Hi Michael,
Replies inline:
On 26 April 2014 09:19, Michael Pavling pavl...@gmail.com wrote:
On 22 April 2014 20:09, Imran Chaudhry ichaud...@gmail.com wrote:
I'm after decent hardware to run XBMC on, I've already tried
OpenElec/Raspberry Pi but was not satisfied with it. I've bought a WD
Live Media Player which I am similarly not 100% happy with.
I've run it on a Pi, and it just wasn't quite fast enough to give a nice
response on menu transitions for everyday use (though I'm happy to take a Pi
and hard-drive on holiday with me rather than a DVD player and stack of
discs).
Same and same - the redeeming feature of the RPi is that as a media
center I could whack in a 32Gb microsd card and have a portable movie
jukebox when I visited friends/family. It's just that transferring
that media is a big pain. scp is very slow for some reason so I had to
manually remove that card and use it in a SD card adapter.
At home I've got a couple of XBMC machines set up, both Atom boards. One's
an Acer Aspire Revo - it's okay, but was a little fiddly to get all the
audio configured. The other was a Zotac Zbox (can't remember exactly which
model though) and it was a breeze to set up (I went with XBMCbuntu rather
than OpenElec), and it runs the TV in the living room. Pretty much on all
the time; we never watch broadcast telly.
Good to hear another point that the Acer Revo works fine. I did the
research so I know about the sound fiddles but it has been solved.
I've bookmarked some blogs/forum posts where they list the config file
changes needed.
I've got a remote (full size) keyboard to manage it if I need to (or SSH for
fiddly stuff!), but most of the time I just use the XBMC remote control app
on my Android phone or the house iPad.
I'll definitely try the official XBMC android app. In my view it'll be
everyone in the house and guests using it potentially and so remote is
a must (easier and more obvious). I have 3 spare remotes from
various projects - I have earmarked the Microsoft Media Center remote
for this one.
At home I do run a separate file-server for the media (the XBMC boxes has
little SSDs to keep them quiet), and a shared SQL server for the app
database, but I set one up for a friend that just ran on a dedicated Zbox
with a 3GB usb drive and he has no complaints.
Sounds good, and a small SSD will be the way to go for me. I don't
like storing media locally if I can help it. I repurposed the RPi into
a NAS which seems to be working just fine.
Interesting you mention the Zotac Zbox. I asked some former Acer Revo
owners on what hardware they would use these days, the reply was:
Lenovo IdeaCentre A190, the new Asus Vivo VM40B or a Zotac Zbox.
Thanks
Sidenote: I've found Amazon Answers as a good resource for asking
questions about products you're interesting in buying. I got multiple
good responses within a few days.
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