So I had this oversized HTPC made from an old computer I had. It's mobo went out and now I am on the search for a replacement.
I have been reading through the hardware forums and see just about everyone agrees some varient of ZOTAC would work for xbmc at 1080.
I used to have sickbeard/sabnzbd set up on my old PC and I don't know if it would fly with one of the ZOTAC systems running xbmc as well. Which isn't a big deal if it doesn't.
Here is what I am wanting to do though (if possible)
- Run 1080p streaming over the network (or if usb3/esata off of an attached drive)
- If possible run sabnzbd/sickbeard
- Have a live TV feed (don't need PVR) from a HDTV antenna... so if it could take the feed directly from the antenna (in the clear i believe it is called) that would be awsome.
I think that is about it. I am essentially trying to get rid of my cable and it's dvr altogether.
I'm not sure which ZOTAC in particular you are refering to but the
ND-22 should handle all that you are wanting to do with no problems. Pair it with a
HDHomerun and you'll be able to record/watch two HDTV streams at the same time from your antenna.
I honestly didn't have a specific model in mind. I was looking at the dual core atoms with ion... but really just looking for something sub 300 that would get it done. I thought I saw a zotac box that has a coax input but then realized it was then antenna connection for wifi...
I don't really need to DVR the antenna feed. The antenna hdtv feed would be just for watching on down times (no other shows recorded), but that dvr box is very interesting... just don't want to tac on another 130.
I suppose I could just get a usb tuner or something similar to bring the feed into the box. I have done limited research on xbmc and live tv... but from what I saw it could handle it.... just never done it myself.
I am mainly curious if someone had a recommendation for a sub 300 box that could possibly handle xbmc and sickbeard/sabnzbd without hurting 1080 output. Wondering if anyone has a similar interest/setup.
I had an Ion 330 system, a Acer Revo 3610 running Ubuntu to be exact, that ran sickbeard/sabnzbd and played 1080p w/o breaking a sweat, provided you run up to date NVIDIA drivers of course. Sickbeard/Sabnzbd are not processor intensive. Now I run SAB/SB/CouchPotato/Headphones on an UnRaid server so then I switched to the PVR angle using a HD Homerun I got on a new egg special.
HD Homerun proved a little tougher - or rather I had some issues with PVR (as opposed to Live TV). MythTV has drivers for HD Homerun that recognized it out of the box but I hated, hated, hated how cumbersome MythTV set up and configuration was and by the time I had it running it was too annoying to try to sort continuing permissions problems I had actually accessing the recordings I was making, such that i finally gave up in disgust. Really I found it a big bummer. I don't claim to be the most Linux technical person at all but I was astounded at how difficult it was repeatedly to simply record to an external HD and set permissions so I could actually play back what it recorded - even starting with a Mythbuntu install disk, following all the guides religiously. Also I didn't like the Myth TV interface - it tried to do to many things XBMC already does much, much better and as I said it seemed simply bound and determined to fight doing the one thing I wanted it to do - record TV. so to heck with it.
TVHeadend is more streamlined and would have been more to my liking but it does not itself claim to support the HD Homerun. Though there are several folks who claims to have compiled working DVB's for it for TV Headend, I was also never successful using any of their methods.
Then on a whim, I used Windows Media Center on the Windows 7 partition I had also installed but rarely used and lo and behold it immediately recognized the HD Homerun and was an absolute cinch to set to recording up with. Personally I would much rather run a leaner, meaner OS for an HTPC but using the
plug-in for launching XBMC from within Windows Media Center was a very, very easy set up and worked flawlessly almost immediately.
Of course if you have sickbeard working you find a lot more limited use for regular PVR - local news and sports, a few less popular shows, one time events since sickbeard already gets the stuff and organizes it in a much more xbmc-autoscraper friendly way anyway.
But thats my story of how I recently became a reluctant XBMC Windows 7 user.
YMMV on the ease of either MythTV or TVHeadend with the HD Homerun, of course.
Just about everyone recommends the ND22 at some point, but just about everywhere is out of stock or selling third party. Is there a replacement/upgraded version of this?
I would prefer having a DVI port but this is what I am thinking about buying now...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856173001
Any thoughts... possibly a better version I should go with? Whatever I find... I will most likely buy another in a month or two. So I don't really want something that will soon be out of stock/replaced.
2x Crucial 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 - $19.98
1x Western Digital Scorpio Black wd5000bpkt 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0 - $69.99
1x Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ND22-U - $249.99
I know just about everywhere shows using SSD's but I am still not comfortable with the reliability. I imagine with a laptop hard drive over 10 feet away in an entertainment center I won't hear much. I know I probably spent a little more then I could have on the HDD but with twice the cache I was hoping to cut down some of the read/write times since I will be trying to do Sickbeard/Sabnzbd at the same time as XBMC.
The next step is getting a large esata external to tac on to this for excess storage. The 500gb should handle all my recent stuff very well, but as it is watched will probably end up throwing it onto the other drive just to have it (and store my movie collection/etc).
Welcome any critisms on the build. I just couldn't get away from the recommendations to go with the ND22... so I bit the bullet. Also was funny the 2 seperate sticks of memory was 5 dollars cheaper then buying literally the exact same memory in a 2 pack (same packaging)... so keep that in mind if you are building a pc.