[stoobydale]

Hi, stumbled across this forum a little too late. I have already bought most of the bits for my first HTCP build, just waiting for some parts to arrive in the post.

Case, Streacom F7C Evo (not overly impressed, more later)
MOBO, ASRock FM2A85X-itx
CPU, AMD A6 640K Black Edition
Cooler, Scythe Kozuti SCKZT-1000
RAM, Crucial DDR3 PC3 10600
PSU, Streacom Nano 150w
Remote, Streacom IR Receiver and remote
ODD, Sony BC-5600S Blu Ray Combo (from China??)
Case Fan, Coolink SWiF2 80P
HD, 120GB SSD Kingston SSD Now V300
Wireless, Dynamode Nano 802.11n Wireless USB Adapter (2T2R) - 802.11n 300Mbps

So, thats all the bits. What I was hoping to do was to replace the stand alone Blu Ray player in the room with a HTPC. It will be used for Blu Ray and DVD playback from disk and also ripped films in various formats from an external HDD. Very very rarely it will be used to stream music and pictures from the home NAS. Playback will be via an Onkyo amp and a Panasonic 42" plasma, everything needs to be easy as I live with a house full of technophobes. The biggest stumbling bloc for me and the reason why my head is hurting is because I don't know what software to use. I have a choice of Win7 Professional, Win7 Ultimate and Win8. The other thing that I don't understand is booting straight into XBMC from a USB stick. The more I read, the more confused I become. Please help an idiot in distress?

[mayoman]

If you are booting from a USB stick you would be using a cut down Linux OS like OpenElec which has no GUI (desktop) other than XBMC itself, or XBMCbuntu which is a bit more desktop support behind XBMC.
However, as you are getting an SSD, there is no real reason to do this - One of the benefits of the SSD is the faster boot time you have from putting your OS onto it.

Your choice on OS is personal. OpenElec, XBMCbuntu, or another "light" Linux distro like Xubuntu will be faster than Windows (both to boot and will put less of a strain on your system when running).
However, there are some things that Linux does not support(e.g. Netflix addon), and if you have a house of Technophobes, then the security of a windows desktop behind XBMC will help, (assuming they are at least familiar with Windows)
I would go with Win7 over Win8, but again that's a personal choice as much as anything.
No difference between Win7 pro and ultimate I am aware of unless you want to use Bitlocker or have a multilingual household.

[stoobydale]

Thanks for the reply mayoman. What would you recommend for Blu ray playback?

[mayoman]

What would you recommend for Blu ray playback?

Sorry, I'm a hardware cheapskate so can't help you there (No Blu ray player or TV good enough to make it worthwhile getting one)

I'm sure the Sony BC-5600S you have ordered will be fine though. XBMC should pick it up no problem.

[Starstream]

Be aware that XBMC BD playback does not fully support BD menus, it's there but experimental and you'd need software to decrypt the BD in real time like AnyDVD-HD. Normal BD playback is to auto play main title from the disc skipping menus.

Win7, Win8 don't matter though if using USB3 drives go with Win8 as it supports those, Win7 doesn't support USB3 natively and it's very unreliable in my experience.

If it were me I would have stuck with a reasonably decent BD player with USB/DLNA support like one from LG, technophobes tend to handle those more basic systems better but seeing as you've already pulled the trigger on the HTPC there's no going back, I would also look at Confluence Customizable Mod, this is a skin based off the default XBMC skin that allows you to hide all the various elements making it a more streamlined system. Get rid of add-ons, programs and whatever else you think is not needed like music or pictures.

[stoobydale]

Thanks again for your input. I think this is one of the areas where I am struggling. From what I understand, XBMC can not play back a Blu ray disk. I think I have to get some 3rd party software like Power DVD. Could be completely wrong though.

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Thanks Starstream, must have been typing at the same time as you. The stand alone player that I have is a Samsung BD-C6500 it's ok but it quite often struggles with some of the formats that I get my films on, and as for streaming films to it from the home NAS it's rubbish. Constant drop outs over the wireless. Would Power DVD negate me having to use XBMC with AnyDVD-HD running in the background? Happy with either route just want the one that works best.

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Wooah, don't know what happened there. 2 posts in the same box?

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Now 3??