[jariten17]

So,

I will apologize initially for putting any request like this together as I know the correct answer is 'search, review, think'...However, unlike a lot of other forums (for other topics) I've been on this one seems to update suggestions on a weekly basis and I've found it hard to, through searching the archives, find a solid path forward.

So here's where I am:
My wife has recently gotten into Korean/Japaese dramas which are all subtitled by random folks in random formats...After getting sick and tired of using handbrake to convert every damned episode to something that the xbox360 could play natively from a Samba share (and converting the soft subs to hard) I went to the internet and the general advice I got was: you need to get a good XBMC.

So I've been searching around this forum and trying to figure out 'what OS/software do I need' (I think I'm on a linux based dedicated box), 'what hardware do I need', and 'do I want a dedicated NAS' (I think I've decided yes...and not custom).

So for this sub-forum I ask:

Formfactor: for the xbmc fronT; no bigger than a large shoebox (don't need a tiny box, but that's fine if it's sufficient...but certainly not a full tower either) I would also like to know if the prebuilt nettops are litterally better than what I could build.

Noise: Don't care (I keep all my AV components in a different room so the setup can be as loud as anything)

Sound: Must pass at least a minimal 5.1 on the HDMI connection.

What hardware build or all-in-one is best to ensure full 1080p from random Korean video. Does anyone have any experience with soft subtitles and what hardware, if any, can handle them (or am I forever going to have to hard code the subs to the videos). Another must is that it must do at least a crappy Dolby 5.1 (DTS/HD is better...but I'll live) via the HDMI connection(requirement).

For the NAS...I'm looking at just going to newegg or amazon and buying something commercial rather than building a box out of my old parts. Is there any particular thing to look for that it will make it more comfortable in your build. Are there any commercial builds I should avoid that don't play well with your build?

As for software: I'm a veteran of hundreds of Unix/Solaris/Linux/DOS/make up your own OS...builds. I worked for DEC...then compaq...then HP after the mergers. I haven't used a linux prompt since 2004 but I'm not afraid of a command line...That said: Whatever is the most transparent.

Budget is kind of irrelevant...I'd rather have the best capable deal in each catagory...that said...I'd really rather not pay more than 900 bucks so my wife can oogle some cute japanese boys.

What you say?

[spartan711]

Does your wife follow many different shows? Because in my experience, a group is fairly consistent in their style of subbing.

So you want 1 front-end, plus a NAS?
Front end
Cheap mini-itx case w/ psu: 50 bucks
AMD Zacate for Asrock E350: 110 bucks
2GB Mushkin silver: 23 bucks.

Under 200 bucks, can bitstream hd audio on windows.

Backend
For simplicity, UnRAID. If you want, you can buy one of their boxes. They're out of stock at the moment, but they should be in soon. It's cheaper to build your own though using a norco. There are MULTIPLE solutions for a nas, but UnRAID is regarded is the easiest.

[Warp3]

Watching Korean TV is actually the primary reason I recently acquired my XBMC Live setup, so hopefully I can provide some helpful info.

Personally, I opted for the Zotac Zbox HD-ND02U (a barebones Atom 330 + NVIDIA ION nettop) in which I installed 4GB of memory (complete overkill, but memory is fairly cheap and 2x2GB is the max it will hold anyway), and a 16GB SSD (I stream all my videos from an external HDD attached to a PC on the network, so I didn't need a big drive for the XBMC machine). The nettop and SSD combo were on sale at the time at NewEgg, so all 3 items together came to about $300 shipped. Unfortunately, that model of nettop is sold out at NewEgg right now, but any of the Atom/ION or Celeron/ION Zotac Zbox models will work fine (in fact, the HD-ND02U is actually one of the slower Zbox models that NewEgg sells). Don't get the AMD/ATI-based Zotac, though, if you plan to use XBMC Live or XBMC over Linux, as ATI support isn't nearly as good as NVIDIA support under Linux. Any nettop with an ION should work fine for XBMC Live.

With VDPAU (hardware acceleration) enabled, this setup has taken nearly every video file I've thrown at it (H.264 MKV, XVID AVI, MP4, TS/TP, etc.) without complaint (including some high bitrate 1920x1080 60fps H.264 videos that were way too much for my PC to play). The Atom CPU is generally doing nothing beyond about 5-10% usage on even the highest quality videos, since the NVIDIA ION GPU is doing all the work. The only two exceptions have been: (a) one music video that doesn't seem to want to play on other computers either, so I suspect that file is simply corrupt and (b) some old very low-quality RMVB (RealVideo) files that it won't play without stalling for some reason (so I just converted those to XVID AVIs instead and they work fine); whether this was an issue with the files themselves or with the way that XBMC decodes RealMedia, I don't know.

Soft subs work great with XBMC (at least SRTs do, since that's what all my subbed shows have used). If they are named the same as the video file, it will automatically use them. Otherwise, you can manually pick the subtitle file from the menu.

On a related note: Out of the box, XBMC Live (at least 9.11, which is what I'm running) doesn't handle Unicode filenames and subtitles very well (it will play files with foreign characters in the name, it just won't display the names properly in the UI), but this can be fixed with minor settings changes and replacing one font file.

As for noise, in my experience, the Zotac with an SSD is dead silent. The only real moving part in the machine is the CPU fan and since the Atom is idle most of the time, it never really does much. If you want to save money, you could always use an HDD instead, since you noted you don't care about noise.

One part of your list that I *can't* speak to is the audio over HDMI, since my current setup can't make use of audio over HDMI (my receiver only does passthrough for HDMI), so I haven't actually tried it (though there are plenty of threads about setting up audio over HDMI).

[mbetter]

On a related note: Out of the box, XBMC Live (at least 9.11, which is what I'm running) doesn't handle Unicode filenames and subtitles very well (it will play files with foreign characters in the name, it just won't display the names properly in the UI), but this can be fixed with minor settings changes and replacing one font file.

I'd take this with a grain of salt; this is an outdated version of XBMC that he's running, it's very possible that these things have been fixed by now.

[Warp3]

I'd take this with a grain of salt; this is an outdated version of XBMC that he's running, it's very possible that these things have been fixed by now.

The reason I recall reading that this didn't work is that they intentionally didn't opt to include the larger unicode font in XBMC Live (either for space reasons or licensing reasons, I don't recall which one off hand). Unless this stance has changed with the 10.00 release, I wouldn't expect it to be any different in this area. If it does work out-of-the-box in 10.00, then that would be great news.

Also, the final version of 10.00 hasn't been out all that long, either, so 9.11 is not exactly ancient considering it was the most recent stable release up until very recently. In fact, the only reason I'm running 9.11 is that I was too impatient to let the 10.00 ISO finish downloading (I wanted to play with my new toy...lol) and I already had the 9.11 ISO which I'd downloaded a month or two ago.

Regardless, my point was less that it was an issue and more that it was a fairly simple fix. It took me a little while to find the fix, but once I did, it wasn't difficult to implement. The main part of the fix is simply replacing the arial.ttf file in XBMC with the arialuni.ttf file from any Windows machine.

UPDATE (Feb 19): I have XBMC 10.00 installed on my Ubuntu box now and it did not require replacing the arial.ttf file (just changing the theme font to Arial and the character set to Korean in XBMC). Whether this is due to XBMC 9.11 vs XBMC 10.00 or due to XBMC Live vs XBMC atop Ubuntu 10.10 (with Korean language support loaded in Ubuntu), I don't know.

UPDATE (Mar 1): I decided to reload my Zbox with XBMC 10.00 Live today (a fresh wipe/install, so no remnants of 9.11 Live remained) and I've confirmed that Korean filenames (incl. Chinese characters) work great with the included arial.ttf file now. The *only* change I had to make was to change the skin settings to use "Arial Type" instead of "Default" for the font. After that one change, Korean filenames work without issue (which wasn't the case with 9.11 Live).

[dopethrone]

Bump! I'm very interested in this, as I'm also looking for off the shelf NAS suggestions. Did you ever pull the trigger on anything jariten17?