<div dir="ltr">On 7 March 2013 16:18, Joseph Fry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:joe@thefrys.com" target="_blank">joe@thefrys.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">
<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
Right. But these particular boxes were being sold as "XBMC appliance"s.<br>
I'm presuming that meant Linux. Does XBMC have a Windows port?<br>
<br>
Does that mean that these were being sold as "sucky" XBMC appliances,<br>
maybe only capable of SD content?<br></blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I hope I changed the subject correctly.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div></div><div>I run my setup as a combined Myth FE/BE and can switch between XBMC and MythFE. Personally I prefer XBMC for Movies/TV shows/Youtube etc but even with the new MythTV Plugin I still prefer MythFE for playing and managing my TV recordings....but that's another story.</div>
<div><br></div><div>As for the hardware, it is bundled with Openelec (<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16px">Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center). Which is basically a very minimal Linux Distro that boots straight into XBMC to give you an XBMC media centre out of the box. I simply use Mythbuntu with XBMC also installed but have had a play with openelec recently. It is very controlled in terms of if (for example) a TV card driver is not supported you cannot install it yourself. They lock it down to make sure everything works and they dont have support/compatability issues. I dont want to get into an argument about the rights and wrongs of doing so but what I am getting at is, I cant believe Openelec are going to endorse on their website (which is how I found this link) a piece of hardware that cant support what XBMC supports (Full 1080p HD video content).</span></div>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Looking at the forums on Openelec, it appears that they do support AMD GPU's, however there are some pretty serious caveats. No MPEG2/4 acceleration, only PCM over HDMI. So essentially, if your content is limited to h264 and you don't want HD audio, I guess you would be ok.</div>
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<div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16px">I've not got one, I haven't tried one but if I was ion need of another box I probably would</span></div>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div> </div><div>I'm still not sure that I would take the plunge... even if they get the limitations fixed, AMD doesn't have much of a track record of long term support for linux... they would probably break it again before they improved on it. </div>
</div></div></div><br></blockquote></div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra" style>I use audio over optical so the HDMI bit is a non-issue for me but fair and valid points thank you! I'm not planning on buying one I must admit as I dont need any more hardware. I guess if it was Atom/ION then it would be a great buy :-) Maybe one day!</div>
<div class="gmail_extra" style><br></div><div class="gmail_extra" style>Martin</div></div>