Details of your boxee TV setup?

drstein · #1 February 2nd, 2009, 10:37 AM

I would like to hear how other people have Boxee set up and how you're running it. Not just "I watch boxee on my Dell laptop" but for folks that have taken a HTPC setup and added Boxee, or are using a Mac Mini for Boxee, etc.

Photos would be great. I think it's informative for the rest of the class.

I only have an Apple TV plugged into a Sony 48" DLP HDTV via HDMI. That's it. But I know other folks have more interesting setups...

tonyscha · #2 February 2nd, 2009, 09:00 PM

I have a HTPC
AMD 4200+ X2
1 Gig of Ram
1TB HD
MCE Remotes
32inch LCD TV

I normally run Mediaportal, and have that setup to open boxee.

richbutler1 · #3 February 2nd, 2009, 11:04 PM

This is a copy/paste from another thread with a few additions,so please forgive the cross post to help others build a nice, affordable Boxee + HTPC. This is after a great deal of reading through sometimes hundreds of product reviews for each component...

Power consumption....go with a 45watt CPU like the AMD 4850e (check out the 5050e also) You may have this HTPC on 24/7 for torrents/TV recording so a power hungry CPU and motherboard design will cost you more in the long run. If you're not going to do video processing, heavy photo editing or high end gaming the combo below will serve you well.

Cost ....AMD has lower total cost, been rock solid

Motherboard...Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-2SHP below is ready for Blu-Ray, 7.1 Audio Optical out, HDMI, gigabit ethernet, nice expandability, best in class, cheap. PS: It does support the newest 140W Phenoms for some superjuice down the road if you re-purpose. The AMD 780 chipset on a mini ATX MB is a must fro HTPC and integrated Blu-Ray playback, thus no need to drop $$ on a discrete graphics card.

Flexibility....Blu-Ray drive, got most common sold for support and info
Drive Space....cheap, get 500Gb or better, you might keep an eye on quiet HD tech. specs.; if you record TV or torrents you'll want a beefy local HD

Case...get decent power output 450 watts+ for now and future; you can always pay more for a high efficiency 80 PLUS PS

O/S...I went Win Vista Ultimate for MCE to be my DVR (trying to figure out how to get Boxee to recognize the TV shows natively or with some minor filename morphing) There are many fans of MythTV and other DVR solutions, so take a look at them.

Here's my under $500 HTPC with Blu-Ray and HD Audio (look for the Realtek ALC889 audio chip for solid sound for the $) not listed below is a scavenged 500Gb drive, TV tuner card(your call) and 2Gb Memory(DDR2800 would serve you well, MB below supports 1066 depending on CPU tho, read the specs on Gigabyte site)...all purchased from Newegg.com

HT CASE APEVIA(ASP)|X-MASTER-BK/500 $74.99
MB GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2HP 780G RTL $79.99
CPU AMD|A64 X2 4850E 2.5G AM2 R $53.99
BD/HD-ROM COMBO LG|GGC-H20L SATA RT $119.99

Payment Summary: Subtotal:$326.45 Tax:$25.07 S&H:$31.70
Total Amount:$383.22

Conclusion and Results: Blu-ray discs play great, Boxee solid so far, can access my network shares, internet browsing on TV (a 42" 720p philips via hdmi)

Hope this helps the Boxee Windows DIY crowd a little.

scott314 · #4 February 2nd, 2009, 11:36 PM

HTPC: OS X 10.5.6
Shuttle K45
Intel e2160 CPU
2GB DDR2-667
16GB USB Flash Memory
PicoPSU 90W Power Supply
Creative X-FI USB Audio
MCE IR Receiver
Logitech Harmony 550 Remote Control
Logitech DiNovo Edge Bluetooth Keyboard

NAS: Openfiler 2.3
Dell Poweredge 1750
2x2.4GHz Intel Xeon
4GB ECC DDR-400
2x18GB SCSI RAID-1

SAN: OpenSolaris 2008.11
NORCO-4020
Dual Socket Opteron 242 64-bit CPU's
4GB ECC DDR-400
4GB Compact Flash OS partition
5x500GB WD Green HD in RAIDZ1
5x1TB Samsung HD in RAIDZ1

TV
Samsung 56" DLP 1080P

lifeless2112 · #5 February 3rd, 2009, 01:48 AM

Is anyone running on ubuntu? if so what is your setup and can you play back 1080i mp4 (if you know)

drewjacks0n · #6 February 3rd, 2009, 03:11 AM

i run ubuntu 8.04 on a shuttle xpc with a core2duo 3ghz chip.

it plays everything, all 1080p, killa sample with no dropped frames

**marcel** · #7 February 3rd, 2009, 03:18 AM

richbutler1 nice one..

wrx1 · #8 February 3rd, 2009, 12:26 PM

Mac Mini
2ghz, 2gb or ram, super drive

Older Athlon 64 system running windows home server
3.8TB of storage

Gigabit wire though out the whole house

Sony 40" xbr3 TV

Russ

nalthien · #9 February 4th, 2009, 10:50 AM

See my sig for my HTPC specs. Plays Blu Ray great; and Boxee works great as well.

Now, if I could just get the two to play nicely together....

I still maintain that it should be possible with AnyDVD. So long as Boxee knows how to access the files on the disc once its been decrypted.

pahtz · #10 February 5th, 2009, 04:52 AM

I was going to build a HTPC for a friend and based on my research the new NVidia GeForce 9300 integrated video chipset with an Intel Dual-Core E5200 2.5GHz cpu gives you a good bang for the buck with plenty of power for HD Blu-ray playback.

Asus P5N7A-VM Motherboard US$120
Dual Core E5200 CPU US$60

Motherboard Review: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2333126,00.asp