[Nattal]

I'm going to (re)build my HTPC, getting a new motherboard and CPU to bump up the power a little. I was planning to get one of the Asus or Gigabyte motherboards that have Blu-ray decoding hardware and HDMI output.

I have one thought though, I understand that XBMC is platform independent, and as such does not use hardware acceleration. Is this limited to the graphics, or does it mean that using a motherboard with Blu-ray decoding would not be any advantage for better(smoother) playback?

I was planning either the AMD 5050 CPU or a similar Core Duo, around 2.8-3.0Gz.

[menthe]

Hi

Personally I use this dedicated HTPC configuration to run XBMC on a Arch Linux distribution:

Case: Thermaltake DH102 VH2001BNS
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-380
Case Cooling: (x2) Noctua NF-R8
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H (GeForce 9400)
CPU: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9650
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U9B
RAM: Corsair Twin2X 2 x 2 Go DDRII PC6400 CAS 5 DHX (4Go RAM)
HDD: OCZ Vertex Series 30 Go S-ATA II (SSD HD dedicated to the system)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1000 Go - 32 Mo (For the multimedia files)
Optical Drive: LG GGW-H20L
TV Card/Acquisition: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500
Keyboard: Logitech diNovo Edge
Remote: Logitech Harmony One

OS: Arch Linux 2009.02
Frontend Home Cinema: XBMC Atlantis with MythTV Back-end and Aeon Auriga


My Arch distrib boot in less than 18sec directly in my XBMC session

[Nattal]

Hey Menthe,

Nice rig

Thats one of the motherboards I was looking at, how do you find Blu-Ray playback through XBMC?

I'm also planing to use an SSD for the boot & system drive, my media files are all on a NAS box.

Not decided whether to go Win or Linux yet, only just started playing with Linux, not sure if I'm up to getting the full rig running properly. Am playing on a spare rig with it, then will try XBMC on there too.

[menthe]

the blu ray are relatively well-read but with XBMC Babylon version and VDPAU support it will certainly be much better.

I also plan to store all my media files in a NAS server running under FreeNAS or maybe another light secure linux distrib (Debian? what else? ) and my choice to use a SSD for the system disk is mainly motivated by the fact that it is very reactive, the system starts in less than 18sec (from power on to the xbmc homescreen) and that every action involving data stored on the ssd is done instantly.

EDIT: In my opinion Linux is well indicated if you want to run a full dedicated HTPC (but you should be ready to tweak some config files yourself, especialy to use remotes/case Touchscreen/LCD/VFD etc...), but finaly Linux is more powerfull than windows to run a HTPC after having refined its configuration.

[sirfaber]

hi menthe...
do u have a blog with a guide on how u assembled and configured it? ...with config files etc..?

[menthe]

No I have not...

But google is your friend and if you search just a little there are some people who could help you (here for example )

[JoWa]

hey menthe...

which harmony do you use? and how complicated was it to configure it?
or do you use the dinovo edge to control the xbmc and the harmony only for the tv card?

greetz