My soon to be boxee box, do you have any ideas for improvements?

**mimesis** · May 11th, 2009, 04:30 PM

I'm looking to build my HTPC within the next month and I want to keep things quiet and also have power consumption be as low as possible for a pricetag of around $500 or cheaper. Now i've done some pricing myself already and I was curious as to whether or not any of you would change this setup? I already have a 1TB Fantom Drives external that has a WD Green Drive in it for low power consumption already and a spare 500gb Western Digital Mybook sitting around not being used. So my question is basically should I go with this build? Does anyone have a better case in mind? Or better anything for that matter?

CPU : AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processorhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103255
MOBO : ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMIhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131324
CASE : SILVERSTONE Silver Aluminum LC02S ATX Media Center / HTPC Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811163141
RAM : CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) XMS2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145184
HDD : Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220341
DVD : Sony Optiarc Slim http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827118018

Subtotal: $462.94
Shipping: $22.45
-------------------------------
Grand Total: $485.39

**ickmund** · May 11th, 2009, 06:27 PM

Originally Posted by mimesis

I'm looking to build my HTPC within the next month and I want to keep things quiet and also have power consumption be as low as possible for a pricetag of around $500 or cheaper. Now i've done some pricing myself already and I was curious as to whether or not any of you would change this setup? I already have a 1TB Fantom Drives external that has a WD Green Drive in it for low power consumption already and a spare 500gb Western Digital Mybook sitting around not being used. So my question is basically should I go with this build? Does anyone have a better case in mind? Or better anything for that matter?

CPU : AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processorhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103255
MOBO : ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMIhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131324
CASE : SILVERSTONE Silver Aluminum LC02S ATX Media Center / HTPC Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811163141
RAM : CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) XMS2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145184
HDD : Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220341
DVD : Sony Optiarc Slim http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827118018

Subtotal: $462.94
Shipping: $22.45
-------------------------------
Grand Total: $485.39

I love that setup. Or I used to atleast.

With the release of the 9300/9400 chipsets I went with one of those mobos instead, and last minute opted for a Intel CPU.

Two questions, one for you, one for the community:
1. What's your goal with this machine?
2. Will this machine be able to run "normal" 1080p movies? Normal meaning good quality, but properly decoded, not 100+ Mbps!

- Icky

**defaria** · May 11th, 2009, 06:34 PM

My understanding of your choice of motherboard includes AMD, 64-bit and the ATI Radeon HD 3200. Assuming you want to go to Jaunty (and why not, Jaunity's released), and Jaunity 64 bit (again why not? Allows you to use more than 4 gig memory) watch out for the following issues:

I've had horrible problems with the ATI Radeon HD3200. So have many others. Search this forum and the ubuntu forums for details. I ended up ditching the ATI and purchased a Nvidia 9500 GT. Still some problems but all in all much better
You do know there is no 64 bit version of Boxee available in the repos at this time? I did end up building a 64-bit version locally. There are still problems with this - possibly tied to the use of PulseAudio, which people say to remove. I haven't worked that out yet either. Again, search around.

**mimesis** · May 11th, 2009, 08:14 PM

Actually the build is going to be as follows

Vista Ultimate w/ VMC
Secondrun.tv
Boxee
MeediOS
PlayOn

With the following programs i'll have all internet TV covered except for networks using the Move player. Which the developers of playon have said they are making progress on it. And a plugin coder at playonplugins.com is working on a way of decrypting/decompiling and recompiling of them into a recognizable format.

However, back on topic. I don't really want to cheap out on anything. I already feel like i'm cheaping out on the case because it only has 60mm fans. I wanted a case with 120mm's but the bigger the case the more expensive and it pushed my budget past where i wanted to go. If anyone knows of a cheap HTPC that has 120mm exhaust fans then let me know and i'll switch to a Phenom instead of the X2.

1. What's your goal with this machine?

I plan on using it in conjunction with other programs to cover most of the vast majority of scattered internet TV. While boxee offers what they offer other programs have some of the content that boxee doesn't yet cover. As far as streaming local video's, I have some I could stream through boxee. And if the pc doesn't have the brawn to handle 1080p then i'm not too worried i'll just put PMS (Playstation Media Server) on it and stream the HD video's to my playstation through that. Right now i'm currently just using a ps3 with PMS and PlayOn for with plugins for more content. This covers most of what boxee has although not all. But what i really want is a beautiful UI to look at. The downfall to using an 360 or PS3 for media streaming is that the protocol is UPnP and there is absolutely nothing spectacular about PS3 or 360's UI. Not to mention boxee can just plain do more as far as trailers, info, etc.

Assuming you want to go to Jaunty (and why not, Jaunity's released), and Jaunity 64 bit (again why not? Allows you to use more than 4 gig memory) watch out for the following issues:

No, I do not and will not go with linux i've tried it and I hate it with a passion. I'm not trying to sound rude but why do you think from my build that i'm going with a linux build? I have almost the same build on my normal PC and it handles boxee without a hitch. My current PC is as follows...

CPU - Amd Athlon 64 X2 6400+ 3.2ghz
RAM - 4gb Corsair XMS2
PSU - 800w OCZ GameXStream
GPU - EVGA 8800GTX
MOBO - ASUS M2N-e SLi

Is there any reason why the 2.5ghz x2 couldn't handle boxee while my 3.2 can? Looking past the processor the only thing my current system would have over the HTPC would be videocard. And if I really have to go with a Phenom i'll actually probably put that in my current system and put my 6400+ in the HTPC.

**defaria** · May 12th, 2009, 12:42 AM

Originally Posted by mimesis

I'm not trying to sound rude but why do you think from my build that i'm going with a linux build?

Oh I don't know - maybe because if you go to boxee.org and click on downloads you'll see it for Linux and Mac but when you try Windows you get:

first, thanks for coming to check out boxee, the best way to get all your entertainment in one place.

we're sorry to say boxee for Windows is not publicly available yet. we told Maximum PC that it would be, but since speaking with them we've had to react to a few situations and shift resources around, delaying the launch. we want to get boxee for Windows to you as quickly as possible, but we also want to ensure boxee works well across all the different flavors of PCs before we release it.

we hope to release boxee for Windows closer to June, but in the meantime we continue to send out a few thousand weekly Windows invites. you've been automatically added to that pool, and we'll send you a note as soon as the Windows version goes public.

**thefuzz** · May 12th, 2009, 08:05 AM

There is no great app out there that covers everything yet.. Mostly I have found that Media Center and PlayOn get me most of what I need. You can check out Tversity as well but I don't think it works well with Media Center. I run it on a separate box. XBMC is one of the best products out there in my opinion I just wish they had a better box you could buy to run it on then the Old Xbox. The interface is great and you can use it with PlayOn and Hulu. I like Media Center it's just slow.

The Fuzz
www.thefuzznetwork.com

**mimesis** · May 12th, 2009, 02:56 PM

There is no great app out there that covers everything yet.. Mostly I have found that Media Center and PlayOn get me most of what I need. You can check out Tversity as well but I don't think it works well with Media Center. I run it on a separate box. XBMC is one of the best products out there in my opinion I just wish they had a better box you could buy to run it on then the Old Xbox. The interface is great and you can use it with PlayOn and Hulu. I like Media Center it's just slow.

The Fuzz
www.thefuzznetwork.com

Yeah I know, btw this is "famine" from playonplugins.com i'm the mod there.

But as far as covering everything i know it won't but it will cover the majority. Secondrun, boxee, and playon covers almost all of the LEGAL content on the net with the exception of any network that uses the Move player.

And to the others, I have boxee for windows, i've had the alpha for a while now (somewhere around 4-5 months). So my build will be on a windows machine.