ISO Recs for smallest & cheapest XBMC Windows host
#1
I've got two full blown MCE's in my living room & bedroom but I'd like to add one to my home office. Needs to have a HDMI output, USB and ethernet NIC port. Goal is to put Windows 7 on it and then XBMC after adding a IR receiver.

What's the minimal hardware people have used out there? The lowest i could find was around $250 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6883103440), but the Acer Revo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6883103440) looks nice, just 2x the price.
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#2
If you didn't need windows 7 then you could pick up a rasberry pi for less than $50, add in a USB I/R receiver (I'm thinking of one) and you've got a cheap set-up.

Flirc now has a forum: forum.flirc.tv
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#3
(2012-04-15, 14:21)pseudo7 Wrote: If you didn't need windows 7 then you could pick up a rasberry pi for less than $50, add in a USB I/R receiver (I'm thinking of one) and you've got a cheap set-up.

Depends on how soon he wants it... people in the first round of pre-orders are saying they are seeing estimated ship dates of May... the one I just ordered shows an estimated ship date of August. Sad Kinda hoping that's a very conservative estimate as I'm hoping to build a small, portable HTPC with it and one or two 1TB laptop hard drives so I can easily take a good chunk of my library with me when traveling in my RV or on my dad's sailboat. Would be so much easier and lighter than carrying my three 300 disc binders to the RV and having to find a place to store them.

... back on topic.... There are some refurbished, barebone Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11-U's on ebay for $150. If you have a spare laptop HD and memory laying around then this seems to be a really cheap option. The Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11-U is a group 4 HTPC per eskro's guide which, doesn't seem bad to me. Took me a while of looking at the list before I found the difference between group 4 and 5 is only stream netflix at SD and not HD like the group 5's.

HTPC 1 - AMD A8-3870K, ASRock A75M, Silverstone ML03B, Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3 1866, Crucial M4 64GB SSD
HTPC 2 - HP Stream Mini, 6GB Ram
unRAID 6 Server - Intel Celeron G1610, 20TB Storage

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#4
@aconell-
Have you seen this "Lenovo IdeaCentre Q180"? It is fully equipped (Intel 2.13GHz + AMD HD6450 + W7 64-bit) and it should be ready for XBMC out of the box......
>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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#5
Guess I should have clarified, I want to PUT Windows7 on it, but doesn't need to be installed. Bare bones hardware is all I need. I've got the OS.
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ISO Recs for smallest & cheapest XBMC Windows host0