LinuxMCE Forums
General => Users => Topic started by: dcubox1 on May 05, 2010, 11:44:15 am
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So im looking at buying a new MD for PXE booting anyone got any opinions on a good spec but not over priced MD?
Looking for something with HDMI and/or SPDIF outputs preferably....
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Acer Revo
;D
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http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173797
Generally I'm very pleased with it. Has HDMI (definitely) and SPDIF (I'm fairly sure), read also the wiki page on this board. Get it with two gigs of RAM. Fan is a bit noisey I thought, but I swapped it out with a Fractal Design (or was it Scythe?) one. Soon am I going to mount it to the back of my TV with a slot-loading optical drive (so the CDs appear to "pop" out the top of the TV) and a 1U PSU (again with a new quiet fan).
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I like my revo- and I think the other nano based MDs are similarly impressive if you just want tv, music/video, etc. My only real complaint is with hulu. The revo doesn't quite have the umpf (technical term) to get a smooth picture. I fully admit I may not have vdpau setup correctly, so maybe the difficulties are limited to me.
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I don't believe that hulu takes advantage of vdpau acceleration as of yet, nvidia has stated this is being worked on.
J.
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After much searching as well as testing with my single-core ION netbook (HP Mini 311), I will be buying either the Revo AR3610 or a Zotac barebones. Those seem to be the best bang for the buck that have both HDMI for my TV and spdif for my speakers. I'm limiting myself to dual core Atom cpu plus ION gfx. I'd consider building one, but I haven't seen any cases that are as small as the Revo/Zotac cases and for me this is important.
If someone could point me to a similar sized case for cheap enough I'd consider going the roll-your-own route.
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What turned me off the revo is the extra stuff that comes with it, i.e. wireless, hard drives, XP etc. Of course you are going to be paying for this unwanted stuff (which just won't do if you're tight-fisted like me). Although you can get "linux versions" can't you? I assume they would still come with hard drives and wireless though.
I thought the following mini-ITX cases looked quite interesting - I'll be getting the first one for my car as I am in the process of building a carPC running a minimal install debian, but for my media director I won't have any case I don't think - it will be mounted to the back of the TV, so I'll leave the mobo "naked" as it were.
http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=12699
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=3#thinclient
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/156186
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I love this little mini-itx case, VESA mount, wall mount, DIN rail mount... Great for home and auto. $39
http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure
Some autopc cases for reasonable prices as well...
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.101/.f
J.