Post Your Media Center Room and/or PC :D

[iLOVENZB]

I've been contemplating if I should build one for our theater room but I've had other commitments.

Post your rooms, boxes and your specs .

Spoiler: Show

Is a Core i5 good enough for BD playback? I run 1080p rips on a Quad core box but not sure what uncompressed video will be like.

[Detale]

You should know that you don't need an i5 to play BR movies compressed or otherwise bud. If it's just for movie use you can get a tiny pc with an atom cpu. I think Skizo did this and it worked out well for him. I forget which model he went with but it was something like this
Capture.JPG

Of course personally I'd say go for a WDTV Live (best bang for your buck). With a homebrew firmware they are really really snazzy looking check out my other thread. I have a few WD boxes and I am running an old PC as a server using Freenas. It is really the best config I have tried yet and I have tried them ALL! It's fairly easy to set up and has worked without a hitch for years now. Plays all the formats, only costs about $100 and simply....works like it should.


EDIT" Oh my specs. Well My main PC is an i7 with an EVGA p55 and is all customed out like


It's been a work in progress for YEARS NOW

[tesco]

Now that's hot. What case is that?

Is a Core i5 good enough for BD playback? I run 1080p rips on a Quad core box but not sure what uncompressed video will be like.

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure you're got it backwards. Compressed video needs a better CPU because it has to decompress as it plays, uncompressed video just has to play...

[Detale]

You are correct sir, but an i5 is overkill if it's just to play video.

[tesco]

You are correct sir, but an i5 is overkill if it's just to play video.

I think the vid card is more important.
My old computer, an athlon 64 3200+ with a nvidia 6800, would sometimes stutter playing 720p. 1080 was impossible. When I put in my 8800gt it was able to play perfectly.

[Detale]

Well yes, and no. Sure the video card is a factor but more importantly it's the codec package. I remember using I think AVC codecs (or something, can't remember the damn name or find my old HTPC thread) as it uses more of the cpu I believe. I remember Skizo had an issue when he first got his ion setup recently but the codecs resolved it. ATM I've been using "Shark007's" and I'm happy with it.


EDIT: Just remembered its CoreAVC

[KFlint]

CoreAVC is indeed pretty effective, on my old XP PC, some hd movies wouldn't have a decent frame rate at times and after installing CoreAVC they were all playing without flaws.

[lightshow]

CoreAVC's main function that seperates it is that it will offload processing to the GPU.

The first pic you posted was a Foxconn nettop with an ION video chipset. These chipsets are known to be able to offload to the GPU if the video software is configured to do so (hardware acceleration).

This is possible on Linux VADPU and Windows.

I've heard of sucess over at xbmc.org with nettops such as Foxconn or Acer Aspire Revo which use the ION chipset with the Atom processor to do 1080i streaming / playback. The hardware decoding functionally makes it so you don't need a juiced up processor anymore. Then you can go down in formfactor and PSU requirements.

I'm planning on building my HTPC using FoxConn or Zotac Zbox nettops. They'll allow me 1080i. I don't really do blueray or physical disks so all I care about is MKV 1080i streaming (muliple audio channels, 5.1, etc.) of whatever the source was : blueray or not using XBMC as my platform running on Ubuntu (XBMC Live).

I may actually switch to Windows so that I can configure my emulator sets using maximus arcade as the Front end which will be cross launchable between that app and XBMC.

Right now I'm in the planning stages and testing with the XBMC and Maximus Arcade seamless integration and how to setup all my controllers (N64, Snes, etc. via USB) and make sure all my settings are always persistent.