Hardware selection for XBMC
#1
Hi everyone,

I've been looking at XBMC (and PLEX to some extent) for a while now and I'm finally to the point that I can spend some money on getting my media system set up through out my house.

I'm planning on having a client running XBMC for each TV and a NAS for storage along with a dedicated torrent box (NAS and Torrent box may be 1 but that's not important).

For the XBMC clients I'm considering 3 options

  1. Asus Eee B204 w/ XBMC for Linux
  2. Apple TV w/ XBMC for Mac
  3. Mac Mini w/ XBMC for Mac

Can anyone help with positives and negatives for each?
A couple questions that I could use some help on:
  • Will the B204 (Atom N280 w/ Hardware Video) handle 1080p? Or is XBMC Software decode only?
  • Are there any differences between the Linux and Mac versions of XBMC?


Thanks in advance everyone. I am very excited to finally be able to start using XBMC.
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#2
I would skip the ATV, it's underpowered and can't play high bit rate HD content. I have it and it's stutter city with my rips. I am building a Linux box right now with some stuff I had laying around the house. I don't have a sound card yet but a Core2Duo 2.0ghz with 4gig of ram is playing 1080P BluRay rips very nicely. Now once I add the sound that could change things. The other issue with the ATV is no upgrade options.
Kodi: Shield Pro 2019
Storage: Synology DS2415+, DS1815+
HT: LG 65C9 OLED, Pioneer VSX-LX503
Speakers: ProAc Super Towers/front, ProAc EBT's/rear, Polk S35/center, SVS PB-2000 Subwoofer
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#3
XBMC is software decode only, Linux and MAC are same core codebase. Plex and Boxee are forks of that codebase with additional features and tweaks.

C2D with about 3GHZ is what you will want to decode high bitrate video in my experience. That should slowly get lower as tweaks are applied to the codebas and if hardware accelerated video decode comes along the CPU usage will plummet. I overclock slower 45nm C2D and they work just fine on Linux. Plenty of threads discussing this in this forum...
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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#4
I have no visible frame loss on any of my files with my e6750, do you?

BLKMGK Wrote:XBMC is software decode only, Linux and MAC are same core codebase. Plex and Boxee are forks of that codebase with additional features and tweaks.

C2D with about 3GHZ is what you will want to decode high bitrate video in my experience. That should slowly get lower as tweaks are applied to the codebas and if hardware accelerated video decode comes along the CPU usage will plummet. I overclock slower 45nm C2D and they work just fine on Linux. Plenty of threads discussing this in this forum...
ﻪﻥﻋﺸﻷﻜﻈﭚ
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#5
onesojourner Wrote:I have no visible frame loss on any of my files with my e6750, do you?

I need to update my sig as I now have a 2.6ghz C2D in a 45nm fab process - overclocked to just above 3ghz. Yes, I DID see frame drop prior to overclocking both my old CPU and this one. The content I test with is "Killa Sample" and it beats the crap out of the rendering process. Lots of debate as to whether this is a good test or not but I saw some drops in other video too so I overclocked and never looked back. XBMC continues to improve though so it's possible I would see less drops now. That said - I'm not playing "scene rips" or other downloaded content. I am ripping my own Bluray disks and encoding them myself with an eye towards quality and NOT file size. I save about 40% off the original size on average and have fairly high bitrate video so YMMV.

Bottom line - your 1080 content and my 1080 content are likely not the same - resolution has less to do with playback than bitrate and encoding. I could probably play Apple Trailers at 1080 all day long on a much slower CPU, not so the rips I've encoded myself - especially the bird scene in the Earth series! Shocked
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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#6
So I'm running HDDDVD rips no problem on an HP nc6000 laptop (Pentium M 1.6 Ghz)
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