New HTPC for a bedroom required......

[holidayboy]

Howdy all,

I'm looking to buy a new small form factor HTPC system for a guest bedroom and wondered what people might recommend.

I've been looking at the new Acer Revo, has anybody had any experience with low clocked AMD chips lately - if so, how do they perform 7MC wise?

The system will be used purely for 7MC - DVBLink net pack installed for Live TV, My Movies, Media Browser, TunerfreeMCE etc....

Thanks for any feedback / better options for SFF PC options.

This is the Revo that I looked at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Desktop-du ... =de_a_smtd

[Venom51]

The R3700 is my prefered box for the bedroom, gym tv's, bar TV and guest bedroom tv. My R3700's have been good little boxes so far. I wouldn't want to try recording multiple streams and such with them but for viewing live TV, Recorded content and such they do ok. If I wasn't worried about SSD lifespan I'd drop one of them in each of the Revo's.

I haven't tested an RL100 but I'm not an AMD fan and have had zero luck with them when having to fix stuff for other people so I stay away.

[adam1991]

The R3700 is my prefered box for the bedroom, gym tv's, bar TV and guest bedroom tv. My R3700's have been good little boxes so far. I wouldn't want to try recording multiple streams and such with them but for viewing live TV, Recorded content and such they do ok.

ummmmmm...you've just described an XBox extender hooked to a capable multi-stream tuner HTPC.

[Venom51]

The R3700 is my prefered box for the bedroom, gym tv's, bar TV and guest bedroom tv. My R3700's have been good little boxes so far. I wouldn't want to try recording multiple streams and such with them but for viewing live TV, Recorded content and such they do ok.

ummmmmm...you've just described an XBox extender hooked to a capable multi-stream tuner HTPC.

I'm never going to buy an Xbox. I'm a pc guy and therefor everything I do will be PC based. When Microsoft decides to abandon Media Center and the Xbox I can repurpose what ever PC I happen to be using at the time with either a different HTPC software package or for some other purpose. It won't become a fairly useless hunk of scrap like the Xbox or a Linkysys DMA2100 or the other extenders that have gone by the way side.

[holidayboy]

Thanks for the feedback. I've been a bit of an Intel fanboy for a few years now so wasn't sure how well the box would perform.

I'm not interested in getting a 'true' extender myself - I use TunerfreeMCE and other online video streaming stuff that an xbox can't do.

[milli260876]

get on ebuyer and look at the zotac zbox, I'm just about to buy the id41..!!

[holidayboy]

Thanks, I'll have a look.

[Scallica]

Take a look at the Dell Zino. They are no longer in production, but perhaps you can find one on ebay.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-zino-hd-410/pd

[holidayboy]

Thanks, I did think Zino at the same time as Revo and then found a lot of 'discontinued' pages!

The Zotac Zbox jobbies look pretty cool - and cheap

I've avoided having Bluray drives in HTPC boxes up until now but I did think that having an optical drive might be handy for the guest room - even if guests only have DVD discs with them.

Apparently some people still don't realise that there is (a more pleasant) life without loading plastic discs to watch a movie - crazy I know!

Any more thoughts are very welcome, thanks for the feedback so far folks

[LuckyDay]

The R3700 is my prefered box for the bedroom, gym tv's, bar TV and guest bedroom tv. My R3700's have been good little boxes so far. I wouldn't want to try recording multiple streams and such with them but for viewing live TV, Recorded content and such they do ok.

ummmmmm...you've just described an XBox extender hooked to a capable multi-stream tuner HTPC.

I'm never going to buy an Xbox. I'm a pc guy and therefor everything I do will be PC based. When Microsoft decides to abandon Media Center and the Xbox I can repurpose what ever PC I happen to be using at the time with either a different HTPC software package or for some other purpose. It won't become a fairly useless hunk of scrap like the Xbox or a Linkysys DMA2100 or the other extenders that have gone by the way side.

To be fair, the 360 will always play games, DVDs, and stream audio/video/image content from a PC on the same network.

The capability for those things are built into the core 360 dashboard and hardware, not Media Center.

[Venom51]

To be fair, the 360 will always play games, DVDs, and stream audio/video/image content from a PC on the same network.

The capability for those things are built into the core 360 dashboard and hardware, not Media Center.

Yep..still don't want one. I'll stick to small form factor PC's.

[LuckyDay]

Fair enough, but it's inaccurate to say it's going to become as useless as something like a dedicated extender.

[tysoncsmith]

If you can find one, i have the Linksys extender, which too is not in production anymore but a fantastic device. Has a DVD player incorperated and plays mkv HD files too. i found one on ebay and after a fierce bidding war managed to score one for $250 australian. Alternatively if you have the know-how, my little asus eee pc 900a (9inch ssd netbook with vga out) with windows 7 HP on it and 2g RAM actually worked extremely well with playing back recorded tv and movies. lacks the optical drive but a simple usb optical drive would work well too. I only tested it for shits-and-giggles and surprised me on how well the little 1.6ghz atom did with WMC7 if all your doing is playing back tv and movies.
Thats my 2 cents worth.

[redscare24]

The world of extenders has become slim picking lately. The Dell Zino was a decent budget option but since that's discontinued there hasn't been a lot of options pop up to replace it.

I know Assassin HTPC has a mini build that can mount on the back of TV's as well. If you want something in the form of a small form factor TV that might work.

[tony_park]

how about an all-in-one pc Rob? We have one from MSI installed in our kitchen, have to say it does really well over a gigabit network... take a look http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-har ... in-one-pcs

Tony

[STC]

Blimey, 20% VAT is a stinger eh?

[mark1234]

It certainly brings a tear to the eye.

[thomtom]

Here are a few SFF Machines that you might be interested in (some already mentioned above):

Zotax Zbox: There are fully built and barebone versions, No optical drive
Intel Mac Mini: Quite pricey compared to others
Asus EeeBox:Nice and small, No optical drive
Acer Aspire Revo r100: Looks very stylish, 1 opitcal drive (3D Blu Ray) but its AMD based, slide out keyboard
Shuttle XS35(GT?): Its a barebone and has space for an opitcal drive
Asrock Nettop ION 330HT: DVD or blu ray versions, includes a remote control


Hope that helps, let us know what you end up going for!