2014-01-02, 06:39
A friend of mine recently bought a Matricom G-box and I set XBMC up on it with an external hard drive full of movies. I'm in love with XBMC now and want to replace my own WD TV Live but I'm stuck... there are so many options. I've been researching for a few weeks now, and I just can't find a good answer. I'm no stranger to building computers so my plan at first was to build a HTPC but it's much more expensive than say the $100 Matricom box or even a Lenovo Q190 which I can get for about $270.
My #1 use of it will be to watch movies. I have a server running Windows Home Server 2011, it has an attached NAS with 4TB of video and photos. All gigabit ethernet running from server to entertainment area, so I'm not overly concerned with WiFi capability. I do have a 3D TV so it would be nice to be able to stream 3D content from the server. And I would like to be able to stream Netflix without issues (although I can do that from my Xbox One, so this isn't a deal breaker). I don't it to play BluRay and I don't need to rip/encode on it, I have another desktop PC that I do all of that on. I probably won't play games on it either.
I guess my hangup is this... what can I do, or what will the Q190 or a built HTPC do better than the cheap G-box?
My movie files are generally compressed MKV files in the 5GB range although I do have several full quality 30+GB mkv files. Generally if I have issues playing the big ones, I just reencode them but it would be nice to not have to.
I'm hoping that one of you can give me some guidance... thanks so much, you guys/girls are awesome! I've learned so much already by browsing this forum.
My #1 use of it will be to watch movies. I have a server running Windows Home Server 2011, it has an attached NAS with 4TB of video and photos. All gigabit ethernet running from server to entertainment area, so I'm not overly concerned with WiFi capability. I do have a 3D TV so it would be nice to be able to stream 3D content from the server. And I would like to be able to stream Netflix without issues (although I can do that from my Xbox One, so this isn't a deal breaker). I don't it to play BluRay and I don't need to rip/encode on it, I have another desktop PC that I do all of that on. I probably won't play games on it either.
I guess my hangup is this... what can I do, or what will the Q190 or a built HTPC do better than the cheap G-box?
My movie files are generally compressed MKV files in the 5GB range although I do have several full quality 30+GB mkv files. Generally if I have issues playing the big ones, I just reencode them but it would be nice to not have to.
I'm hoping that one of you can give me some guidance... thanks so much, you guys/girls are awesome! I've learned so much already by browsing this forum.
