2011-12-06, 22:37
It’s a shame the xbmc community hasn’t embraced one single hardware platform like the original XBOX way back in the day. I understand and think it’s amazing that XBMC is trying to be more and more cross platform compatible. But the larger community you can get running on 1 (very good) piece of hardware the better. For every problem/configuration issue you run into, ten others already have and possibly figured out a solution.
Requirements:
1. Smooth 1080p video playback (sorry 3D viewers ur on your own)
2. Quiet
3. Quick boot (the few seconds @ most)
4. Don’t waist electricity (unless your super rich, then it makes no diff)
5. Storage
6. Torrent downloads
7. Remote
1.
When I picked up the revo years ago I was hoping more people would to have a nice large community running the same hardware, don’t get me wrong there are enough out there to find *almost* any problems you’ll have… but not all! But it still seems to be one of the largest single supported bases for XBMC, another commonly used piece of hardware is apple TV (but you need to hack this and I hear there are ongoing annoyances with FM upgrades and such). I paid $200 for my revo over 2 years ago and it handles 1080p flawlessly (but there was a lot of initial setup involved, may want to look at the XBMC-freaks release as its has the much needed nvida drivers baked into the ISO)… that’s as much as ill say, remember this is a hardware recommendation guide not a setup guide. Also skins have to be considered here, the latest and greatest skins are ALWAYS worth it, so far I havnt run into one skin that my box can’t handle (even with the extra options like sliding background turned on) fyi Aeon Nox is the best one ive found so far.
2.
Revo is as quiet as it gets, I think there is only one VERY small fan in there and I have never heard it even go on, when im watching a movie I don’t want to hear the buzz of a power supply or case fan.
3.
Unfortunately the boot time with the revo isn’t that impressive, to solve this I never shut it down. It always goes into sleep mode instead (this comes with a few glitches, like loosing nav sounds
but nothing major) the revo supports S3 and once in sleep usually almost no power, best option out there considering I now have instant boot times. This also lets me turn on/sleep the revo via remote
4.
Putting the revo into sleep instead of a full shutdown isn’t the greenest solution, I’ll admit it… but for instant boot I don’t think there is anything that uses less. And because I would consider the revo more like a laptop instead of a desktop it uses a small little DC converter like a router, needs no fans for PSU cooling and uses far less than a conventional desktop.
5.
NAS is the key, I went with a drobo because it’s so simple and I don’t lose sleep when a drive dies. But they are over prices especially in today’s market. When I got mine years ago there were very few other options that created the same ease-of-use & drive failure environments. Let your budget decide which one you get but the key is a NAS. I think you can even run torrent clients natively on the drobo but I have never tried (this would eliminate the need for #6)
6.
Netbooks! If your NAS does not have a torrent program built in or you just want more flexibility than they give you setup a small “server” to be nothing more than a torrent downloading machine (let’s face it that’s where you are getting all your watchable programs). I went with a $150 netbook with nothing special @ all, it sits right next to my drobo and uses virtually no power as well because that’s the nature of a netbook. I installed utorrent and configured it to move completed downloads directly to my drobo when completed (I would avoid direct download to the nas as the constant slow stream of downloading never lets it sleep which can be taxing over time) I don’t even open the netbook screen, I always remove desktop from my main PC, I think utorrent has remote option built in if you want to go that step farther.
7.
Get yourself the cheapest USB IR receiver on the internet you can find. After that buy a Harmony remote, they have VERY expensive models but they also have $30-$40 units that do the job. The reason I like that remove is because you can configure individual button presses on your computer which gets programmed to the remote.
That’s it! I don’t get why people spend $2000 on the top CPU / Vid card just for a HTPC running XBMC? And still have hard drive costs on top of that? Any desktop computer will be far too big to look good in any home theater setup as well as have a noisy power supply (I’ve never seen a silent 600+w power supply) and excluding 3D there is nothing more than 1080p this thing will need to do
Anyhow this is just my 2 cents, im sure there are 101 different opinions on which hardware to get exactly but ive had this type setup for 2+ years now and have yet to see a variation of this that I would consider better!
Good luck,
-aPeg
Requirements:
1. Smooth 1080p video playback (sorry 3D viewers ur on your own)
2. Quiet
3. Quick boot (the few seconds @ most)
4. Don’t waist electricity (unless your super rich, then it makes no diff)
5. Storage
6. Torrent downloads
7. Remote
1.
When I picked up the revo years ago I was hoping more people would to have a nice large community running the same hardware, don’t get me wrong there are enough out there to find *almost* any problems you’ll have… but not all! But it still seems to be one of the largest single supported bases for XBMC, another commonly used piece of hardware is apple TV (but you need to hack this and I hear there are ongoing annoyances with FM upgrades and such). I paid $200 for my revo over 2 years ago and it handles 1080p flawlessly (but there was a lot of initial setup involved, may want to look at the XBMC-freaks release as its has the much needed nvida drivers baked into the ISO)… that’s as much as ill say, remember this is a hardware recommendation guide not a setup guide. Also skins have to be considered here, the latest and greatest skins are ALWAYS worth it, so far I havnt run into one skin that my box can’t handle (even with the extra options like sliding background turned on) fyi Aeon Nox is the best one ive found so far.
2.
Revo is as quiet as it gets, I think there is only one VERY small fan in there and I have never heard it even go on, when im watching a movie I don’t want to hear the buzz of a power supply or case fan.
3.
Unfortunately the boot time with the revo isn’t that impressive, to solve this I never shut it down. It always goes into sleep mode instead (this comes with a few glitches, like loosing nav sounds
but nothing major) the revo supports S3 and once in sleep usually almost no power, best option out there considering I now have instant boot times. This also lets me turn on/sleep the revo via remote4.
Putting the revo into sleep instead of a full shutdown isn’t the greenest solution, I’ll admit it… but for instant boot I don’t think there is anything that uses less. And because I would consider the revo more like a laptop instead of a desktop it uses a small little DC converter like a router, needs no fans for PSU cooling and uses far less than a conventional desktop.
5.
NAS is the key, I went with a drobo because it’s so simple and I don’t lose sleep when a drive dies. But they are over prices especially in today’s market. When I got mine years ago there were very few other options that created the same ease-of-use & drive failure environments. Let your budget decide which one you get but the key is a NAS. I think you can even run torrent clients natively on the drobo but I have never tried (this would eliminate the need for #6)
6.
Netbooks! If your NAS does not have a torrent program built in or you just want more flexibility than they give you setup a small “server” to be nothing more than a torrent downloading machine (let’s face it that’s where you are getting all your watchable programs). I went with a $150 netbook with nothing special @ all, it sits right next to my drobo and uses virtually no power as well because that’s the nature of a netbook. I installed utorrent and configured it to move completed downloads directly to my drobo when completed (I would avoid direct download to the nas as the constant slow stream of downloading never lets it sleep which can be taxing over time) I don’t even open the netbook screen, I always remove desktop from my main PC, I think utorrent has remote option built in if you want to go that step farther.
7.
Get yourself the cheapest USB IR receiver on the internet you can find. After that buy a Harmony remote, they have VERY expensive models but they also have $30-$40 units that do the job. The reason I like that remove is because you can configure individual button presses on your computer which gets programmed to the remote.
That’s it! I don’t get why people spend $2000 on the top CPU / Vid card just for a HTPC running XBMC? And still have hard drive costs on top of that? Any desktop computer will be far too big to look good in any home theater setup as well as have a noisy power supply (I’ve never seen a silent 600+w power supply) and excluding 3D there is nothing more than 1080p this thing will need to do
Anyhow this is just my 2 cents, im sure there are 101 different opinions on which hardware to get exactly but ive had this type setup for 2+ years now and have yet to see a variation of this that I would consider better!
Good luck,
-aPeg
