Hi all,
I am new in the HTPC arena and have been lately growing interest in building one for my living room. I currently have an XBOX360 and use it mainly to stream movies from my PC using media player or through the XBOX360 USB placing movies on pen drives. It works but it is a bit raw and I know I can have a better setup.
I was looking at XBMC and was impressed by how much polished it is and ideal for prime time. I installed it on my Ipad 2 and it worked like a charm. I also saw some videos on youtube and was impressed by the way it works on the original XBox especially when coupled with those old school emulators.
In my livining room I have a 720p 50" Plasma and a Yamaha 6.1 AV receiver which I would like to use with my new HTPC. I narrowed down the following candidates as they are in my price range and they available quite easily in my country.
- XBOX original, chipped with 300GB internal drive
- New Apple TV 3 (will need to wait for a JB though)
- Used Acer Revo R3600 with 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD
- New Foxconn NT-535 without HDD but I have an external HDD which I can use
- Used Dell optiplex USFF (so have to stick to the intel gma 950)
What I want to try to achieve is the following:
- Play 720p HD videos (preferably future proofing to 1080p but not a must) from USB HDD (or internal HDD), pen drive, usb or internal dvd or stream from my windows PC (can also be a normal SMB share over 1Gbps wired network)
- Watch youtube videos
- Be able to have emulator games such as Mame, Sega, Nes...
- Stream free video services such as icefilms, nasa tv, ted talks... (paid services not available in my country - geo blocked)
- Airplay from my ipad 2 or iphone 4s
- Controls using some form or wireless or IR remote control
- Ideally have SPDIF out and hdmi or dvi
Concerns:
Apart from the ATV i think that all the products I narrowed down can do the above to some extent.
I think ATV cannot run emulators.
I know xbox option cannot do 1080p but as I said 720p is enough for me.
The foxconn CPU seems faster than the Revo but the gpu is not ION based (Intel GMA 3150 vs GeForce 9400M). Revo 3600 is also a bit cheaper.
I saw the xbox option on youube and this is the one i liked most but the hw is quite old and dont want to end up doing an outdated system. I am sure that all systems can be made to resemble what I saw on youtube.
I would prefer a linux option rather than windows because of resource usage. Have some basic linux knowledge but even so, this would be a chance for me to learn more
Sorry for all these questions but hopefully these would allow me to go for a final and hopefully informed decision.
Thanks
I am new in the HTPC arena and have been lately growing interest in building one for my living room. I currently have an XBOX360 and use it mainly to stream movies from my PC using media player or through the XBOX360 USB placing movies on pen drives. It works but it is a bit raw and I know I can have a better setup.
I was looking at XBMC and was impressed by how much polished it is and ideal for prime time. I installed it on my Ipad 2 and it worked like a charm. I also saw some videos on youtube and was impressed by the way it works on the original XBox especially when coupled with those old school emulators.
In my livining room I have a 720p 50" Plasma and a Yamaha 6.1 AV receiver which I would like to use with my new HTPC. I narrowed down the following candidates as they are in my price range and they available quite easily in my country.
- XBOX original, chipped with 300GB internal drive
- New Apple TV 3 (will need to wait for a JB though)
- Used Acer Revo R3600 with 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD
- New Foxconn NT-535 without HDD but I have an external HDD which I can use
- Used Dell optiplex USFF (so have to stick to the intel gma 950)
What I want to try to achieve is the following:
- Play 720p HD videos (preferably future proofing to 1080p but not a must) from USB HDD (or internal HDD), pen drive, usb or internal dvd or stream from my windows PC (can also be a normal SMB share over 1Gbps wired network)
- Watch youtube videos
- Be able to have emulator games such as Mame, Sega, Nes...
- Stream free video services such as icefilms, nasa tv, ted talks... (paid services not available in my country - geo blocked)
- Airplay from my ipad 2 or iphone 4s
- Controls using some form or wireless or IR remote control
- Ideally have SPDIF out and hdmi or dvi
Concerns:
Apart from the ATV i think that all the products I narrowed down can do the above to some extent.
I think ATV cannot run emulators.
I know xbox option cannot do 1080p but as I said 720p is enough for me.
The foxconn CPU seems faster than the Revo but the gpu is not ION based (Intel GMA 3150 vs GeForce 9400M). Revo 3600 is also a bit cheaper.
I saw the xbox option on youube and this is the one i liked most but the hw is quite old and dont want to end up doing an outdated system. I am sure that all systems can be made to resemble what I saw on youtube.
I would prefer a linux option rather than windows because of resource usage. Have some basic linux knowledge but even so, this would be a chance for me to learn more
Sorry for all these questions but hopefully these would allow me to go for a final and hopefully informed decision.
Thanks
