New NAS / media center - what OS?

[fackamato]

Hey gyus,

I'm putting together a PC with the following specs:

Mainboard & CPU: ASUS AT3N7A-I, Intel®Atom330, nVIDIA ION
RAM: Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC6400 2GB KIT
Case: Antec MicroATX Cube NSK1300
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA2
HDD OS: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB
HDMI Cable, HDMI M-HDMI M, 2.5m, v1.3


So basically a 1.6GHz dual core atom on an ION chipset with 2GB of RAM. It will be connected to the 1080P LCD via HDMI, and I'll probably run XBMC on it. It'll be connected via LAN, and I'll probably use truecrypt on both the drives. I'm hoping XBMC will use the NVIDIA ION to accelerate the 1080p playback of things.

What distribution would suit these applications best do you think? It would also double as a NAS (SMB, FTP & NFS).

Or is there a reason I should go with Windows 7?

[Delph1]

www.moovida.com

http://freevo.sourceforge.net

W7 is nice and all but personally I don't like WMC.

//Andreas

[fackamato]

www.moovida.com

http://freevo.sourceforge.net

W7 is nice and all but personally I don't like WMC.

//Andreas

Sweet, I'll give both of them a try and compare to XBMC. Hopefully assembling things this weekend. (yay!, only a geek spends money on things he doesn't really need )

I haven't tried WMC, is there a particular reason you don't like it? Oh! Should I get a remote? I probably should... or I could... hm.

[Delph1]

It's Microsoft, the interface, no extendability,half-ass support for other DLNA-servers than MS own, well the list really goes on.

//Andreas

[fackamato]

It's Microsoft, the interface, no extendability,half-ass support for other DLNA-servers than MS own, well the list really goes on.

//Andreas

Why am I not surprised

I'll settle on XBMC first, if I don't like it I might try something else (unlikely). I do have a Wii, and a USB bluetooth adapter, so with some luck I might even be able to use that as a remote.

I'll keep you posted! Building should commence in 2 weeks. 8)

[fackamato]

A friend of mine lent me a PSU so I could put it all together (although without a case) during the weekend...

during which I attended Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide To The Orchestra! Was super awesome.

I got Ubuntu 9.10 AMD64 installed, put XBMC on it (through a PPA, the XBMC version is 9.10 alpha 2 IIRC. Beta 1 is soon to be released for the Linux folks).

It works, sorta. It looks super crisp and crystal clear with its skin, on the 1080P LCD. Looks a lot better than the Popcorn Hour.

On the other hand, the Popcorn hour is flawless in its playback. I don't think I can say that for XBMC yet. Which is kind of sad... but I'll just use it as a storage solution for the Popcorn (via NFS).

Everybody should be using huge TVs as computer monitors! It's cool 8)

[Delph1]

Hehe nice, and I agree with you on the size of the screen. SIZE MATTERS!

//Andreas

[fackamato]

After some testing, I can now say that the Popcorn Hour is redundant. XBMC is sooo much nicer to look at, and navigates faster as well, partly because you're using a keyboard. I'll see if I can sell the Popcorn. komplett.ie won't get the case in stock (ever, the product is obsolete), so I cancelled that order, and ordered this case from another site (it's somewhere on the roads now!!):

[Delph1]

Antec mATX right?

//Andreas

[fackamato]

Antec mATX right?

//Andreas

Yep (pic clickable), it's the Antec NSK1380

[Delph1]

Ah, thought I recognized it. :-)

//Andreas