that it's a damned expensive replacement.

WPS
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#10
Oooh, that NUC's spec look so delicious in such a compact box. My wallet is shrinking the more I read about it.
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