HTPC recommendations

**lath19** · December 30th, 2011, 07:27 AM

So my original xbox with xbmc just isn't cutting it anymore. It doesn't have the resources to play high quality video and it's noisy as hell. Originally I was thinking of buying a nettop to replace it and running openelec or xbmc live. After thinking about it some more I'd rather build my own htpc running win7 (or Ubuntu is an option) and have xbmc installed as an app. Apple TV can run xbmc but it doesn't have the horsepower to breeze through 720p skins or play 1080p content. Does anybody run a setup like this? Is it a pain to launch xbmc instead of having the system boot right into it? Hardware recommendations?

Looking at something along the lines of this:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=114896

Any advice is appreciated.

**decker89** · January 1st, 2012, 07:46 PM

My setup is an Xbox 360 at the tv and a pc in the office with an over the air tuner which streams live channels to the Xbox via the network within windows media center.

Xbox 360 has a lot of native content like Netflix, YouTube, daily motion, Zune movies, and others. Tie that with an over the air tuner for the pc (I use Hdhomerun from silicone dust) and you can view and record your locals channels in hi def from your Xbox 360 and also have all the other video apps that are native to the Xbox.

Your only costs would be $50 a year for Xbox gold membership and any other subscription services you sign up for like Netflix or Hulu plus.

No cable bills or satellite bills. The only challenge not having cable or sat is getting kings games live. At this point I can only watch kings games live via the pc directly using NHL gamecenter.

Oh and the new xbox is fairly quite, it's quite enough to where it's a non-issue for watching movies or whatever else on your tv.

Thread: HTPC recommendations

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Display

HTPC recommendations

Posting Permissions