[thomj42]

Hello all,
I've been using XBMC for years in one guise or another, but I've never had it working EXACTLY how I wanted so I finally decided to share my plans and get some ideas from you all.
I have 4 rooms in my house that myself and the others I live with use for media.

-Living room 1 has a dell XPS m1710 2.1Ghz Core Duo with 512mb 7900GTX and 2GB RAM. (plays 1080p in windows using CoreAVC codec but not in XBMC)
42" 1080p LCD

-Living room 2 has a HP ML115 G6 server- 2.1Ghz AMD Opteron with 1GB RAM and a low profile Radeon HD5450 HDMI card. All storage is on this box (around 3.5TB) Runs ubuntu, and plays some 1080p stuff in VLC but not in XBMC.
37" 1080p LCD

-Living room 3 has an XBOX 360 and Wii (hacked with Wii Media Player)
Front Projector 480p

-My Bedroom- has a hacked XBOX running XBMC.
19" 480p LCD

SO. It's not a bad setup, but everything only kinda plays 1080p and i find myself getting annoyed when i want to open something in one of the living rooms and can't.

So my main questions are:
1. Could I do anything to that m1710 to make it handle 1080p better in XBMC? more RAM? the 7900GTX has no useful hardware acceleration i think.
2. The server has hardware acceleration but still struggles- could this be down to the 1GB of RAM?

One idea was to build or buy a new box for living room 1, move the m1710 to room 3 (which doesn't need 1080p) and buy more RAM for the server in room 2.

Thoughts, comments all greatly appreciated

[Kirky99]

I don't think there's much you can do with the laptop. Maybe getting off Windows will get you more CPU to wrk with, but I don't think it's going to get it done.

I'd guess the server is memory bound. I'm not sure of the current state of ATi, Ubuntu and hardware acceleration, but I think that machine would be your easiest to get to 1080p.

For living room 1 a nice low power build would be your best bet. Get something supported well by OpenELEC, provided you don't need it to do much else. I really like my Ion based system, running OpenELEC gets it pretty responsive for even heavier skins and power usage is very low. Does 1080p without a hitch. Got mine running off a very small USB stick and 4G of memory, I should take 2G out and see how it goes, but I don't need it for anything else.

[eskro]

i agree with Kirky99,
u could simply get a cheap ATOM/iON machine and use OpenELEC on it!

Any box from group#3 will suit your needs!
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=8...post843683

happy shopping

[thomj42]

thanks guys, glad to see we are all on the same page!
i'm thinking of running windows or ubuntu on the new box though, as it will be used for web-browsing and some other mundane PC stuff too.
thinking either tinyurl.com/3vzkav4 or tinyurl.com/3kn3vbq.
Do you think the cheaper Atom variety would be okay for stress-free 1080p playback in xbmc with a decent skin? would like DTS audio but no need for 3D.

[eskro]

wow, those are pricey O.O

[thomj42]

yeah i had a feeling that was the case.
I am concerned about bulding my own in case it's noisy or it overheats. I like the idea that if you buy pre-built everything is guaranteed to work with everything else.
Anywhere better that delivers to Ireland you know of?

[eskro]

what about on Ebay??

http://cgi.ebay.ie/Mini-PC-Intel-Atom-33...4cf840c229

or

http://cgi.ebay.ie/Shuttle-XS35GT-Atom-D...4aacd3cd0b

[thomj42]

hmm thanks eskro, that's very interesting! which of your Groups do they belong to I wonder?

[eskro]

Group#3

[Kirky99]

I was waiting on that reply. I was going to say they are between Group 3/4. Hulu is now accelerated at least under Windows with the latest Flash releases, but I haven't tested their highest res stuff yet. I was pretty sure NetFlix isn't, and not sure if the Atom would be able to display it well...

Previously any Flash content was shaky no mater what resolution.

[poofyhairguy]

Netflix will work in HD on Atom when MS releases Silverlight 5.