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I've seen a lot of posts around here about the zboxes, but none about the ID31. Well okay, there's one post with no replies. So I'm just wondering, does anybody have good experience with this for xbmc? I'm thinking about getting it and using the 250gb drive for storing my movies, and then running either xbmc or openelec from a thumb drive. It'll be my first system and I plan to build a one-off after I graduate, but for now I just want to know if this one is any good?
Atom D525
1.83 ghz dual
2 gb ram
250 gb 5400 rpm hard drive
Anybody have any experience? Should it be able to play my ~4-6GB 1080 rips seemlessly, and navigate the xbmc menu's smoothly?
And just to kill 2 birds with one post, what exactly is the differences between xbmc and openelec? Is openelec just a version of xbmc that's easier to use, but has all the same features? Or is it more like OSX/Linux, where they're built off the same roots, but otherwise completely separate systems?
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Do you have a PC capable of serving files over your network? If so, it seems adding more storage (1tb or more, internal or USB) and using an ATV2 as a client would be both a more advantageous and budget friendly approach. $100 for an ATV2 and $60 for a 1TB USB HDD seems to make a lot more sense than $300-400 for a ZBox with only 250gb of storage.
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2011-08-02, 21:29
(This post was last modified: 2011-08-02, 21:40 by IsleOfMan.)
With network storage already in place, I'm not seeing the a major advantage with any HTPC over the ATV2 for what sounds like will eventually be a secondary client. The savings should also leave plenty of budget for a nice remote (The Harmony 600/650 is great for around $50 ).
What is your display size and viewing distance? If 1080p output is a concern, check the link in my signature.
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The tv at the moment is just a 32, and will be hooked up to a 40 in september when my other roomie brings his tv back, so 1080 probably isn't huge, I just like to know I'm doing everything I can! But I am open to ATV2 actually.. I just heard it's pretty laggy sometimes? Can it run Aeon (not that I was planning on that anyways..)?
If I were to go pick up an ATV2 and Harmony 650 this evening, what else would I need to get up and running, streaming content through HDMI and running the harmony remote?
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2011-08-02, 22:33
(This post was last modified: 2011-08-02, 22:36 by IsleOfMan.)
I haven't tested the ATV2 outside of Confluence (horizontal), but in the few YouTube videos I can find, Aeon (not MQ2 or NOX) looks to be fairly responsive. That said, the newer horizontal Confluence included in the ATV2 builds (and all other fairly recent pre-Eden nightlies) shares a lot of its layout with Aeon and is quite snappy.
If you bought the ATV2 (the Futureshop link is the correct model) and a Harmony tonight you could be up and running in probably 30 minutes... it will probably take you as long or longer to program and tweak the Harmony as it will to jailbreak the ATV2 and install XBMC. You will need a Micro-USB cable for the jailbreak... luckily for you the Harmon 600 or 650 will include one!
Depending on what firmware version the ATV2 is on out of the box, I would recommend using one of the jailbreaks that includes NitoTV, just to save the added step(s) of installing XBMC via an SSH Terminal. You'll likely need to use SSH and/or SFTP for something on down the road (like adding 3rd Party Repos or updating librtmp to get Hulu working) but it's not a necessity just to install XBMC.
You might also need to add some time for organizing the media on your network drive if it's not in a decent structure.
