I am looking for as close to a prebuilt system as possible that suits my needs. I am pretty confident I will be choosing one of the zotac units, I am basically debating between all of the ones in the group 6 list as well as the ZBOX-ID82-U in group 7. I want to pick one and settle on it as my plan is to make a few copies of it for friends and family after I set it up as it will contains our entire collection of family videos (lots of 1080p ones) and photos. I want to have identical hardware in each unit. Some of the units in group 6 seem to not be sold anymore or are at least difficult to find online. Whatever I get I want it to still be easy to get another new one in 6 months (newegg or amazon preferred).
So here are the contenders
Zotac ZBOXNANO-AD10-U
Zotac ZBOX-AD02-U
Zotac ZBOX-AD03BR-U
Zotac ZBOXNSX-AD11-PLUS-U
Zotac ZBOX-AD04-U
Zotac ZBOX-ID82-U
I plan on running linux on it, hopefully openelec although I haven't used it yet, maybe under ubuntu, or possibly another distro, looking for max stability and easy updates. My current install is on a desktop running ubuntu precise with 4gb ram with frodo rc3 using the unstable xbmc repo, and although I get the occasional lock up and I have to kill xbmc.bin manually, overall it is a great experience, I run in standalone mode.
The preassembled units all seem to come with 2GB ram (will 2gb of ram be enough for xbmc to do everything smoothly and snappily? all add-ons as well?) and either 320GB drive or 64GB SSD neither of which is enough for my 900GB collection. So I would have to either tack a usb drive on each one, or put a new 1TB 2.5" internal drive in each one (if I do this I might as well go for a barebones unit). My concern with a usb drive is there will be multiple usb devices connected, at minimum an IR receiver, and possibly an external blu ray drive, and in the long term maybe another usb drive if more storage is needed. Running under linux will I run into problems with my mount points changing if these devices are disconnected and reconnected by accident or when moving the unit?
I've read in some places that amd 350 models sometimes have trouble with high quality flash video. I definitely want enough power that all flash playback is very smooth.
The Zotac ZBOX-AD03BR-PLUS-U is interesting because of the onboard blu ray. Have all the blu ray linux bugs been ironed out? It seems they will play fine using makemkv from what I have read. Will they also rip nicely on linux using swiss army knife or another plugin? Would the ZBOX-AD03BR-PLUS-U be able to rip a blu ray and simultaneously be able to play another 1080P movie from the hard drive smoothly? Would any of my considered models be able to do that if I use an external blu ray?
However the Zotac ZBOX-AD03BR-PLUS-U does not seem to come as a barebones unit if I decide to go with a new 1TB internal.
Some of those units have S/PDIF optical audio out and some do not. Does that provide better quality than the audio coming over the HDMI? Some people may have a receiver that does not have HDMI, but it does have S/PDIF, so if I don't get a unit with S/PDIF I imagine they will be forced to run analog audio to their receiver... correct? Does the S/PDIF run well under linux and will it provide noticeably better quality than analog?
Sorry to blather but I have a lot of considerations in my mind lol. Anyone want to make a recommendation for me based on my concerns and intended uses? I suppose I am also open to non-Zotac options, but barebones is the minimum for me, and completely preassembled is preferred, I don't want to be hooking up motherboards and processors. And of course, as long as it can do all I want, minimum cost