2011-02-16, 04:19
poofyhairguy,
Thanks for posting this thread! I think I fit somewhere in between group 2 and 2.5 but I have a few questions...
- It would be awesome to have the streaming capability (netflix) so I don't have to swap over to my blue-ray player and use its horrible netflix widget. But is the full functionality there? (I read your post about hardware accelerated flash being experimental.)
- Is it your recommendation to use the "Live" installation on these boxes or should you do a custom linux build with xbmc on top? (Sorry if this is a newb question, just wondering if there is a huge advantage to a manual installation over the Live build)
- The 2 pre-built options in Group 2 (shuttle and zotac) appear to be slightly different. Shuttle is a barebone while the zotac comes with a hard drive and RAM. Do you have disk/ram recommendations for the shuttle barebone?
- Is the hard drive a factor if you have a file server on the home network? (windows or linux) I'm just unfamiliar with what other features a local disk brings to xbmc outside of media storage.
- If I'm reading correctly, the Zotac ND01 ($249) is recommended for Group 2 people. The Zotac ND22 ($269) is recommended for group 2.5 people but you still need to buy RAM ($28 for 2GB) & Storage ($7 for 4GB SDHC). This puts the delta around $55 correct? (I'm assuming the hard disk is not a factor.. set me straight if that's incorrect )
Thanks again for putting together this awesome guide!
~Brian
**EDIT: In my last bullet I assumed Live can be installed to an SDHC card. If this is not true, replace my storage link with an $8 USB stick.
**EDIT #2: Math fail in my last bullet... woops
Thanks for posting this thread! I think I fit somewhere in between group 2 and 2.5 but I have a few questions...
- It would be awesome to have the streaming capability (netflix) so I don't have to swap over to my blue-ray player and use its horrible netflix widget. But is the full functionality there? (I read your post about hardware accelerated flash being experimental.)
- Is it your recommendation to use the "Live" installation on these boxes or should you do a custom linux build with xbmc on top? (Sorry if this is a newb question, just wondering if there is a huge advantage to a manual installation over the Live build)
- The 2 pre-built options in Group 2 (shuttle and zotac) appear to be slightly different. Shuttle is a barebone while the zotac comes with a hard drive and RAM. Do you have disk/ram recommendations for the shuttle barebone?
- Is the hard drive a factor if you have a file server on the home network? (windows or linux) I'm just unfamiliar with what other features a local disk brings to xbmc outside of media storage.
- If I'm reading correctly, the Zotac ND01 ($249) is recommended for Group 2 people. The Zotac ND22 ($269) is recommended for group 2.5 people but you still need to buy RAM ($28 for 2GB) & Storage ($7 for 4GB SDHC). This puts the delta around $55 correct? (I'm assuming the hard disk is not a factor.. set me straight if that's incorrect )
Thanks again for putting together this awesome guide!
~Brian
**EDIT: In my last bullet I assumed Live can be installed to an SDHC card. If this is not true, replace my storage link with an $8 USB stick.
**EDIT #2: Math fail in my last bullet... woops