Kodi Community Forum

Hey guys! I'm completely new and have no background knowledge of XBMC, coding, or anything that might be helpful. I do have a general idea of what XBMC is and what it can do. I've looked through a couple guides and watched a few videos.

So my main question is what setup should I run? A few hardware specs: 1080p LED TV, graphics card: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260M, ram: 4-8Gb. The computer we'll have will be an Alienware brand, but it's my room mates and it'll be used as a normal computer half the time. (We've also got 2 other laptops, but the hardware specs aren't nearly as good...), for storing movies, TV shows, and what not we'll probably go ahead and plug an external hard drive up (just to save disk space)

Random information: We've also got an Xbox 360 hooked up to the same TV, and will probably have 2 TV tuner cards available to use on the computer plus the actual TV itself, surround sound (most likely 7.1, although I'd like to hook up 2 subs for music...).

So back to the original question: What would be the ideal setup for us? I like the idea of an HTPC, but I don't wanna drop $250 to buy a nice netop...

All help is appreciated!

Well the ideal setup is to drop $250 on a nice nettop.

I'd guess you're running Windows on the gaming PC. In that case download and try the Windows version of XBMC. It's a well behaved app and won't do anything stupid to your Windows installation. The only problem is that gaming PCs tend to be noisy, e.g. loud fans, and this can be a nuisance when you're watching a film or listening to music.

You should find XBMC will run on your laptops, so give it a try. The average laptop will struggle with 1080p films but should be fine for 720p and lower.

JR

well.. My main things while selecting propper HW was: quiet, fast-enough, just xbmc use & chrome Web, low powerconsumption.
Zbox ID40 = dual core Atom @1.8Ghz with Nvidia ion2.

- FullHD h264 plays fluent.
- powerfull enugh to play around.. youtube, web.... skype..
- always on, never turnd off (well, This also has apache WebServer to serve...)

So let's say I decide to buy a nettop. What's the best I can buy, and what's a cheap one that will get the job done?

Also, if I were to run XBMC on one of the laptops, would you recommend installing the windows version on the laptop or running the live version from usb or Cd?

XBMC still doesn't support live TV, right? Unless I do something with Linux...? (I saw a thread here in the general help, but didn't read it yet.)

Have a look at http://www.xbmcboxes.com/. I use an Acer Revo 3610 (now superceded by the 3700 I think) and I'm very happy with it. Any of the HTPCs based on the ION or ION2 chipsets should be fine.

XBMCLive is significantly faster to start up than Windows on a typical HTPC. The only problem with Live is if you need to run other apps as well. In that case you might find Windows to be easier. I use Windows 7 on my Revo and it works fine.

JR