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Jim Jones posted:I was looking for a good compromise of mini-mouse/keyboard, and the Rii seems to meet that qualification well. I considered the Logitech diNovo, but the price seems unreasonably high, and many people report problems such as low battery life and connectivity issues. The Lenovo N5901 looks interesting, however, it is aesthetically weird and I could see my hands hating it. My ideal option would be something average remote sized with a relatively full keyboard, mouse function, media keys, and backlight if at all possible.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 01:11 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 05:19 |
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kalicki posted:Why the Caviar Black? Green should be fine, especially with the SSD I seem to remember hearing that the Caviar Greens had poor performance or unreliability or something? If it's just decreased performance, then you're right and that wouldn't matter for an HTPC. japtor posted:I have a similar mini keyboard remote thing, they're really awkward to use any time you have to type anything because there's no screen right above the keyboard like on a phone (and at least on mine the range isn't so hot). If you plan to do any typing other than searching now and then it's fine, but if you were going to do more typing (like browsing and posting here I guess) I'd suggest a full size keyboard. I just got a Logitech K400, has an integrated trackpad on the right and seems decent enough. Only complaint so far is that it doesn't do two finger tap for right click even though it does two finger scroll. Appreciate the advice! I pretty much plan on using the keyboard for controlling software with media keys, as well as searching and looking up things here and there. If it were just for me, something like that would be fine. However, I have a 10 month old daughter who's into everything, and something of that size would make it more difficult to keep out of her reach comfortably, so I'm looking for something around the size of an average remote. Also, I'll be using it on a couch directly ~15 feet in front of the HTPC, so even IR will be just fine.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 02:58 |
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I remember from a RAID/NAS thread or something that the Green drives had a reputation for head parking excessively and dying, or just something weird with regard to using them in some RAID setups. I have no clue if they have an issue otherwise, and for all I know that stuff may be blown out of proportion. I run a few in security camera DVRs and haven't had an issue yet, maybe cause they're constantly writing and can't park?  Otherwise if you're paranoid about them there's other 2TB drives that can be had for much less than the $200 for that Black drive. (and if you don't mind Green in the end there's the 3TB for less than the 2TB black)As for the remote, yeah that's pretty much the ideal use case. Just pick whichever one where you'd be comfortable with the layout, although I'm guessing you've already noticed there's a crapload out there. I got one with a little optical pad cause I figured I'd get annoyed using the right half of the keyboard on ones like the one you linked.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 04:03 |
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japtor posted:I remember from a RAID/NAS thread or something that the Green drives had a reputation for head parking excessively and dying, or just something weird with regard to using them in some RAID setups. I have no clue if they have an issue otherwise, and for all I know that stuff may be blown out of proportion. I run a few in security camera DVRs and haven't had an issue yet, maybe cause they're constantly writing and can't park? Head parking is only a problem if you're in a high usage situation, where it adds extra wear to the drive as they're always coming out of park. On the other hand, in a media pc situation, it's not bad at all, as head parking saves energy, especially since you might not need the data on that drive for hours.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 05:02 |
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For those of you with a Zotac AD10, is there some trick I'm not seeing to make the remote that comes with it fully functional with XBMC? Most of the buttons seem to work OK (as keypress sims--so the OK button just sends Return/Enter, back sends Esc, etc), but some--the Info, Windows, and color buttons come to mind--don't seem to do anything or, worse, launch MCE. The ShowKey app doesn't display anything for those keys either. Would it work better if I switch to OpenElec? Can OpenElec even do the SABnzbd/sick beard thing? Should I just buy a different remote  ?
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 05:39 |
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Ciaphas posted:For those of you with a Zotac AD10, is there some trick I'm not seeing to make the remote that comes with it fully functional with XBMC? Most of the buttons seem to work OK (as keypress sims--so the OK button just sends Return/Enter, back sends Esc, etc), but some--the Info, Windows, and color buttons come to mind--don't seem to do anything or, worse, launch MCE. The ShowKey app doesn't display anything for those keys either. I guess maybe Eventghost for Windows: http://www.eventghost.org/ And this for Linux: http://ben.periton.co.uk/2012/06/co...remote-control/ I hit a really annoying snag when I tried to set up the AD10. The install went great, and when I connected it to the TV via HDMI it worked flawlessly. The problems came when I tried to connect it though the receiver. POST-screen too big, XBMC-splash too big, "no signal" after splash. God loving drat it. So there's something going on between the TV and the AD10, namely the Yamaha receiver. After some googling I found out that it has something to do with the Yamaha not relaying EDID information correctly. No modeline would work (there's apparently a bug in the ATI driver which ignores modelines), so I had to read the EDID-info from the TV while connected straight to it, save the raw dump to the HD with some Windows program, and then get the AD10 to read my custom EDID-dump instead of whatever drunken gibberish the Yamaha is trying to feed it. If you think this had a positive outcome and worked out in the end, you've obviously never hosed around in xorg.conf before. So now I have to resort to every nerds' nightmare: HDMI straight to the TV and analogue sound to the receiver. xkcd had it absolutely right: 
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 07:42 |
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xorg.conf is where computer nerds go to die.  torjus posted:Windows or Linux? Sorry, I should have said I was referring to Windows. I'll see if Eventghost does anything in the morning. Probably try OpenELEC too because why the hell not. Thanks 
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 08:08 |
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Ciaphas posted:xorg.conf is where computer nerds go to die. There is an addon for XBMC called MCE remote. That will let you map keyboard presses to remote buttons. Head over to the XBMC thread as I'm sure some of them have run into it before.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 13:52 |
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Ciaphas posted:For those of you with a Zotac AD10, is there some trick I'm not seeing to make the remote that comes with it fully functional with XBMC? Most of the buttons seem to work OK (as keypress sims--so the OK button just sends Return/Enter, back sends Esc, etc), but some--the Info, Windows, and color buttons come to mind--don't seem to do anything or, worse, launch MCE. The ShowKey app doesn't display anything for those keys either. The zotac remote is sending windows media center commands, not xbmc commands. I recommend using a harmony remote and mapping the keys to keyboard commands.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2012 14:10 |
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Don Lapre posted:The zotac remote is sending windows media center commands, not xbmc commands. I recommend using a harmony remote and mapping the keys to keyboard commands. How do I map the harmony keys to keyboard commands? I saw a Harmony 300 on the cheap today and picked it up, but I can't work out how to do that--I add the Zotac AD10 as a device but when I go to modify buttons it only shows commands, not keypresses.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 02:32 |
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Ciaphas posted:How do I map the harmony keys to keyboard commands? I saw a Harmony 300 on the cheap today and picked it up, but I can't work out how to do that--I add the Zotac AD10 as a device but when I go to modify buttons it only shows commands, not keypresses. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=95063 if using windows 7 I recommend putting a shortcut to xbmc as the first item in the QuickStart bar and program a button to win+1 so pressing it will launch xbmc from the windows desktop.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 02:45 |
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I think I got what I paid for--the Harmony 300 apparently doesn't support Activities at all which means I can't program the thing per that guide (thanks for linking it, though). I can add the Media Center Remote and MCE Keyboard as devices, but neither the internal IR receiver in the AD10 nor the external one that came with it respond to either device choice. I'm so bad at this 
Ciaphas fucked around with this message at Jul 14, 2012 around 03:22 |
| # ? Jul 14, 2012 02:58 |
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Are you on Windows? If so, you can use EventGhost for this. There's an XBMC plugin for it, so it makes it relatively easy to customize everything. Here's the quick and dirty: - Install EventGhost, make sure it works with your IR receiver - Add the XBMC plugin to EG, drag it into your context folder - Add a new device to the Harmony, something with lots of buttons (think DVD changer) - Switch the Harmony to that device, then press a button. The IR code should pop up in the lower left of EG - Drag that code to whatever XBMC command you want - Repeat for all buttons It takes a bit to setup, but you can have custom buttons for just about everything in XBMC. Note that I did this like 4 versions of XBMC ago, so there might be something easier by now. I keep EG around since it also works with the Windows desktop (I can have that same "device" on the Harmony do different things when XBMC isn't open, in other words) and various emulators/programs I run.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 12:55 |
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Ciaphas posted:I think I got what I paid for--the Harmony 300 apparently doesn't support Activities at all which means I can't program the thing per that guide (thanks for linking it, though). I can add the Media Center Remote and MCE Keyboard as devices, but neither the internal IR receiver in the AD10 nor the external one that came with it respond to either device choice. As someone said before, go to xbmc/ settings/ add-ons/ get add-ons. Look in the program add-ons for mceremote. Install it. Then click on it to configure the key mappings. It should already have the actions mapped for an mce remote, like the one that came with your ad10.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 15:12 |
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torjus posted:Windows or Linux? The solution to your problem is a HDMI Detective but whether a permanent fix is worth $100ish to you is up to you and how much more time you want to futily gently caress around with a software solution which ultimately won't work (trust me).
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 15:17 |
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EC posted:Are you on Windows? If so, you can use EventGhost for this. There's an XBMC plugin for it, so it makes it relatively easy to customize everything. I'm with you right up to the part where eventghost is supposed to display the key I'm hitting. Where is that? Also, I thought I had to select a device on the harmony that's compatible with my IR receiver--namely the one in the ad10, not just any old device?
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 19:46 |
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Ciaphas posted:I'm with you right up to the part where eventghost is supposed to display the key I'm hitting. Where is that? Even if you don't have activities you should still be able to map keys to buttons.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 20:03 |
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IR receivers should jut work with anything sending an IR code. EG should display the codes in the bottom left side, if I remember right. I'm not sure if EG is compatible with your unit, but if it isn't out of the box I'm sure some digging in their forums will reveal something.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2012 20:05 |
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I thought an IR receiver would ignore commands from any remote it didn't recognize, though? At least for sure the one built in to the Zotac AD10 ignores everything any other remote sends. Including the Harmony 300, unless I set it to BE an AD10, in which case I'm back to square one. I DID have some better results with both the stock remote and the Harmony in AD10 mode when I used the 'Generic HID' plugin in EventGhost. It started recognizing keys, but the remote appears to alternate between sending two different codes on every keypress. At any rate I'm returning the Harmony 300 to Fry's in a little while--it is seriously laggy on repeated keypresses on all of my devices--so maybe I'll end up with another remote or another receiver that works.
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| # ? Jul 15, 2012 00:11 |
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Scratch2k posted:The solution to your problem is a HDMI Detective but whether a permanent fix is worth $100ish to you is up to you and how much more time you want to futily gently caress around with a software solution which ultimately won't work (trust me).
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| # ? Jul 15, 2012 09:22 |
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Some more on the Zotac ID61 so far after getting it mostly set up (just waiting on CableCard tuner now): After updating the firmware or whatever, the noise is a bit quieter, but still annoying. Sort of ok while watching TV (barring silence) but it's enough that I wouldn't want to keep it on all the time like I do with my Mac mini. Mounting it behind the TV might help make it less noticeable. There's some mount it comes with that appears to hook up to this VESA mount I assume. Performance seems ok. At first when I had power saving stuff on, specifically for the integrated graphics, the Windows Media Center interface became unusably laggy at 1080, but it was fine once I turned it back to the "balanced" power setting. Until the CC tuner comes in I've testing with an old USB analog tuner recording to an external USB 3 drive, which ran into a snag when waking from sleep. WMC gave a "disk full" error when trying to view TV, I guess cause the drive didn't come back online fast enough on wake. Restarting the app got it working fine again, so I guess I should be looking into a way of restarting it on wake automatically or something. Until then I've gotten around it by switching sleep to S0...which isn't really sleep but it's enough to quiet the fan down at least. Reading into it more I guess I should see if S1 or S2 is supported and test those out, I think S3 is the default. (edit-I was using S1 actually, gotta figure out how to get to S2 now) And the last issue I ran into, the remote doesn't appear to wake the computer, I think it was working before though so I'm not sure what's going on, unless I was just thinking of it starting from power off. Worst case the keyboard still works, but not ideal of course. I guess if mounting it behind screen reduces noise enough I wouldn't bother with sleep at all. Also since the remote is kind of awkward I ordered this universal one, which appears to support WMC going by one of the reviews, and worst case is programmable. The TV has one of those annoying (for simple functions) fancy gyro mouse remotes, and there's a BD player, so hopefully it'll make the whole remote situation a lot simpler. Almost forgot one other snag since I'm going to be using it with an extender, the wifi sucks. Doesn't appear to do 5ghz only mode and is just 1x1 antenna or something, best I've seen out of it is barely over 802.11g speeds. Just going to run a line instead since it won't be too hard there. japtor fucked around with this message at Jul 16, 2012 around 01:11 |
| # ? Jul 15, 2012 10:29 |
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g0del posted:Thanks for the link. I suspect now that the issue is that I'm running linux, not windows. Since the ad10 remote works, I'll try setting the harmony up as an ad10, and see if I can get that to work.
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| # ? Jul 18, 2012 09:15 |
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torjus posted:Did you get this going? I guess it'd involve some fuckery with keyboard.xml to get things like the context-menu (c?) working as the normal AD10-remote doesn't have anything mapped to take care of that.
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 03:09 |
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New ad10 bios is up. Officially supports specifying video ram like the beta bios.
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 03:16 |
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So the remotes I ordered appear to be used/refurbished and in sort of crappy condition  , I'll probably get a Harmony 200/300. Not that I've figured out the wake from sleep issue yet, I can turn the machine on from being completely off, but not wake it from sleep.And now I'm 0 for 2 on CableCard self installs  . Hopefully the cable to the wall won't have to be changed, I found that there appears to be a lot of mouse/rat piss and poo poo where it comes in...otherwise I'd at least change that one out myself with a new cable and better connectors. On the plus side i got ethernet wired up cleanly and can stream recorded files fine from the computer in my room.
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 11:46 |
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My friend finally got his raspberry pi. Plugged it into a cell phone charger, and installed Raspbmc on it. It runs pretty well for how little hardware it has. I played some 720p MKVs and those ran flawlessly. I pulled those movies from my NAS and it was able to do all that without any special configuration. Have not tried music yet, but I assume that should work easily. Where it does struggle is rendering the UI, especially when a movie is playing. It becomes borderline unusable. Scraping my pretty limited movie collection also took quite a while. Setting it up via mysql + dropbox would probably the way to go here. I was unable to pull up a VTY once in XBMC, but my friend said you can SSH into it to configure it. Finally, someone gave me some movies on ISOs, which play fine on my XBMCbuntu install, but the Raspbmc can't play those. It just sits there spins its wheel, then says to check the error log. So if you want it to play ISOs right now, no luck with that. It does boot fairly quickly, as to be expected from an SD card. My friend said they recommend you use a certain type of SD card and he wasn't using the right one, but it seemed to be working just fine on his 8gb one. I am pretty happy with it and can't wait to get the one I ordered...in 12 weeks haha
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 12:54 |
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Is Ubuntu desktop ok for running a NAS and sickbeard/Couch Potato so should the server version be used?
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 13:38 |
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Reloaded my HTPC because it needed it. I was always too lazy to reload it and it was just a Windows 7 computer that was my desktop thrown into an HTPC case and hooked to the tv. So all of my poo poo was on there (minus personal files, I moved those off). But it was slow to boot and all the tweaks I did messing around with it made it unreliable. So I decided to see how it would be with Windows 8. Did a clean install, was easy as hell to get my ceton card working and it's up and going. Windows 8 is great for a media center. My rosewill ir receiver automatically installed and my harmony one worked all without me doing anything to configure them. Even better.
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 13:54 |
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Bonzo posted:Is Ubuntu desktop ok for running a NAS and sickbeard/Couch Potato so should the server version be used? That is what I use and it works fine. I followed this guide for Sick Beard and this guide for CouchPotato The guy has some good start up scrips and it runs really well.
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| # ? Jul 20, 2012 16:26 |
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More fun times with the Zotac, apparently the internal IR receiver can boot the machine up but not wake it from sleep. The USB receiver can wake it at least, haven't bothered testing booting cause the machine won't be shut off. However the USB receiver appears to suck with anything other than the bundled Zotac remote, like from 10ft out or so the Zotac works fine, but not the Harmony 200 I just got (which works fine at similar range on my other machine). Hopefully a different receiver will do the trick. And one little thing I noticed while messing with the Harmony's "Watch TV" button (to turn on the TV and wake at the same time) is that video doesn't come back, I guess something to do with HDMI handshaking or something. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an option for a time delay between the signals on the 200 so I just mapped wake separately. (and I'm too cheap for that little Gefen HDMI thingy that supposedly gets around problems like this)
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| # ? Jul 21, 2012 05:48 |
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japtor posted:More fun times with the Zotac, apparently the internal IR receiver can boot the machine up but not wake it from sleep. The USB receiver can wake it at least, haven't bothered testing booting cause the machine won't be shut off. However the USB receiver appears to suck with anything other than the bundled Zotac remote, like from 10ft out or so the Zotac works fine, but not the Harmony 200 I just got (which works fine at similar range on my other machine). Hopefully a different receiver will do the trick.
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| # ? Jul 21, 2012 12:53 |
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Those are AMD drivers right? Wrong Zotac . Mine is a Celeron/HD3000 model.
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| # ? Jul 21, 2012 17:53 |
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Looking for some guidance on building an HTPC for someone who is maybe an 8th grader when it comes to computer stuff. My skills are pretty much limited to putting together PC components and installing Windows. What I want to be able to do: watch OTA shows, watch Netflix and Hulu, stream some sports or other shows, watch downloaded shows/movies, maybe play some emulator games. If it isn't too complex, I might try recording some shows too. I have a nice HT audio setup that currently plays through the optical out on the TV. I'm currently using my 360 alone for this stuff. So, I put together this build Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $74.99 BIOSTAR A880GZ AM3+ AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $59.99 KWorld Hybrid TV Stick UB445-U USB 2.0 Interface $29.99 Rosewill RKM-800RF 2.4 GHz Cordless Slim Keyboard and Mouse Combo $29.99 G.SKILL Value Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory $20.49 AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor 3.0GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor $49.99 APEX DM-387 Black Steel Micro ATX Media Center / Slim HTPC Comuter Case w/ ATX12V Flex 275W Power Supply $49.99 Total was $315. Thoughts on components, etc? Is there another way I should do this, like a Roku box or something? Can something cheaper do everything I want? I'd like to keep the price around $300 for everything. I'd also like to use Windows as my OS; I've used Linux a little bit but not enough to know what I'm doing, plus my girlfriend has to be able to use the thing. Anyway, any guidance is appreciated. edit - in case it is relevant, I we don't use cable/satellite and we have a 1080p TV. bewbies fucked around with this message at Jul 22, 2012 around 15:49 |
| # ? Jul 22, 2012 15:29 |
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Don Lapre posted:New ad10 bios is up. Officially supports specifying video ram like the beta bios. Does this help for Netflix? I don't use it since i use my ps3 mostly curious. @bewbies, if you don't want to build something you can get a Zotac ivy bridge box, which I assume will play netflix. I was going to build my own, like you but then I realized I didn't want the hassle and bought the AD10 for $200 and added in $12 worth of ram. Flash should work a lot better with the new bios, and I really love the box in general. I boot from a SD card for xbmc and I just unplug the SD card and boot from the hard drive if I want Windows. Easy as pie. If you want more detailed advice ask in the SHSC building thread, they convinced me when I was debating. kri kri fucked around with this message at Jul 22, 2012 around 16:06 |
| # ? Jul 22, 2012 16:01 |
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bewbies posted:Looking for some guidance on building an HTPC for someone who is maybe an 8th grader when it comes to computer stuff. My skills are pretty much limited to putting together PC components and installing Windows. What about something like this? KWorld Hybrid TV Stick UB445-U USB 2.0 Interface $29.99 Logitech K400 (920-003070) Black USB RF Wireless Standard Keyboard $34.99 HGST Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 (0A57915) 500GB 5400 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive $69.99 Foxconn nt-A3500-0h0WWAEQB AMD Hudson D1 White Mini / Booksize Barebone System combo with Kingston 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3S9/4G $152.99 for both totals a bit less than yours, for $287.96, and can do pretty much what you said you wanted to do, in a smaller package, and using about 25w att.
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| # ? Jul 22, 2012 19:36 |
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bewbies posted:Looking for some guidance on building an HTPC for someone who is maybe an 8th grader when it comes to computer stuff. My skills are pretty much limited to putting together PC components and installing Windows. Option: Use your current PC/desktop to run SABnzbd, SickBeard, and Couch Potato, then just stream it all to a Raspberri Pi running RaspBMC for a grand total of about $50 including shipping. If making a full HTPC, don't cheap out on the keyboard/mouse. It's a HUGE pain in the rear end to have to move within 3 feet of the system with the wireless stuff because otherwise it only sees every 5th key from your couch.
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| # ? Jul 22, 2012 21:02 |
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walumachoncha posted:Logitech K400 (920-003070) Black USB RF Wireless Standard Keyboard $34.99 Otherwise maybe look into a traditional remote control of some sort since using the keyboard and mouse for everything isn't ideal.
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| # ? Jul 23, 2012 03:25 |
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japtor posted:And yeah if you're getting a 500GB drive, might as well get a laptop one if it's around the same price, it opens up the case options a bit (and will be quieter and lower power).
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| # ? Jul 23, 2012 04:33 |
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If he wants to record TV I would not go with anything less than 250 GB.
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| # ? Jul 23, 2012 21:24 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 05:19 |
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I recently picked up a cheap Revo 3610 and I'm having trouble getting smooth playback of HD video via XBMC. The video just keeps stuttering, even on 720p. I followed this guide: http://www.pauljroberts.com/my-pers...that-works-well and I'm still having no luck. I'm not streaming the video, just playing it off an external hard drive. Any advice? [EDIT] Running Windows 7 by the way.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2012 12:25 |
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