Budget htpc build help

King85

King85

King85

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Joined
30 Nov 2008
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Solihull, West Mids
Im looking to build a htpc to go in the front room with the 42 inch tv but I need to do it on a small budget but luckily my needs are only small.

Requirement are:

Able to stream netflix
Able to stream nba league pass
Browse the internet
Play hd media such as .mkv
Have wireless connectivity

I don't need a huge hd or a dvd rom immediately and I won't be playing any games on it.
I'd like to keep the budget as low possible whilst not sacrificing function but can go up to £200.

Any ideas as I've not a clue where to start?
 
Not going to get a decent basic setup for £200, even used.

If you want to cut corners and possibly experience slight stuttering in 1080p video then you can get numerous ION based boxes. Like the Acer Revo for example, I used to have one but the stuttering drove me mad, certainly not software related, lots of people have it. It's just not quite powerful enough to decode 1080p video and play it smoothly resulting in a frame skip every now and again.

If you want a "proper" box then the HP Microservers are good and have £100 cashback, not sure how much they are but people frequently sell them 2nd hand for less than £100 (obviously no cashback). New ones are £250-ish.

You will then need a graphics card capable of 1080p video decoding, for that most will say a GT430 (anyone who says ATI\AMD on this should be ignored on anything they say, just an FYI) This is because ATI cards can't output a 23.976 frames per second that is needed for most film material and output 24fps instead then skip a frame every now and again.

GT430 will also handle the sound.

You will need 2GB of RAM for an XBMC\Ubuntu based setup.

For wireless, just get a cheap USB wireless N stick. You WILL have problems streaming HD video over a wireless network. Not worth the bother, too temperamental.
 
I've seen an Acer Revo playback full 1080p bluray rips perfectly. I've been researching into it too as I really want a small device which is going to be used purely for media playback (music and video - not for gaming). However, I'd love a little hp microserver, but can't afford one.
 
The new revo has an ion 2 GPU and I've seen it play full HD with ease (even play games with ease). They're available now for less than £170!!!
 
hernaldo said:
You will then need a graphics card capable of 1080p video decoding, for that most will say a GT430 (anyone who says ATI\AMD on this should be ignored on anything they say, just an FYI) This is because ATI cards can't output a 23.976 frames per second that is needed for most film material and output 24fps instead then skip a frame every now and again.
Click to expand...

Handles HD audio much better though!

Do you have any spare parts at all? Hard Drive especially as it a big cost these days, so if you can spare something in the meantime from another pc etc it would help a lot.

I just built this setup - works perfectly and plays back full blu ray rips (not encoded in anyway) through xbmc. Cost me £216 including delivery and about 15 mins of my time to put it together - nice / fairly quite small case.

Thermaltake Element Q Black mini-IT
Gigabyte A75N-USB3, AMD A75, FM1
AMD A6 3500, S FM1, Lynx Core, Trip
4GB Kingston DDR3-1333 ECC CL9 1333

I had a spare 320GB hard drive and blu ray drive. I will be replacing the hard drive with a SSD shortly.

The pc connects to my UnRaid storage (Microserver) which holds over 5 TB of Blu Ray / HD DVD / DVD Rips

I control it using my Ipad, it runs the AEON MQ3 skin perfectly and I can wake it and sent it to sleep using the xbmc app on ipad/iphone

If anyone has any questions I could go into more detail
 
Thanks for the replies, atm I have no internet and typing on the phone is a chore but I'll write a proper reply on thurs when our bb gets installed.

Thanks again
 
hernaldo said:
Not going to get a decent basic setup for £200, even used.

If you want to cut corners and possibly experience slight stuttering in 1080p video then you can get numerous ION based boxes. Like the Acer Revo for example, I used to have one but the stuttering drove me mad, certainly not software related, lots of people have it. It's just not quite powerful enough to decode 1080p video and play it smoothly resulting in a frame skip every now and again.
Click to expand...

Many thousands of people have NOT had issues with 1080P with Revos and similar nettop boxes. My friend has 2 Revos on a 50" plasma and 40" LCD and never has issues. My ER1401s (FS btw :D) also play 1080P fine.
 
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