[MrCarbo]

Hi

I'm still mulling over the best hardware setup for running XBMC Live.

I've spec'd out a very decent PC that would also be useful for gaming, ripping etc, but now I'm worried about how noisy that machine would be.. so now I'm looking at a REVO R3610: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/200537.

I know people are using this machine to run XBMC, but I just have a few questions:

1. What's the UI like in Live - is it responsive/fast or sluggish?
2. Will it/xbmc be capable of playing large size 1080p files without stuttering/dropping frames? I'm thinking specifically of the large (>10GB) Lord of the Rings Bluray rips I've made waiting to be played on whatever xbmc pc I decide to buy. Will it be ok doing this over a LAN and also from a USB HDD?
3. Can the R3610 output HDMI audio? Can it bitstream?
4. I'm not really keen on buying a USB DVD Drive just to install XBMC on the R3610, but I do have several USB pendrives and SD cards... can the R3610 boot off them to install XBMC Live?
5. More of a linux question - what format does the usb hdd need to be for xbmc live to be able to read it? Ideally I'd like the USB drive to be in a format that XBMC Live can read and also a windows machine can read/write, but also be able to support >4GB files.

Thanks for any advice

[poofyhairguy]

1. What's the UI like in Live - is it responsive/fast or sluggish?

Fast as can be basically. I put a SSD in my ION box and the interface is faster than my Quad Core. Definitely enough CPU for the interface.

2. Will it/xbmc be capable of playing large size 1080p files without stuttering/dropping frames? I'm thinking specifically of the large (>10GB) Lord of the Rings Bluray rips I've made waiting to be played on whatever xbmc pc I decide to buy. Will it be ok doing this over a LAN and also from a USB HDD?

Yes it will play the largest 1080p files out there (my ION box play my 42GB Avatar rip), but no it might not work well over USB. I have hit the USB limit before the ION limit for content- LAN via a NAS/Mediaserver is the best way.

3. Can the R3610 output HDMI audio? Can it bitstream?

Yes it will output 8 channel uncompressed audio, no it can't bitstream DTS-HD or Dolby True-HD. You have to pass along the already decoded audio. That is why I rip all my Blu Rays to mkvs with 8 channel FLAC.

[MrCarbo]

Thanks for the info...

I would've thought USB2 would be faster than a 100MBps LAN?

I've added some more questions:

I think I already know the answer to booting off a USB drive now, so I'm just left with:

5. More of a linux question - what format does the usb hdd need to be for xbmc live to be able to read it? Ideally I'd like the USB drive to be in a format that XBMC Live can read and also a windows machine can read/write, but also be able to support >4GB files. Does XBMC Live support NTFS formatted USB HDD? Does it support EXT2?

[MrCarbo]

Is there a problem running XBMC Live on a Revo R3610 and putting large (>4GB) HD files on an external USB HDD foramtted in ntfs?

Will the drive be automounted and visible in xbmc? Will there be a problem streaming HD off it?

[poofyhairguy]

I have used NTFS drives with XBMC Live in the past. I did that for a week last year while my media server was getting repaired.

The limit with USB is somewhere around a 20GB file. So 1080p/720p scene mkvs taken off the net will work fine, but pure Blu Ray rips won't. USB is not faster than LAN in any way (even though I have a 1000mbs LAN, not a 100mbs one- 1000mbs switches are cheap!) do to a bottleneck by design (that is why technically slower Firewire 400 destroys USB2).