autoboy
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I missed the poll too! Not sure how I did that, but I haven’t been that active on here lately. 1 more vote for SageTV to offset Jennyfur.
I’ve used MC but just for windows XP and it had way too many limitations. I’ve been with SageTV ever since. I tried boxee and found it didn’t add anything over SageTV and didn’t support recording. XBMC I use on my laptop but just for the occasional movie when traveling.
“Other” may be CE devices like the popcorn hour and other media streamers
On a side note, I think entirely too much attention is paid to the UI of these solutions. I can learn the UI in a day of using the product and after a week I don’t even pay any attention to the UI. MUCH more important is the functionality of the software / hardware. Boxee and XBMC are just media player UIs and offer me nothing more than a pretty face. They have great UIs and are nice to use, but I need more out of my HTPC.
I missed the poll too! Not sure how I did that, but I haven’t been that active on here lately. 1 more vote for SageTV to offset Jennyfur.
I’ve used MC but just for windows XP and it had way too many limitations. I’ve been with SageTV ever since. I tried boxee and found it didn’t add anything over SageTV and didn’t support recording. XBMC I use on my laptop but just for the occasional movie when traveling.
“Other” may be CE devices like the popcorn hour and other media streamers
On a side note, I think entirely too much attention is paid to the UI of these solutions. I can learn the UI in a day of using the product and after a week I don’t even pay any attention to the UI. MUCH more important is the functionality of the software / hardware. Boxee and XBMC are just media player UIs and offer me nothing more than a pretty face. They have great UIs and are nice to use, but I need more out of my HTPC.
I don’t think the AppleTV classic tried to appeal to all users at all. It’s pretty much the same as the current one except it lacks Netflix and the new UI. I consider the new AppleTV a little more than a simple hardware refresh that allows the price to drop and the video capability to improve slightly. I’m not sure the old one could handle HD Netflix. The graphics card in the old AppleTV was only an underclocked 7300 and it lacked full h.264 decoding while the CPU only ran at 1ghz.
I don’t think the AppleTV classic tried to appeal to all users at all. It’s pretty much the same as the current one except it lacks Netflix and the new UI. I consider the new AppleTV a little more than a simple hardware refresh that allows the price to drop and the video capability to improve slightly. I’m not sure the old one could handle HD Netflix. The graphics card in the old AppleTV was only an underclocked 7300 and it lacked full h.264 decoding while the CPU only ran at 1ghz.
[quote=”babgvant”]
[quote=”autoboy”]
God I hate HD bitstreaming. I wish it would just go away.
[/quote]There are a lot of reasons why HD bit streaming is a very nice feature (bypassing the OS’s mixer to name a big one). Why do you want it to go away?
[/quote]
because it is confusing for users and completely unnecessary for 99.99% of of the population. It is thought by many people as the only way to get HD audio to your speakers but that is not true at all.
[quote=”babgvant”]
[quote=”autoboy”]
God I hate HD bitstreaming. I wish it would just go away.
[/quote]There are a lot of reasons why HD bit streaming is a very nice feature (bypassing the OS’s mixer to name a big one). Why do you want it to go away?
[/quote]
because it is confusing for users and completely unnecessary for 99.99% of of the population. It is thought by many people as the only way to get HD audio to your speakers but that is not true at all.
[quote=”Mikinho”]
[quote=”autoboy”]
Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card[/quote]One one of the pre-reqs was 3D HDTV and HD Audio bitstreaming so a discrete sound card was needed since the NVIDIA 4xx series weren’t available at the time of the article.
[quote=”autoboy”]
The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds. At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu. Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.
[/quote]We’ll have a review next month that will disagree on that. The AtomION builds can be a great HTPC if done right assuming you aren’t a big add-inextra software user. For a long time Flash was worthless with Ion builds but since their introduced hardware acceleration it works quite nicely.
[/quote]God I hate HD bitstreaming. I wish it would just go away.
Why anyone would spend an extra $250 plus all the setup headaches to get bitstreaming is beyond me. That same person would probably pair that bitstreaming setup with a small $1000 satellite speaker system thinking they got great sound out of it. LPCM is right there absolutely free. ::) If you want bitstreaming over LPCM because you must have completely untouched audio then you had better have $3000 worth of speaker and $800 worth of amp or more with perfectly placed speakers and exact calibration.
Is your Atom dual core? That makes it better. But does it work with Hulu? What about with Silverlight?
[quote=”Mikinho”]
[quote=”autoboy”]
Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card[/quote]One one of the pre-reqs was 3D HDTV and HD Audio bitstreaming so a discrete sound card was needed since the NVIDIA 4xx series weren’t available at the time of the article.
[quote=”autoboy”]
The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds. At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu. Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.
[/quote]We’ll have a review next month that will disagree on that. The AtomION builds can be a great HTPC if done right assuming you aren’t a big add-inextra software user. For a long time Flash was worthless with Ion builds but since their introduced hardware acceleration it works quite nicely.
[/quote]God I hate HD bitstreaming. I wish it would just go away.
Why anyone would spend an extra $250 plus all the setup headaches to get bitstreaming is beyond me. That same person would probably pair that bitstreaming setup with a small $1000 satellite speaker system thinking they got great sound out of it. LPCM is right there absolutely free. ::) If you want bitstreaming over LPCM because you must have completely untouched audio then you had better have $3000 worth of speaker and $800 worth of amp or more with perfectly placed speakers and exact calibration.
Is your Atom dual core? That makes it better. But does it work with Hulu? What about with Silverlight?
I don’t think it is THAT bad. At least they used a fanless graphics card and a 45W CPU. Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card, could have spent half what they spent on the motherboard, and probably don’t need a fanless PSU, but the overall build could be much worse. I’ve seen much worse HTPC builds.
The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds. At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu. Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.
I don’t think it is THAT bad. At least they used a fanless graphics card and a 45W CPU. Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card, could have spent half what they spent on the motherboard, and probably don’t need a fanless PSU, but the overall build could be much worse. I’ve seen much worse HTPC builds.
The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds. At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu. Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.
Some people just can’t wait. These movies will only be available via the HDMI port on PPV enabled cable boxes so you can’t just hook up a HD-PVR and copy the movie. You will need an HDfury as well.
Some people just can’t wait. These movies will only be available via the HDMI port on PPV enabled cable boxes so you can’t just hook up a HD-PVR and copy the movie. You will need an HDfury as well.
I would get dropouts in the file on HDHR recordings when I uploaded a large file to the WHS. I was also using a Gigabyte board with the onboard gigabit nic. I upgraded to an Intel PCIe nic and the problem went away. $30 on Newegg.
I still can’t upload a large file to the WHS and play back a high bitrate 1080p movie without hiccups, but I think that is related to harddrive throughput more than the network. That’s why I keep my TV recording drives off of the drive pool. I see no reason to include them in the drive pool.
I would get dropouts in the file on HDHR recordings when I uploaded a large file to the WHS. I was also using a Gigabyte board with the onboard gigabit nic. I upgraded to an Intel PCIe nic and the problem went away. $30 on Newegg.
I still can’t upload a large file to the WHS and play back a high bitrate 1080p movie without hiccups, but I think that is related to harddrive throughput more than the network. That’s why I keep my TV recording drives off of the drive pool. I see no reason to include them in the drive pool.
That’s my opinion as well. If I really want surround sound, I will set up speakers rather than spend a bunch of money on fake surround. The Boston is just a direct replacement of the TV speakers and comes with a handy wireless sub, all for $300. It’s the choice I would make.
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