johnny2 Wrote:
If the Nvidia hardware acceleration bugs are fixed (which I think they will be), Nvidia ION would have to be the ideal motherboard for XBMC. Small, powerful, and hopefully reasonably cheap.
Personally I feel the pico ITX ion platform is genius, however it would be more interesting for me as an XBMC user who runs XBMC under LINUX to see a different processor on the boards (preferably they would just put a CPU socket and heat sync retention clip), I mean the ION will be great for netbooks and even ultralow power PCs running windows with apps that support GPU accelerated decoding of HD video, but to the best of my knowledge XBMC is not one of those apps yet. However I feel the Pico ITX platform has promise at least to satisfy my needs, personally I would like to see some motherboards released around this form factor but supporting better CPUs so that XBMC could be used more effectively, perhaps one that supports AMD’s AM2 low power Athlon 64 x2s or Intel’s core 2 duos. I feel nvidia’s minimalistic approach would be great for x86-64 set-top box media centers.
Personally this is what I would want
1. Pico ITX form factor (or something smaller than micro ATX)
2. Integrated video with GPU accelerated HD decoding support (so when the software is capable of taking advantage of it, it will be there)
2a. HDMI with audio support
3. X number of SATA2 ports (personally I would only need one to hook up a 16GB SSD)
4. Optical out
5. Socketed CPU (any AMD or Intel just needs to be capable of decoding 1080P with out GPU acceleration for the time being)
6. 2 Dimm slots (support for 4GB ram)
7. X number of USB ports (for me it would not be important, just would hook up a thumb drive occasionally)
8. Integrated Windows Media Center compatible IR receiver (the newest spec)
9. Gigabit LAN
Personally I feel any expansion slots would be unnecessary considering everything listed above would fit my needs but they could probably add an Express card slot for those who want to add wireless or what not.
Slice
P.S. it is interesting to note that boards with the above specs could be used for multiple things, anything from a small home server or NAS box to a high-end Linux router if an additional LAN port were provided. A board like this would be an enthusiasts’ wet dream because of the massive amounts of flexibility and small form factor it would offer.