[art76]

With the strong Aussie dollar looking to update our current P4 based Win7/XBMC box at home with some newer US sourced parts.

Reading lots here and trying to gather all of poofyhairguy's advice but still unsure which way to go with my hardware purchase.

Needs to:-
Run XBMC (either from Windows or as XBMC Live)
Play usual files, up to 720p although do have some 1080p content. Nothing like 20gb bluray rips.
Play Flash stream videos from various websites, Australian ABC iView, Sesame Street website plus others I'm sure
Run Skype (family catch ups)

Would be nice:-
Play DVDs from disk
Be as small and cool running as possible as it gets hot here
Maybe a TV tuner card for occasional recording of tv shows

I'm leaning towards something I can dual boot with Win7/XBMC and XBMC Live. So, to boot first into XBMC for general media viewing or dual boot into Win7 to use browser to view flash streams, skype plus hopefully still XBMC if we are going to be switching back and forth a lot.

I guess my options are:-
- Zotac atom/ion based mini pc (reading other posts, get the earlier one and not the next gen?)
- Shuttle XS35GT mini pc
- Build a Zotac atom/ion ITX PC

So as it seems any of these would be great for XBMC Live, which option would be best for Win7 to run on?

It seems the mini pc's can only take 2GB max where the ITX system could go up to 4GB which I guess Win7 would run better on. Any drawbacks to these ITX boards?


Also, from anyone that has any of the mini pc's, can you see that they have a 120-240 ac adaptor as we're on 240v so don't want to have to replace that straight up?

Thanks for any and all suggestions

[sylvio2000]

I am in the same position and dont know what to buy

Although I am willing to build my own mini-itx htpc I always abort this project, because I cant find an affordable, nice case which fits my needs.

This sounds a bit trivial, but its my point of view.

There are only a few cases I like e.g. from ripple:





But I dont know where to buy such cases. I already asked ripple and hope they have dealer for me



Maybe it would be better to buy a prebuild one like the Zotac Zbox DVD ID31:



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Btw. I dont know why you would need more than 2GB for an htpc.
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[jabba_29]

Interesting.

Btw. I dont know why you would need more than 2GB for an htpc.

I started with original Xbox and have been using first gen apple TV for almost 2 years I guess. I am now thinking about building a box myself (not a hardware guy) and was thinking very much about the Shuttle.

The Zotac Zbox looks pretty sweet, wondering how quiet it is compared to the shuttle?

Main requirement is BluRay & XBMC(obviously).

[sylvio2000]

There are only a few Ion devices which have no fan inside.

The zbox also does have a fan, but I dont know how loud it is. I think there is also a version with blu-ray drive.

If you would like to run Blu-ray you have to use Windows I think. Afaik there is no working solution to run encrypted blu-rays in Linux.

The Shuttle box has NO fan, the only making noise would be the hdd (but this can be changed too, with a ssd )

[jabba_29]

Was thinking about SSD, glad to find out blu-ray doesn't work in Linux now though,
would have gone for a slim blu ray player & openelec.tv distro...

More things to take into consideration.

[art76]

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Btw. I dont know why you would need more than 2GB for an htpc.
-------------

Purely for the Win7 side of things, as still need to have that OS. May be fine without but if I do end up going the ITX then won't hurt and shouldn't cost much anyway.

Nice cases there btw, will have to look into the case side of things in case I go down the ITX path.

[skare]

I am in the same position and dont know what to buy

Although I am willing to build my own mini-itx htpc I always abort this project, because I cant find an affordable, nice case which fits my needs.

This sounds a bit trivial, but its my point of view.

There are only a few cases I like e.g. from ripple:





But I dont know where to buy such cases. I already asked ripple and hope they have dealer for me

-------------

I agree. Those Ripple cases look nice. Not much information on them though. Do they have a webpage or some other way you can get in contact with them?

[sylvio2000]

The homepage is here: http://www.ripple.co.kr/eng/

I already asked where to buy it. Hope they answer me

[darkscout]

At what point does an MacMini become cost effective.

Personally it's way too rich for my blood (HTPC should be <$200 even hand built). Some people are going wild with nice cases high end MoBos, etc which put it way over the price point of a MacMini.

Even if you run Linux on it.

[sylvio2000]

To reach the price of a macmini, you have to buy A LOT OF expensive things

The ripple cases arent that much expensive.

If you can live with prebuild boxes then MAYBE you can reach your goal under 200$. But it is not possible to change things if they broke (e.g. mobo).

But some people do not like the cases of (most) prebuild boxes (like me). On the other hand for normal PCs you got much cheaper when creating your own one, but with a nettop you cant save much money.

[poofyhairguy]

(HTPC should be <$200 even hand built).

That is very hard to do. Unless you build over the course of months of buying Newegg shellshockers (or use old parts, which I assume you account for in the $200 mark), then a $200 HTPC will either have a case with a loud fan, a terrible PSU, or a risky mobo.

Right now I think the Shuttle is the premier ION system. The Zotacs come after that. Both with 2GB of RAM will run Windows 7 just fine and be adequate HTPCs for most people.

I only ever recommend more for gaming, heavy skins (like you love Aeon), tons of HD Flash/Silverlight streaming outside XBMC, and if you want to treat it like a desktop.

A Mac Mini becomes price effective around the $450 mark (as that is the price of Nvidia Minis- you don't want an Intel GPU mini as they are worse than ION boxes.). I only recommend the Mini route if you REALLY like streaming sites and you want Plex.

[art76]

Thanks for the insight poofyhairguy.

So in terms of difference between the mini pc hardware and just the itx motherboard they should be pretty much the same?

Just want to confirm that which ever way I go, they are pretty similar except for the packaging as still thinking I may go the itx m/b road.

Thinking I will try and mount that into a dead Sony CD player case I have at home, was going to put the guts of an xbox into it before I realised HD content and started to give the xbox's away to family.

[darkscout]

That is very hard to do. Unless you build over the course of months of buying Newegg shellshockers (or use old parts, which I assume you account for in the $200 mark), then a $200 HTPC will either have a case with a loud fan, a terrible PSU, or a risky mobo.

Maybe it's just ambient noise in my house, but I really can't hear my HTPC at all.

Mine was right at around $200 and that includes the GT220 I bought on eBay. It's no AppleTV in terms of size, but it fits perfectly on the shelf above my receiver.

[poofyhairguy]

Thanks for the insight poofyhairguy.

So in terms of difference between the mini pc hardware and just the itx motherboard they should be pretty much the same?

The main difference between building a Mini ITX system and buying and off the shelf Nettop is that a built system (if you do it right) is upgradable. Mine can take a better GPU sometime in the future for example. So therefore a build can be more future-proof, but to do that requires buying parts that cost more.

[poofyhairguy]

Mine was right at around $200 and that includes the GT220 I bought on eBay. It's no AppleTV in terms of size, but it fits perfectly on the shelf above my receiver.

I didn't say it couldn't be done, just that it is hard. If we go by Ebay prices it is much easier to get under $200, but I can't in good conscience recommend people buying random parts off ebay from vendors I have no experience with.

I know it can be done. I recently put together a "junk" HTPC for about $100 ($50 for the P4 system from someone and $50 for the GPU) that plays 1080p just fine. I agree with you that the hardware requirements for XBMC are very little, and weak systems can do the job. The problem is if someone doesn't have ANY spare parts sitting around so they have to buy EVERYTHING. At that point prebuilt systems are often cheaper....