[poofyhairguy]

almost forgot for the gt210, is there a specific brand that's better than the others? would a gt220 be okay too?

A gt220 is actually better. I consider it to be the best HTPC card in existence. Most brands are ok.

As far as CPU, from my vast testing (I have way too many comps) I have determined that you need a 2.6GHZ Core 2 Duo or better to play EVERYTHING.

That is equivalent to like a 2.4GHZ i3 (or less, hard to even buy ones that slow), or a 3.2GHZ Athlon x2. Either way is fine really.

I am a big fan of Gigabyte mobos. I used to buy a lot of different brands, but not anymore. I only buy theirs now, so I suggest that as well.

Any other questions, please ask. I live for this stuff...

[jdawg0528]

is it true that the gt210 and 220 don't support HD audio bitstreaming? i've been reading a little bit about how to get that to work with xbmc. to be honest i'm not sure if that's a big deal. i suppose this is a little bit off topic from my original post but it will influence what i do for a video card. so does anyone have any feedback on whether being able to bitstream the HD audio from bluray rips is a "must". or do most of you feel that LPCM is fine and dandy.

[poofyhairguy]

You are right that the g2xx series cannot bit stream HD audio. Linux can't with any hardware out there.

But honestly I don't think that is a big deal. Uncompressed audio is uncompressed audio, LPCM should not sound different than DTS HD or Dolby True HD.

Personally when I rip my Blu Rays I rip them to mkv files with multichannel FLAC. This takes us MUCH less space than a m2ts file with DTS HD, and plays perfectly on my XBMC Live box....

[kxy1983]

With your suggestion of SSD, is read speed more important than write speed?
Im looking at 2 different SSD's after failing miserably to getting XBMC Live installed on compact flash>ide adapters. both were detected in bios as fixed IDE drives, but the live installer couldnt install the GRUB boot loader whether i used software raid or just trying to use a single card. They are a pair of brand new PQI 4gb 233X cards.

Pricing diff is negligable, but i can get 180MB/s Read, 50MB write, or 125MB Read, 70MB write.

Kingston 30G SSD V-Series SATA2
Internet Price: $103.00 (faster read)

OCZ 32G Onyx SSD SATAII 2.5
Internet Price: $89.00 (faster write)

I would assume that read speeds would lead to snappier menus, being faster to read the thumbnails etc.

[poofyhairguy]

Random reads are the most important. My recommendation? The drive I personally use:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820227393

[emal011]

You are right that the g2xx series cannot bit stream HD audio. Linux can't with any hardware out there.

But honestly I don't think that is a big deal. Uncompressed audio is uncompressed audio, LPCM should not sound different than DTS HD or Dolby True HD.

Personally when I rip my Blu Rays I rip them to mkv files with multichannel FLAC. This takes us MUCH less space than a m2ts file with DTS HD, and plays perfectly on my XBMC Live box....

Can u tell me, wich converter video u use? From a dvd to a mkv, how much is the diferrence saved?

[StarChild]

True, but with Silverlight you lose that advantage (and more and more streaming sites use silverlight). Plus I have my skepticism about GPU accelerated Flash- in my experience it still needs more CPU than XBMC needs to play a mkv with GPU acceleration. Adobe is a company filled with poor programmers.

Oh. I didn't know that. I haven't run into any webpage that require silverlight except Microsofts own page. But I don't live in US so I haven't tested those other pages you talking about. GPU accelerated Flash may require more CPU then other programs yes, but if it's enough with a Atom 330, why waste money on something that doesn't going to make any difference? (Except for Silverlight then)
Do you have some example of Silverlight pages?