[vicbitter]

Of course, the availability of cheap HW makes this worse. Those who bought a WDTV may now buy some crappy ARM device or a cheap nettop and run xbmc, and many of them.won't bother on learning how the ecosystem works.

The issue is not the cost of the hardware but whether or not it can perform the tasks you require... An optimally tuned ARM device or cheap Nettop can give you a flawless XBMC experience!

Try to be objective... Isn't your HTPC in fact one of those "cheap nettop"-based platforms except it includes a MCE remote?

[Ned Scott]

I'm not wild about the wording he's chosen, but snowjim has a very good point. XBMC can be seen as amateur-hour if someone uses the wrong hardware that causes nothing but pain. This is actually a problem we're having right now with PVR/Live TV stuff. I've started a thread int he PVR help forum to get specific hardware and software set-up advice for the most common situations so that the newbies don't have to suffer and conclude that PVR requires a team of engineers.

Giving some kind of specific, or even just general recommendations, would indeed help a lot of people out. We've got a lot of this on the hardware subforum, but it needs to be more exposed. Even if it's just stuff like "a processor like this or better" or "DEAR GOD, AVOID ATI GPUs!!!!!", that's going to be golden information to new users.

When it comes to XBMC on ARM hardware, people are slamming us with "does it work on this or that" questions.

So yeah, let's make a page (or pages) on the wiki, with a big huge disclaimer that "this page is maintained by the community and following these hardware suggestions will likely burn your house down. Always do your own research, this is only a guide to get you started"

Then the community can have at it on both general suggestions and even specific suggestions.

[snowjim]

Which platforms would you have dropped?

Windows?
Android?
OS/X?
Linux X86?
Linux ARM?

I don't really care about the platform as long as it works as good as possible. Yes they all have positive and negative side on a personal level but as long as it works great I am more then happy to ignore them.

But If all platforms could be equally stable I would choose Windows hands down, I suppose this is the platform that is the hardest to get stable but it is for me(personally) much more flexible.

[nickr]

No you criticise the xbmc devs for being multi platform and spreading themselves too thin so that they are jack of all platforms and master of none. Please logically with reasoning justify your choice.

[Prof Yaffle]

@ned - can I offer a suggestion/caution - most threads I've ever seen along the "post your experiences here!" line have normally descended into off-topic hell, endless rambles about random bits of kit, semi-religious vendor debates, or all three. Maybe a wiki would be different, but...

Perhaps the WINE example or similar would work, if it could be maintenance-light - maybe simply record components as green/amber/red with the number of user votes for each, with a bit of background you can drill to per vote (OS and major software versions probably being the most pertinent)? That'd allow people to say "oh, such-and-such seems to work for a lot of people, and the folks for whom it doesn't work are all running <blob>".

This has been a heated debate, and - let's be honest - many of us actually *enjoy* the tinkering. But we all also have a need for something that just works at some point, be that an Android stick, an Ouya, an ION box, or a jailbroken ATV2. I hate having to tell the kids that TV will be delayed for half an hour while I repair something I just broke by accident...

[vicbitter]

@ned - can I offer a suggestion/caution - most threads I've ever seen along the "post your experiences here!" line have normally descended into off-topic hell, endless rambles about random bits of kit, semi-religious vendor debates, or all three. Maybe a wiki would be different, but...

Perhaps the WINE example or similar would work, if it could be maintenance-light - maybe simply record components as green/amber/red with the number of user votes for each, with a bit of background you can drill to per vote (OS and major software versions probably being the most pertinent)? That'd allow people to say "oh, such-and-such seems to work for a lot of people, and the folks for whom it doesn't work are all running <blob>".

This has been a heated debate, and - let's be honest - many of us actually *enjoy* the tinkering. But we all also have a need for something that just works at some point, be that an Android stick, an Ouya, an ION box, or a jailbroken ATV2. I hate having to tell the kids that TV will be delayed for half an hour while I repair something I just broke by accident...

Sounds like a great idea... There is a hardware table in the AudioEngine wiki (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=AudioEngine) that could be adapted to include XBMC core functionality

[Ned Scott]

I'd be lucky if the wiki ever got that active. No tip toeing unless it becomes necessary.

[PatrickVogeli]

Of course, the availability of cheap HW makes this worse. Those who bought a WDTV may now buy some crappy ARM device or a cheap nettop and run xbmc, and many of them.won't bother on learning how the ecosystem works.

The issue is not the cost of the hardware but whether or not it can perform the tasks you require... An optimally tuned ARM device or cheap Nettop can give you a flawless XBMC experience!

Try to be objective... Isn't your HTPC in fact one of those "cheap nettop"-based platforms except it includes a MCE remote?

Of course my nettop is a cheap one, and the fact that it came with an MCE remote doesn't change that. And I'm extremely happy with how it works. My point was there is a lot of new people coming, maybe attracted because cheap HW is now widespread and easily available, and most of them don't take the time nor efforts to configure everything properly. XBMC is now quite mainstream, and lots of folks don't know about black levels, 23,976, HW accel, nvidia, ati, etc.. they get a $300 computer, install XBMC and think "that's it!". There are those who spend $1000 or more on a HTPC and run into the same problems, of course.

In a XBMC ecosystem lots of things come together: TV, AVR, Server, PC HW, the OS and finally on top of all is XBMC. Now, if everything is not properly configured, things won't work as they had to. And again, people will complain about what they see... which is XBMC.

[WeirdH]

NVM