Popcorn Hour (NMT - Networked Media Tank) vs. XBMC?

I have had a popcorn hour for about 4 months now. My initial unit was defective and over heating.. I do alot of HD video though.. and the popcorn hour is the only device that play 1080P mkv with high bit rates with no issues.

It also does DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD through the hdmi as well..

Other then it playing HD vids the performance of the gui is sucky -
Playing DVD ISO is kinda sucky

But again I can play a 35 Gigabytes x-men over the network with no issues.

I replaced XBMC on a XBox w/softmod because I needed 720p/1080p playback support. The replacement is a PopCorn Hour A-110 Networked Media Tank. It plays absolutely everything I have thrown out it with no issue, but it does lack a little on the UI.

I need a device for my bedroom so I'm considering moving the PCH A-110 to the bedroom and building a Shuttle for XBMC. Given the cost of a PCH, I need my XBMC build to be competitive.

So, I am looking at using a Shuttle SG33G5 with 2gig RAM, small HDD (I will stream all content of MoCA LAN), and something with a GeForce 9400 GPU with HDMI like an MSI N94GT-MD512. I will take my E6600 2.4ghz C2D out of my current desktop and put it in the shuttle (excuse to upgrade my desktop). The shuttle uses a Realtek ALC888DD.

Extra cost aside, my concern is capability of video and audio output when comparing XBMC to an NMT. From what I read, it doesn't seem like I need to be too concerned with video, but I'm not sure on audio. Full support for common stuff like AC3 and DTS 5.1/6.1 seems to be there, but what about DD HD and DTS HD? I can't find any conclusive info on this front.

What are the thoughts on a build like this and XBMC as an alternative to a NMT.

I was wondering when you'd find you're way over here =)

as of the 9.04 release, passing of lossless codecs (THD/DTS-MA) via HDMI is not supported due to OS limitations (not XBMC limitations). I'd expect that Linux will get its act together first, since there's no HDCP issues. For now, you're limited to bitstream output of DD/DTS, or 6/8-ch PCM. XBMC does not currently decode THD/DTS-MA to PCM, so the files in question would need to have their audio decoded/stored as FLAC

what I've done for my bluray rips is keep both the original lossless audio (for future use), and a lossy DTS 1536kbps track (for now)

That's good info. I think I'll just wait another a few months in general. I can build the Shuttle box for $350-375 total if I don't factor in the upgrade I would do to my desktop so I can move the E6600 to the Shuttle. I'm living with the lower class NMT UI without much issue so unless I can do XBMC cheaper (like ION platform), it doesn't make sense to sacrifice on the audio side right now.

the ION should be a great platform for XBMC once boards are available. I got tired of waiting and just put together a cheap system using a gigabyte 9400 IGP and celeron E1400

Hi,

I Dont know if this is the general place for this or not. I cant seem to find a specific forum for the asrock 330 and im at a complete loss as where to start.

Heres my situation, I currently have a popcorn hour a110 which i think is great apart from the time it takes to verify and unrar large downloaded .mkvs (which is mainly all i use). This is why im looking at a asrock 330.

My current setup using the popcorn hour uses NZBGet which is pretty much downloading constantly. Its set up so that it checks newzbin every 30 mins and downloads any bookmarks i have. This means that when im at work or whatever i can look on nezbin on my phone, add a new film i fancy to my bookmark then when i come home its downloaded and extracted, ready to watch.

Here are my questions:

Im looking at at asrock 330, but despite using telnet a few times, i have no grasp of linux. Id be looking on instaling XBMC live, how easy/hard is this? What is the general upkeep like? Would it be too much for someone with no linux experience?

Ive seen a script (SABNZBD) which looks to do exactly what im doing now (ie downloading/extracting from newzbin). Can this be installed ontop of xbmc live? or would i need to install a full linux os to be able to do this?

Any idea of the verifying/extracting times of say a 1080p 10gig .mkv? On my popcorn this can take 2-6 hours, sometimes longer. Will it be greatly improved?

I wont be using any NAS/network, everything will be self contained. How easy is it to insert a new HDD? I'd be looking at maybe a 1-2TB depending on price. Do 3.5" HDD's fit?

Finally, how does XBMC work? My current YAMJ jukebox i think is great (moviewall skin) but the downside is ive got to run a program from my pc to update it with any new films. Ive seen AEON skin and it looks better than my current one, does this automatically update new films and download fanart/synopsis etc or again does this need to be run externally from a main pc?

Any help greatly appreciated, trying to find a general starting place is going right over my head! To sum up, something that looks good and has the ability to remotely download and unrar nzbs is all im after, preferably alot quicker than my popcorn hour!

Cheers

you didn't spend much time in the forum, did ya? so why should we waste our time to walk you through again? all of your questions can be answerd within 2-3 hours of reading i guess. and besides that wou yould allready have the knowledge to build a machine yourself.

to give you a short answers, yes i would prefer a 330 over the popcorn hour. ill bet it would be a big improvement to your setup. ans since im using some similar setup i can say my machine unrars that mkv in about 5-10 minutes...

Thanks for the help.

Im not new to forums, i understand people get pissed when someone comes on like this and asks a load of basic questions. Im just after a starting point, then ill do the research myself.

All the beginners guides ive seen so far go over my head.

Thanks though.

No need to be a dick. If you don't want to answer someone's questions, just ignore the post.

In order:

It's not particularly difficult, but there are some gotchas if you have no linux experience. Expect to spend some time puzzling your way through various FAQs and HOWTOs.

I don't know anything about your particular usenet download scheme, but if it says it works on linux it should work. It would not be integrated into XBMC, of course.

XBMC can play RAR'd movies without extracting them first, as long as they don't use RAR compression. Releases aren't compressed, so it works great. I've never run into a RAR'd movie that wouldn't play. Of course if you prefer to unrar them for whatever reason, even a piddly atom CPU will go a lot faster than the popcornhour integrated computer on a chip.

The asrock330 takes a 2.5" laptop drive internally. The biggest one you can find is around 640MB. Of course it will work with NAS and external (eSATA/USB) drives too.

XBMC works great, as far as the user experience goes it obliterates everything else.

I do exactly what you are describing using sabnzbdplus. Looking at my log of a 15GB 1080p MKV, it took 418 seconds to PAR2 repair and 711s to unrar. So, less than 20 minutes for both.