[bluray]

If you are into PQ as these guys (Unhappy with Intel HD4000. ATI Card suggestions?), you should read their posts. After 5 kids later, my eyes degraded badly. For me, PQ is not as important AQ these days....

I didn't know that my four children are responsible for the loss of my eyes, I will punish them when the come home

You and I are in the same boat. I use them as a reference to my age, and they are not responsible for my terrible eye sight...

For me image quality is the first I look for but as you clearly stated, I can't see what my children can see, but I rarely here them complain.
Intel made some nice products but some good drivers to support that seems to be difficult for them, that also was a problem for AMD, after the 12.8-12.10 series they also put a lot of shitty drivers on the net. And with that, one must put a effort in adjusting settings until it is as optimal as it can get. I even combine different driver versions for HDMI audio and video when one or the other doesn't seems to do the job right. I nice working Media Center can take a lot of work before it comes to that.

Some people just cannot stop tingling with their HTPC and home theater system. I have a couple friends that never seems to stop tingle with their HTPC and home theaters. As I can tell, the PQ from their AMD discrete GPU on their large screen looks a lot better than the PQ on my smaller HDTV. If you don't do anything special to improve PQ on bigger screen, PQ usually don't look as good as the smaller screen.....

[nooryani84]

Though I'll admit, once you get used to higher PQ, it's hard to downgrade to something inferior.

+1....A lot of hardcore home theater enthusiasts always want the best PQ on their humongous screen. You might not notice much of a different on a tiny screen, but over 80" screen as what a couple friends of mine have in their theater room really make a different with what GPU they use......

They'll never be completely satisfied with their setup and will continuously have features they want to add or improve

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For me image quality is the first I look for but as you clearly stated, I can't see what my children can see, but I rarely here them complain.
Intel made some nice products but some good drivers to support that seems to be difficult for them, that also was a problem for AMD, after the 12.8-12.10 series they also put a lot of shitty drivers on the net. And with that, one must put a effort in adjusting settings until it is as optimal as it can get. I even combine different driver versions for HDMI audio and video when one or the other doesn't seems to do the job right. I nice working Media Center can take a lot of work before it comes to that.

Some people just cannot stop tingling with their HTPC and home theater system. I have a couple friends that never seems to stop tingle with their HTPC and home theaters. As I can tell, the PQ from their AMD discrete GPU on their large screen looks a lot better than the PQ on my smaller HDTV. If you don't do anything special to improve PQ on bigger screen, PQ usually don't look as good as the smaller screen.....

+1 yea I have a little bit of that, though I've decided to focus less on it the past few years.

[DrDaxxy]

Try upscaling as stated in my post #6 using iGPU, then try it with a discrete GPU I suggested on the same PC, and then you will have your answer.....

XBMC provides the same upscaling algorithms for all GPU vendors, so it can't be a quality difference. As I said above, my iGPU handles upscaling SD to 1080p without dropping frames even using the more taxing scalers. There's no difference.

[bluray]

Try upscaling as stated in my post #6 using iGPU, then try it with a discrete GPU I suggested on the same PC, and then you will have your answer.....

XBMC provides the same upscaling algorithms for all GPU vendors, so it can't be a quality difference. As I said above, my iGPU handles upscaling SD to 1080p without dropping frames even using the more taxing scalers. There's no difference.

If you are happy with the power and upscaling using your iGPU, it is all good then....

If you have time (free time) and resource (bigger screen, discrete GPU, etc), you can try upscaling option in my post #6 using a discrete GPU and compare it to upscaling using Intel iGPU on XBMC. If you found out that PQ using upscale option in my post #6 is better than upscaling using iGPU on XBMC, you can use it as XBMC external player too. HTPC options are endless these days....

[nooryani84]

+1 for choice!

[snowjim]

Hi,

I have used XBMC on a couple of different hardwares (Intel NUC i5 and Zotac HD-ND22) but it have never worked perfect. There have been lagging and sync problems.

[cut]

Could you describe what you mean with "not perfect", under Windows (7/8), or what OS did you use? Both systems could run just fine if correct configured, even an old ION 330 will work just fine (without lagging and sync issues) on a Windows 7 system. And the (older type) NUC i5, with HD graphics 4000, can also do a great job, with the right Intel drivers installed.

There is really no need for a discrete GPU in most cases.

The Zotac hade lag problems, specially when panning but the biggest problems was audio sync problems. The sync problems was not on all videos but most. I hade to compensate a lot to get it okay. The overall system is really to slow to get a good XBMC feel.

The Intel Nuc do work fine in most cases, some times I get audio sync problems but its miner(maybe due to the video itself). There was however a big problems with lag free pannings, I hade to turn on all kind of sync options in XBMC and this made a big diffrence. There is however still a small lag but its hardly noticed, I suspect that most users would not even notic it but you can feel that the screen is flickering in some way.

What I seek is a the best possible hardware for XBMC but Im afraid that Windows will be the downfall? I have spoken to XBMC devs before and not even them dare to give suggestion on fully working hardware for XBMC under Windows.

I have however thought a bit longer, maybe its not a good idéa to put a NAS full of mecanic harddrives in the livingroom. Maybe I should just build a really nice NAS with somthing like this :

Motherborad(and CPU) : ASRock C2550D4I
Memmory : Crucial DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz ECC Reg CL11 4GB
Case : Silverstone DS380
Powersupply : FSP Group FSP300-60GHS 300W

And then later build a special XBMC computer.