2010-11-06, 16:24
I'm interesting in placing some quiet front end box(s) around the home, and could use a little advice/tips and any recommended hardware you may know of.
I've read some on the Zbox, FoxConn, and XS35, but am not really sure what some thing is the best alternative. I've built 5, 10 etc PC's in the past, so open to a home build if the overall product will be better in both look and quality. But any home build would really need be a plug and play type, as I'm not handy enough to do any case mods, etc.
So background on what I'd like to achieve.
I've read some on the Zbox, FoxConn, and XS35, but am not really sure what some thing is the best alternative. I've built 5, 10 etc PC's in the past, so open to a home build if the overall product will be better in both look and quality. But any home build would really need be a plug and play type, as I'm not handy enough to do any case mods, etc.
So background on what I'd like to achieve.
- Keep each box to about an overall $200 cost.
- The box will likely be shown in a ent. center, so a clean looking box is preferable for the Mrs.
- I have 5 TB server in the basement, and intend to stream the video around the home wireless-n at the moment (hope one day to cat-5 wire the house), so no need for large HD's in the front-ends.
- The machines should be as quiet as possible, and will need to have WLAN on them.
- I do not need 1080p at this time, but it could be useful in the future. Just would prefer stutter free WLAN streaming. I'm also still toying with LAN over coax for possibly better performance.
- Pretty much a standard now, but the machines should have HDMI out for a one wire plug in to a TV.
- I'm open to running any OS on the machines, either Windows7, Ubuntu, or XBMC live. Whichever is thought of as the preferred OS to run XBMC.
- Is wake on USB possible for with XBMC to power them down while not in use and wake via remote button?