[Balinus]

This is a complete solution for only 360$! Includes a BD drive, 250G HDD and 2G of RAM. You only need to add an operating system and a remote.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.asp...6856173007

[jackh]

Holy s**t...

[eskro]

Price decent, but CPU anemic,,,
wouln't use it with windows7 + XBMC,,,

best to use it with OpenELEC...
but then, its still Linux so, Bluray Disc playback is a no go i believe,,,

[jackh]

its still Linux so, Bluray Disc playback is a no go i believe,,,

Crap... I've been looking at the XBMC linux forums, and BR apparently somewhat works, but it's not straightforward. Anybody has any positive experience on that front?

[Carb0]

Price decent, but CPU anemic,,,
wouln't use it with windows7 + XBMC,,,

best to use it with OpenELEC...
but then, its still Linux so, Bluray Disc playback is a no go i believe,,,

I have an ASRock ION 3D. It has the same processor and XBMC is not noticeably slower on Windows 7.

It's possible to play Bluray discs in linux, but if the playback of Blurays is important then Windows 7 is the way to go. That's the main reason I'm using Windows on my HTPC.

[eskro]

I have an ASRock ION 3D. It has the same processor and XBMC is not noticeably slower on Windows 7.

Well, Windows7 + XBMC + AEON skin = not snappiest interface

if the playback of Blurays is important then Windows 7 is the way to go.

+1

[jackh]

if the playback of Blurays is important then Windows 7 is the way to go.

Seems like a taste decision here. Because if I am building my own machine from scratch or buying this Zotac, then I'd have to spend an extra $100 on the Windows license. Heck, for that exact same money I prefer to buy a blu-ray player, and then I can build my XBMC machine cheaper (no blu-ray drive and linux OS)

My point is, if XBMC is open source, let's (try to) go open source all the way and not give Micro$oft more money than it deserves... If there's no other choice, fine, I'll compromise. But if there's a reasonably good way around Windows I'll take it. Am I the only idiot thinking like this?

[Balinus]

Seems like a taste decision here. Because if I am building my own machine from scratch or buying this Zotac, then I'd have to spend an extra $100 on the Windows license. Heck, for that exact same money I prefer to buy a blu-ray player, and then I can build my XBMC machine cheaper (no blu-ray drive and linux OS)

My point is, if XBMC is open source, let's (try to) go open source all the way and not give Micro$oft more money than it deserves... If there's no other choice, fine, I'll compromise. But if there's a reasonably good way around Windows I'll take it. Am I the only idiot thinking like this?

I'll take the same path. After having considered an all-purpose HTPC with BD playback, I concluded it would be cheaper (unless you take WHS 2011 and in this case the cost are similar) to actually have a standalone BD player with a HTPC doing only XBMC.

It's also 1 thing that you don't need to configure (i.e. software in W7 for BD playback).