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Which is the best machine to run xbmc on. I am using apple tv 2 right now is there an advantage to using a nettop box? I mainly watch high def streaming movies through 1channel and icefilms films always buffers so I am not able to watch anything on there.
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I have an acer revo 3700. In all a very good little machine. Plays everything i throw at it fine. Silent. and small.
A lot of people i know use these or the revo 3610
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2012-04-03, 14:01
(This post was last modified: 2012-04-03, 14:01 by YYXZ.)
Well the best way to run XBMC is on a PC with a decent CPU and GPU, nothing high end is really needed to get a great XBMC experience. XBMC does not really need a lot of CPU and GPU power, as like you said an Apple TV can run it. The benefit in using something like a PC over say your Apple TV is the ability to upgrade hardware when and if need be. It also offers the ability to play more high resolution media files. A netbox is okay, but it depends a lot on the hardware. If its an Intel Atom does it have a Nvidia ION/ION2 GPU in it? If it does not I don't think you will even get 720p out of it, I may be wrong but Intel's GPU's are usually really crappy and even more so in netbooks/netboxs. If it uses AMD's APU, you will be good to go it does 1080p fine. So will a ION2, I have an Atom dual core netbook with ION2 GPU and it plays full 1080p blu-rays fine.
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Bram77
Skilled Python Coder
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If you want to run XBMC on WIndows 7 you will need a more powerful machine compared to running XBMC on linux. I use a Asrock ION 330HT with 4GB RAM and SSD drive (first generation ION) with OpenElec. I've tried running Windows 7 on it but it just isn't capable of running it smoothly. Using Ubuntu with XBMC or OpenElec it's very smooth and more then capable enough.
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I guess i should be more clear I really just want to watch the hd content on icefilms. Does it matter if i use a dinky apple tv or a 500 dollar super computer?
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Apple TV 1 (40 gig) - ~$80 on Amazon
*also comes with remote so you dont need to figure out this option
Broadcom Hardware Decoder BCM970015 - ~$40 from logic supply
*to do your 1080p decoding
Then set up shares on you home computer to play movies off of and your good to go
$120 gets you going
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My tv has a usb imput and plays mkv so i dont really care about playing stuff Ive already downloaded just live streaming stuff online and I want it to be high def. I know its not gonna be bluray quality but atleast 720p
