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Hey Guys, ive decided to upgrade to a new htpc since my old one from pulse-eight seem to be kicking the bucket real soon. (power issues/fan issues).
So i decided to get the Intel NUC i5 D54250WYK Barebone system with:
HyperX Impact So-dimm DDR3L 1600MHz 8GB
Samsung SSD 840 MSATA 250GB
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows
And i already have the Motorolla Controller from pulse-eight.
Ive been running openelec for the last few years and ive enjoyed it for the most part. And streaming will continue to be my 99% action with my xbmc, but lately i want to incorporate my comics, and have a rom/emulators library on my xbmc, possibly incorporate some streaming services in the future.
I tried getting roms and emulators working on the newest openelec, unfortunately it didnt end well. I managed to add it to the library and everything but the games still wont run even after adding 3 new addons and configuring and everything. And i cant seem to find a way to add comics on the xbmc, more so on the aeon 4.1.9.9 skin. I remember it was available on the 3.5 skin.
Anyways i wanted to hear you guys input on whether i should go with win 8.1 and xbmc, or stick with openelec. What are the main benefits of openelec or windows 8.1?
Any help will be greatly appreciated
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lrusak
Team-Kodi Member
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120MB operating system versus a 10GB operating system.
Many things won't work on OpenELEC, or at least not without some knowledge of linux. Emulator addons most likely won't work unless they are specifically built for OpenELEC.
If you are more comfortable with Windows then go for that.
OpenELEC is a dedicated media center and will always be. It's not really built to support things other than XBMC.
As for comics, I believe XBMC will just treat cbz and cbr archives as photos. So you will need to open them in the photos/pictures section of XBMC.
Aeon Nox use to have a Comics specific menu item, but this was basically just a cosmetic thing, you can do this by adding your comics folder as a favourite and making it a main menu item in whatever skin you want.
"PPC is too slow, your CPU has no balls to handle HD content." ~ Davilla
"Maybe it's a toaster. Who knows, but it has nothing to do with us." ~ Ned Scott
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Yeah the size is no big deal for me. Sicne the 250gb msata will be just for roms and the os and perhaps fanarts and such. I already have about 20tb of nas servers for my media.
Yeah ive been using openelec for a long time and i do like its simplicity, but it does have some issues as well, random bugs here and there. The new one 4.2.1 has been fairly good so far. But yeah im just really wanting to play like the old snes and psx games, perhaps run some psp roms, and desmemu roms. I spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out how to make emulation work wiht openelec. I got the retroarch addon, the advanced launcher, the custom rom addon yet nothing worked. I managed to set up scrapers and fix the library and such. But the roms didnt want to play.,..
Ive never used xbmc with windows though. So i dont know how it will work. I went from the first xbox to my pulse-eight and now im getting the intel nuc i5. Im jsut afraid that openelec will never be able to provide everything you can do with xbmc.
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there are also other alternatives like XBMCbuntu and *buntu (eg. Xubuntu, Ubuntu,etc) + XBMC for that setup.
if you want to save yourself time and have a higher chance of things to work, then simply go with Windows always, it's not that hard to decide.
My XBMC/Kodi folder: addons, skins, addon/menu backgrounds & more
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In my opinion the different *buntus 14.x and Linux Mint 17 are good choices. Give it a try!
XBMC can be easily installed.
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Win8.1 works great for all your needs and your hardware can handle it.
It will take about 40gb.
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Ok so im thinking im leaning more towards xbmcbuntu, i think it can run my emulators which i want much more easily than openelec, and wont have the many issues im reading that windows users are apparantly having. Also i love having boot directly to xbmc within seconds, so its also a plus for me. Il test it out tomorrow and let you guys know.
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Win8.1 runs like a cheetah; boot time with ssd is crazy fast.
Windows 7 runs emulators so I can see no reason why Win8.1 should be any different.
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Yeah - another vote for full OS.
I'm not a Windows fanboy, but it does perform beautifully on the i5 NUC.
I've read that most modern Linux distros are the same. When you have this much PC power, it's a shame to go with an embedded OS like OpenElec.
Unleash the full power, and do whatever you want!
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fritsch
Team-Kodi Developer
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Are there nowadays virus scanners available that don't disturb movie playback?
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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Built in in win 8.1or you can get nod32
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Linux doesn't need a virus scanner and I have no problem using Microsoft Sercurity Essintals with movie playback on windows 7. Its the same software as Windows Defender in 8+8.1 so no real need for a support virus scanner really. I do have a non pro version of Malwarebytes hanging around tho just in case. I basically use it as an on demad scanner and not one that runs constantly. Don't need it and MSE battling it out on resources. I personally use PCLinuxOS Mate Edition since I hate Ubuntu personally. XBMCbuntu is a full blown OS as well and you can easily install applications and a better GUI if you want. I
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2014-11-18, 00:12
(This post was last modified: 2014-11-18, 00:14 by aptalca.)
For years I struggled with trying to make sure my htpc did everything. It had to do xbmc, netflix, hulu, full web browser, etc. while maintaining its htpc identity and full remote control capability.
It was a pain.
First I had everything on windows, fully automated with eventghost, but it always kept breaking. I had to leave it on all the time because wake from off did not always work. But xbmc wasn't happy being left open all the time. It would sometimes crash. So I had to set up eventghost to start and close xbmc with the remote. Random windows housekeeping would also slow it down to a crawl at the worst possible times, etc.
Then I tried a dual boot scheme where openelec was used for xbmc and windows for everything else. Then I realized how cool and stable openelec was.
Finally, I bought a chromecast, dedicated htpc to xbmc/openelec and started using the chromecast for netflix, hulu and the browser (desktop mirroring is really cool)
Now I am truly happy. I leave the htpc on all the time so couchpotato and sickbeard can update its library when new things are added. Openelec doesn't have anything going on in the background so power usage is really low when idle, and it is super stable. It very rarely freezes or crashes.
So, I don't know about comics or emulators, but for xbmc, use openelec and for internet streaming, use an official media streamer like chromecast, firetv or the like. Xbmc was never good for that. Almost all addons are hacked and they break, sometimes for good (ie. amazon prime, netflix, hulu, daily show, colbert report, etc.) Chromecast is especially great because it gives you full browser experience (with flash) through mirroring as well.
