Buy or Build/Hardware Suggestions
#1
Hi. I used to run xbmc on my xbox up until I got an HDTV, then I bought a Popcorn Hour A-110 which I've used for a few years. It's been good, but not great; there are few too many movies that it stutters on and it's become a problem. So, now I'm looking to build or buy an HTPC to run xbmc on to eliminate these problems. There are a lot of tutorials on building an HTPC, but I'm not exactly sure I'll need to do that; I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

Basically, here's what I need it to do:
Playback any kind of media I can throw at it, with no hiccups; most of my videos are 1080p, with a variety of video and audio codecs/containers/formats.
It needs to be quiet/small
It needs to be controlled mostly by remote.
I'd like it to start directly into xbmc

Things I don't need:
It doesn't need to play 3D videos.
It doesn't need to play anything from optical media.
It doesn't need to store any media; everything is streamed from an SMB share on another PC.
It doesn't need to play any games.
It doesn't need wi-fi.
It doesn't need to view or record TV (maybe Netflix, but I've got other means of viewing Netflix, so it's not important)

So I'm looking for the cheapest/easiest way to do all of that, whether it be build my own or buy an existing HTPC. If you can offer me any hardware suggestions (or software, I know there are a lot of different routes I could take), I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks in advance for your help; there's a lot of information to sift through, so hopefully you can help me narrow down my search.
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#2
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=94199
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#3
Welcome
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#4
(2012-03-13, 22:32)Jetster Wrote: Welcome

i like that one Tongue

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#5
(2012-03-13, 22:32)Jetster Wrote: Welcome
Lol, if we were going by join date, I've been here longer Wink

Seriously though, thanks for the help; I don't know how I managed to completely miss the post about which group I belong in.

I decided on building my own based on group 6.
Here's what I'm thinking right now:
[CPU+iGPU] AMD A6-3670K 4x2.7GHz HD6530D FM1 100W ($110)
[MOBO] ASRock A75M-ITX FM1 CIR USB3.0 SATAIII UEFI mITX ($90)
[CASE+PSU] Apevia X-Fit-100 250W mITX ($50 + $10)
Then in addition:
[SSD] 60GB OCZ Agility-3 2.5" SATAIII Read:525MB/s Write:280 MB/s ($90)
[RAM] (4 GB) 2x2GB DDR3 1333 CL9 Kingston HyperX Blu ($26)
And I'm thinking I'm going to run Windows 7.

Any suggestions or comments in regard to the above choices?
Thank you again for your help!
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#6
(2012-03-14, 20:49)odsquad64 Wrote: [CPU+iGPU] AMD A6-3670K 4x2.7GHz HD6530D FM1 100W ($110)
You'll enjoy your A6-3670K HTPC......

>Alienware X51- do it all HTPC
>Simplify XBMC configurations
>HOW-TO Bitstreaming using XBMC
I refused to watch movie without bitstreaming HD audio!
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#7
careful with OCZ SSD's, i'd avoid... keep Patriot Torqx2 or Crucial M4 or Intel...

PSU might be total junk in the apevia case... might be noisy too,,,
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