(July 18, 2013 at 6:37 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I took a similar, but slightly different approach.
Media Server (doubles as a client):
Dell Inspiron 660s (available under $300 now, I bought an upgraded one with a Core i3, 6GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive for a bit more)
Plex Media Server (runs on Windows, OSX, Linux, and some NAS appliances)
There's clients for Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Roku, Google TV, and some smart TVs. The server can also serve up media via a web browser, and I can share my media library with anyone I want that has a Plex client. Streaming to portable devices automatically transcodes the stream to not suck up bandwidth.
I haven't played around with XBMC very much, though I understand it's very nice and capable. I happened to like that Plex worked with all of the devices I wanted to use it with and is super easy to set up. While I'm tech-savvy and perfectly capable of rolling a homebrewed system, really didn't want to fuck with it and went for easy to set up. I don't regret it.
XBMC is indeed very capable, I'm also pretty familiar with Plex as well. Really it doesn't matter all that much to me, as long as video playback is EASY (for the not so savvy people in my house).
I didn't go with a large capacity drive because I have a 3TB Nas and a 2TB local drive so there's no real reason for me to go larger.
I don't believe I'll need anymore power than what is allotted on that processor. Intel Celeron's have REALLY come a long way since 10 years ago!
With the small case comes the small (ITX) profile. The ITX boards are a tight fit, so I can't wait for the challenge lol
