2009-11-26, 04:58
Only my second post but I've been visiting this forum for years.
I fell in love with XBMC waaaay back when I soft modded my XBOX but we live in an HD world now!
Although I am not currently in a position to implement this (I'm poor!) I thought I'd request some feedback so I can get an idea of what I need.
My planned setup uses an ASRock ION 330 with XBMC Live. I won't have an internal HDD and was planning on using a useless 4GB Compact Flash card in an SATA adapter or, if more efficient/sensible, a 2GB USB drive. The CF card is a "SanDisk Extreme III Flash memory card".
My media will be stored on an always on desktop pc running Windows XP. Music in iTunes, pictures and videos shared over SMB. I don't currently own a Bluray drive, player or disc but want to be able to stream Bluray quality video over LAN (I plan to get a Bluray drive and make legal, or at least ethical backups of discs I buy). I believe Bluray video is currently 50-70Mbps so in theory a 100Mbps network should handle this but with research it seems this my not be the case and I also want to allow for higher bit rates in the future. As the ASRock mobo has gigabit ethernet I thought I could get a gigabit LAN card for my Windows machine, connect them together, set up all the static IP crap and share files and XPs internet connection to the HTPC.
If you've read this far I thank you.
I thought about just using one machine but I need iTunes for my iPhone and XBMC only supports GPU acceleration on linux.
So, basically my main questions are:
Is the Compact Flash - SATA idea good/bad? (Speed/Reliability)
Can i stream Bluray vids over SMB down a Gigabit network as I outlined?
Will I need CAT 6 cable or anything else "unusual"?
Also:
I am a RAM noob and will need to get my own. What are your recommendations?
Is it fairly simple to set up an XBOX IR dongle and remote?
Is there some fatal flaw to my plan?!
Thanks guys, really :-)
I fell in love with XBMC waaaay back when I soft modded my XBOX but we live in an HD world now!
Although I am not currently in a position to implement this (I'm poor!) I thought I'd request some feedback so I can get an idea of what I need.
My planned setup uses an ASRock ION 330 with XBMC Live. I won't have an internal HDD and was planning on using a useless 4GB Compact Flash card in an SATA adapter or, if more efficient/sensible, a 2GB USB drive. The CF card is a "SanDisk Extreme III Flash memory card".
My media will be stored on an always on desktop pc running Windows XP. Music in iTunes, pictures and videos shared over SMB. I don't currently own a Bluray drive, player or disc but want to be able to stream Bluray quality video over LAN (I plan to get a Bluray drive and make legal, or at least ethical backups of discs I buy). I believe Bluray video is currently 50-70Mbps so in theory a 100Mbps network should handle this but with research it seems this my not be the case and I also want to allow for higher bit rates in the future. As the ASRock mobo has gigabit ethernet I thought I could get a gigabit LAN card for my Windows machine, connect them together, set up all the static IP crap and share files and XPs internet connection to the HTPC.
If you've read this far I thank you.
I thought about just using one machine but I need iTunes for my iPhone and XBMC only supports GPU acceleration on linux.
So, basically my main questions are:
Is the Compact Flash - SATA idea good/bad? (Speed/Reliability)
Can i stream Bluray vids over SMB down a Gigabit network as I outlined?
Will I need CAT 6 cable or anything else "unusual"?
Also:
I am a RAM noob and will need to get my own. What are your recommendations?
Is it fairly simple to set up an XBOX IR dongle and remote?
Is there some fatal flaw to my plan?!
Thanks guys, really :-)
