[Ned Scott]

I'm still getting over a "conference cold" from SCALE 13x last weekend, but hopefully this post makes sense. I've wanted to make a wiki-based flow chart for hardware recommendations for a while, but have been dragging my feet. I've been inspired by poofyhairguy's awesome sticky post, as well as other posts and things people have said, and I think now is the time for us, as a community, to make a kick ass flow chart for helping direct people to good HTPC hardware.

I don't expect something like this to be a one-size-fits-all guide for hardware. Rather, I think it will just compliment the other advice out there, and hopefully clarify some things.

The biggest hurdle for this is to get past the typical wiki page layout, which is not very flow-chart-y.

Any and all ideas are welcome. I think this will make more sense once something is started on the wiki and people see what direction it is going in. I'm going to take some more cold medicine and feel all the colors of the rainbow.

[DJ_Izumi]

So you want to build your own HTPC! Do you hate yourself? --> No --> Just go use Netflix on your Xbox and use the money you've just saved on snacks and drinks.

[hdmkv]

Is there a Google Docs type app we can collaborate on to make a flowchart?

[DocG]

So you want to build your own HTPC! Do you hate yourself? --> No --> Just go use Netflix on your Xbox and use the money you've just saved on snacks and drinks. --> Have Xbox? --> No --> Buy Xbox (Was that really the cheapest alternative? Is there any money left?). --> Have Xbox? --> Yes --> Have Netflix? --> No --> Cannot proceed, please use alternative path.

[wrxtasy]

Do you hate yourself? --> Yes --> Are you a cheapskate ? --> Yes --> Like flashy Websites with impressive Tech specs ? --> Yes --> Buy a just released Android device that no other user has from an unknown takeaway Wok shop in Kowloon H.K.--> Does it work as promised ? --> FCUK No! --> Do you hate yourself ? --> Yes --> Buy a bottle of Bourbon with the money saved and drink yourself senseless !

[DJ_Izumi]

Not to be mean or anything. I love Kodi and my boxes work wonderfully 97% of the time. 3% of the time however, I want to beat them with sticks. There is also a critical bug somewhere in the software, because that 3% of the time is always the same time when I have friends over to watch something. Something is clearly critically wrong with the 'Are friends over to watch stuff with the user?' module that results in many errors that do not occur when the viewer state is 'Sitting alone in your PJs, watching reality shows all day while eating Doritos like a winner'. Those lazy devs just REALLY need to address that.

[MrCrispy]

Do you enjoy reading Kodi forums and posting and troubleshooting -> Yes -> do you like to obsess about your hw/sw choices -> Yes -> Great! Isn't it more fun to worry about this rather than actually, you know, watch a movie? -> Of course, anyone can watch a movie, this makes me feel productive! -> Great choices!

(No at any step -> are you sure you belong here?)

[Ned Scott]

Is there a Google Docs type app we can collaborate on to make a flowchart?

Well, the wiki itself is a collaborative tool, but I just don't know how to really format a flowchart on mediawiki.

[nickr]

I am not sure media wiki is the right tool on it's own. I suspect you need to use a charting tool and export to png or jpeg or svg or something, (svg support wwould be good as it is very scalable to screen size).

[Ned Scott]

It doesn't actually have to be a chart/image itself, but the flow part would still there, and it would presumably be "exportable" as a chart. It could very easily just be a series of questions/sections.

That being said, I did find this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlowchartWiki

We just can't use it yet because our version of mediawiki is too old, because the server is too old, etc, and I don't know what the ETA is on server-side updates.

[ozkhan1]

Ned.. you will be doing us a huge favor once this is completed... excellent idea... don't know if I can help much but I have delved into quite a few different sets of hardware from time to time so might be able to offer something.. let me know.

[BenH]

I have been thinking about this too and my idea would be to have a table with desireable features across the top (24Hz, auto frame rate switching, digital passthrough, hd passthrough, deinterlacing, CEC, some heavy skin etc) and something down the side (platform? size? price range?) that you could click through (and keep cliking through) for a more granular look at that category that eventually would show specific models and link through to wiki pages of the model if they exist.

Then the cells in the table would indicate if the feature is: not possible, sometimes possible or nearly always possible.

But I keep getting stuck with what goes on the side and would logically come next.

Ben

[ozkhan1]

Benh... another useful data point would be accessibility of paid apps such as netflix, hulu, etc.

[curti]

There is the DOT Language to make charts. This website http://sandbox.kidstrythisathome.com/erdos/ makes it easy to export the graph as an image without installing anything.