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Good alternative to Apple Tv that can run Boxee?

R

robotartfashion

macrumors 6502
Jan 1, 2009
311
0
Phoenix, AZ
Airforcekid said:
Too bad there not releasing it in january thinking of going with Acer Revo R1600.
Click to expand...

There's a lot of discussion on this for XBMC if you are ok with using that instead of Boxee (I personally prefer PLEX/XBMC to Boxee's UI)

You can buy the R1600 and install XBMC Live which is a LINUX distro and is able to take advantage of the GPU encoding. People report success with that regularly.

Just keep in mind the caveat to the R1600 for me is the like of wifi and remote sensor, so unless you have a wired connection available you will have to solve both of these issues with usb dongles which can ugly up that machine

Let us know what you do! (I'm considering trying the R1600/XBMC live route for a streamer in my bedroom to avoid the cost of another MacMini)
 
Airforcekid

Airforcekid

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 29, 2008
1,707
680
United States of America
robotartfashion said:
There's a lot of discussion on this for XBMC if you are ok with using that instead of Boxee (I personally prefer PLEX/XBMC to Boxee's UI)

You can buy the R1600 and install XBMC Live which is a LINUX distro and is able to take advantage of the GPU encoding. People report success with that regularly.

Just keep in mind the caveat to the R1600 for me is the like of wifi and remote sensor, so unless you have a wired connection available you will have to solve both of these issues with usb dongles which can ugly up that machine

Let us know what you do! (I'm considering trying the R1600/XBMC live route for a streamer in my bedroom to avoid the cost of another MacMini)
Click to expand...

Thats why I was leaning toward Boxee you can get the remote for the iPhone I also saw a guide to hook up a receiver so the Apple remote would work as well. I dont think its possible but you you boot straight into boxee?
 
R

robotartfashion

macrumors 6502
Jan 1, 2009
311
0
Phoenix, AZ
XBMC remote would work just as well I would assume but remember, all of those remotes on the iPhone work by Wifi access, so that still leaves a problem, but I have seen some discussion about cracking the Revo open and putting a mini-pci wifi n card in (as that's what is installed in the higher end $360 model)

XBMC live boots straight into XBMC. I'm not aware of any BOXEE mods that do that. The big advantage to the XBMC live is that it is based on a linux build so it gives you the ability to use the GPU for the hardware acceleration
 
J

jk1002

macrumors member
Jun 18, 2008
63
2
I think one must ask these days, does it run Netflix, does it run Hulu?

That is why I would go Mac Mini or PC

JK
 
Donar

Donar

macrumors 6502
Jul 12, 2008
382
70
Germany
Airforcekid said:
But can an atom processor handle 1080P video? Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
I installed XBMC Live on a ASROCK 330 ATOM/Ion Nettop yesterday. The ION chipset in this device seems to handle 1080p .mkv just fine. I have Hyperthreading enabled and CPU usage was reported with 23% on one of the four cores the other "three" were at 6-9%.
 
R

robotartfashion

macrumors 6502
Jan 1, 2009
311
0
Phoenix, AZ
Donar said:
I installed XBMC Live on a ASROCK 330 ATOM/Ion Nettop yesterday. The ION chipset in this device seems to handle 1080p .mkv just fine. I have Hyperthreading enabled and CPU usage was reported with 23% on one of the four cores the other "three" were at 6-9%.
Click to expand...

This corroborates that the Asus REVO R1600 is more than adequate even though its a single Ion core as long as you use the XBMC live distro
 
Cave Man

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Feb 12, 2007
7,112
316
Neander Valley, Germany; just outside Duesseldorf
Airforcekid said:
I was considering getting a net-top that runs windows and just run boxee that way. But can an atom processor handle 1080P video? Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

If you get an ION-based computer it could probably handle most 1080p under Windows since many Windows apps can use the gpu of the 9400. But you'd want to investigate that closely. You could build such a beast for about $400 (e.g. based upon the Zotac N330 board).
 
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