[bluray]

What about the Pentium G850 which is equal in price to the A6-5400K?

This is going to be the on-going dilemma: G850 or A6-5400K. It'll be a very close race. I hope there will be no recounts or hanging chads.

For HTPC, I still preferred AMD A6-5400K over G850. It's a new kid on the block, and the AMD Radeon HD 7540D iGPU in A6-5400K is better than the non-3d HD2000 iGPU in G850......

[Beer40oz]

Antec ISK 300-150 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 150W Power Supply

AMD A8-5600K Trinity 3.6GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 7560D AD560KWOHJBOX

I wouldn't recommending the powerful 100W A8-5600K in that case...it might be cooked in a very tight space and that weak 150W PSU is not enough to handle the load either...

It's more suitable for the 65W AMD A6-5400K instead....the AMD 3.8GHz Turbo Dual-Core CPU and Radeon HD 7540D iGPU should be able to handle blu-ray 1080P video, bitstreaming HD audio and XBMC UI with ease....

Good stuff bluray... if the Llano 3500 can do all... of course the new A6-5400k will be great. But yes the 100 W A8 would concern me in such a small case with out proper ventilation.

[supahfly]

I must say I have 2 Zbox ID41, networkek, and connected tgo a NAS where the DB fits on.
So I do all of my watching via streaming via Ethernet. I run the Aeon Nox skin, and I am very satisfied with the smoothness everything runs on.
Of course there are better boxes.
But 1: think of the WAF, it looks great
2: it is a HTPC >>> and film streaming is what it does best.

Just my 2c