Micro HTPC

[Chacolla]

Looking to get one of those micro form factor PCs to use as a lightweight Home Theater PC. Most likely will have Xbox Media Center installed on it streaming off my desktop computer which is networked into the router. No gaming will be used for this at all.

I currently have one of those WDTV Live+ boxes which is great, but I've found that every once in a while I'll come across a file that won't work so well, plus I've always wanted to delve into XBMC.

Is there anything 'new' or 'upcoming' that can compete with the Nvidia Ion2 platform?

I was looking at the Zotac Zbox Nano and it seems to be a pretty good contender.

With my credit card rewards I can essentially get enough money in amazon gift cards to purchase the whole thing.

The other option was using Amazon gift cards and pitching in a little extra and picking up the entry level Mac Mini. I'm not sure if it would be overkill though.

What do you guys think? Pull the trigger on an ION2 platform or wait for something better?

[theuean]

I just put OpenElec on a spare box I had. Smaller form factor, meaning I can put it in the bookcase (but its not MicroITX or anything super tiny). Anyway, you mentioned XBMC so Im going to suggest OpenElec to you once you get comfortable with XBMC, as it allows you to blow away all the unecessary Ubuntu stuff and just run XBMC pretty much standalone. Means you'll need to SSH in to administer it, but I've not had any need to do it at all.

Check it out. Mine is running on an AMD Athlon 3400+ single core with 1.5Gig RAM and an HD5450 video card, HDMI out to the TV. Super quite, and cost me $50 total (I bought the video card, rest I just had kicking around). Plays video from the local network.

[theevilshiftkey]

Seems to me that you pay a premium for that form factor and get a performance hit compared to the more traditional mini ATX forms. If you care about something "better" than the ION2... well I guess you have to define what's "better" for you.

[KeiCar]

I almost went that route, but for cost and simplicity reasons, I went with a mini ITX form factor. It also has more case options available, as I built it all from scratch, that was a concern.

I would love a PC the size of a mac mini, which I owned 2 in the past, but I decided not to this time. My current case is about 1/4 the size of a "standard" PC tower. That leaves 1 CD drive (5.25") and 1 3.25" slot. Plus there is more room in the case itself.

I have mostly laptop parts laying around because thats all Ive used in recent years (laptops not desktops), so it cost nothing say for the HDD and optical drives.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Im a big fan of SFF (small form factor) and I love tiny gadgets no matter what they are. If you think of going that route let us know, or let me know. I would love a micro, nano PC build thread

[Vision33r]

The only reason to do HTPC is for Windows media center and DVR capabilities and not just for streaming and XBMC.

You can get XBMC installed on a hacked AppleTV or Boxee box that cost less than building a HTPC.

[Chacolla]

An AppleTV will not playback 1080p video. Granted, it's 1/3 to 1/4 of the cost, but still...

[spoonie]

ok - what's the deal with this Raspberry Pi thing? $35? allegedly shipping?

[Vision33r]

ok - what's the deal with this Raspberry Pi thing? $35? allegedly shipping?

This is basically like any other ARM based smartphones using similar hardware bits. Most up to date Android phone can do everything AppleTV or dedicated streamer boxes can do and more.

Samsung Galaxy S2 can play 1080p videos, access DLNA content, Netflix, Pandora, and run apps too.

[Hostile]

An AppleTV will not playback 1080p video. Granted, it's 1/3 to 1/4 of the cost, but still...

A jailbroken one certainly will.

[Minker17]

A jailbroken one certainly will.

Mine will play 1080, but I can't remember if it will display 1080 or downstream it to 720.

[ChrisMD]

Last I heard, it'll play 1080p content but it can't push it to your TV. It outputs 720p.

[Chacolla]

So I caved in and bought the Zotac ZboxNano AD-10.

I made a little video of it here:



I'm still in the early stages of setting up XBMC. I need to tweak a few things here and there and also need to add more of the XBMC plugins to really unleash the full potential of it.

I threw a 500gb 5400rpm Seagate drive I had and also a 4gb DDR3 chip in it. The hard drive is a bit of a bottleneck and I'd love to get a small SSD for it, but this is a budget build and I had everything complete for less than $225 and would like to keep it that way.

Of course, I just recently found out that there is most likely going to be an AppleTV refresh soon and it'll handle 1080p no problem, and I'm sure that it'll be jailbroken the first month, so I'll probably snag one of those for the bedroom.

[KeiCar]

Hey, don't forget to keep us updated on your box and how well it runs a month from now


I love mini computers (well mini "anygadget") for that matter.

XMBC is the entire OS, correct? In other words upon boot, you boot into the XMBC environment. If this is so will you dual boot with a more conventional (win or MacOS!) just for compatibility sake?

Oh and I never knew AppleTV didn't to 1080p. That almost seems like a no brainer and I know there was chipsets with enough horsepower at the time it was released that could of pushed that res. Maybe it was a cost issue.

[Chacolla]

No XBMC is actually installed on top of Windows 7 x64. I did it this way because I plan on hooking up Bluetooth game pads to bring me back to N64 emulator days

Xbmc on AppleTV2 can do some light 1080p playback but bluray rips and high quality/high bitrate files will stutter.

I've also been reading up on the Raspberry Pi board and for 35 bucks and an SD card you can have Xbmc running quick and it can playback most bluray rips.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

[NOTORIOUS VR]

Why didn't you just buy a Boxee? Would have been cheaper