View Full Version : Cheap system and specs that will run XBMC Linux really well
Just letting people know of a system I just banged up yesterday which runs 720P very nicely (haven't tried 1080).
I was surprised at how smooth and well it ran, considering the price.
CPU 1.6Ghz Core2Duo - $57
Mobo Cheap - $69
1GB 667 DDR2 - $70
Asus 8600 Geforce (Silent/HDMI/HDCP Compliant<(For an Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive) - $126
$287
I had the other items (case, power supply, Old HDD) so they weren't factored in.
I could get away with 512MB of RAM I think as well.
My dad saw XBMC Linux on my machine and was so impressed that he's going to use it to play his high def content.
After seeing my brothers xbox 360 'media center' piece of crap there's only one option for my dad and that's XBMC for linux. My brother was very disappointed with his 360 and kept asking me 'why doesnt this work the same as my xbox' I kept telling him that the feature was part of the xbox media center (XBMC) and microsoft has decided not to support it in the 360 (samba shares and divx a good example). I was considering a 360 but after seeing my brothers there's no way I would subject myself to that console.
That is $AU287 That's about $US220.
You get a C2D for about 50 US $ ?? Here in Germany the cheapest models are about 100 € which is about 130 US $ !
I wonder if XBMC is actually using the GPU? Or have you selected this one just because of the HDMI/HDCP part? An onboard card with DX9 capabilites should do the job also, not?
thats because, in europe, we get raped for all electronics... and if you think you have it bad in germany, cheapest C2D here is £120, which is around $240 USD.
and yes, xbmc will use the gpu, since it uses sdl, which draws with opengl.
also, microsoft didnt "decide not to support divx and samba shares" they cant.. since if they support divx, they are supporting a brand, and have to pay for it (dont even start about microsoft has lots of money) and they would have to offer tech support for it, and samba, they cant support that without getting sued, because someone somewhere will accuse them of some anti-trust bullshit suite because they only support SMB which is a "windows only" software, even though the samba server is around for linux... microsoft support raw mpeg4, since there are no licencing issues, and they support usb hard drives.. also, no licencing or suing issues... there is a reason behind these things, dont just go flapping off complaining... xbmc can do all these things it does, because it infringes on several IP's and copyrights and patents and all that crap... since its free, and the project doesnt carry any financial backing, there is no point in suing xbmc because of this stuff, because all it will bring is bad publicity.
Hmmm, I wasn't aware of all the issues, it does pay to be courteous.
You get a C2D for about 50 US $ ?? Here in Germany the cheapest models are about 100 € which is about 130 US $ !
I wonder if XBMC is actually using the GPU? Or have you selected this one just because of the HDMI/HDCP part? An onboard card with DX9 capabilites should do the job also, not?
Yeah, it's because we wanted the HDMI/HDCP part, otherwise we would have gone for a cheaper card, probably a 8500, although this one was only $126 so it was actually really cheap anyways...
thats because, in europe, we get raped for all electronics... and if you think you have it bad in germany, cheapest C2D here is £120, which is around $240 USD.Can't speak for our friends down under, but Europe for the most part has 20-25% sales or value add tax which factors heavily in any pricing discussion. Whereas in the US it ranges from 0-6% (correct?), and is usually not in any advertised price.
Although the jump from 50 to 240 USD has to be explained with something else ;)
Can't speak for our friends down under, but Europe for the most part has 20-25% sales or value add tax which factors heavily in any pricing discussion. Whereas in the US it ranges from 0-6% (correct?), and is usually not in any advertised price.
Although the jump from 50 to 240 USD has to be explained with something else ;)
Yeah, we used to have something similar in Australia called sales tax, from memory it was 22% on computer goods, that was replaced a few years ago by a flat 10% on every, called the GST (general sales tax) (as different items has different tax rates).
Which was handy for computer people if nothing else, instant 12% saving...
Yeah, in the US our sales tax is anywhere from 0-9%, depending on the state you live in. Internet purchases aren't taxed in any states that I know of, unless the online retailer exists in the state you live in. In some instances the retailer will charge the tax no matter what to make things easier on their end. Some states try getting people to claim Internet purchases on their taxes at the end of the tax year, but people rarely do this.
For you European folks, can't you just have a retailer in the US send you the computer parts and label them as "gift"?
Yes, if you find someone willing to commit an international fraud :D
How about this.. for my birthday you send me $100 as a gift. For your birthday I'll send you a $100 video card. ;)
jmarshall
2007-08-15, 22:26
GST == Goods and Services Tax.
It's 12.5% in NZ on all goods. In AU it's not on all goods (some foods are exempt for instance) but for the most part is across the board.
Minor nitpick, but it pays to have it correct if someone googles it and ends up here (fat chance I know ;)
That's the one, I had the acronym wrong :)
Your right, the foods that are not taxed under the GST are unprocessed foods such as Fruit and Veg and raw meats.
if you rip the hd content you dont need hdcp. then pump it out component or dvi or vga port on your lcd @ 1920x1080. DRM sucks, you could just use windows vista with a nice G84 (8600 GT OC) to get mad h.264/hardware acceleration. xbmc is going to be doing alot of this in cpu i'm guessing for a long while. Sucks when the 8600 series are just as fast as the 7600 but can take less power and make less heat, but you gotta get someone to write for the enhanced features. i think powerdvd+vista you get the full acceleration which can be the different between playing that hd-dvd at 100% cpu or 10% cpu.
screw DRM we dont need no stinkin DRM
does this mean i can run xbmc on a regular linux box? no xbox needed?
i was actually coming here to ask if there's anything like that, since i see no need why it has to be tied to an xbox. gotta be a way to get that great media compatibility combination on other hardware (possibly some that support up to 1080p and have more CPU power!)
i love how XBMC skips and scans, it works so well, it plays every media format i ever need (especially .iso's, i LOVE that) - i don't play games and i've been planning on getting an xbox solely for this purpose. but i thought hey, someone's got to have repackaged this to work on normal hardware too, it can't be that hard...
i'd be willing to contribute some money too even as long as it worked like the normal xbmc (i'm mainly worried about the remote control aspect, since everything else i think should be workable...)
let us know how that box runs h.264 @ 1080p and 720P. also xvid at both respective resolutions.
mpeg-2 we don't want that :)
Skindred
2007-08-19, 16:38
If it runs x264 1080p from rar, I'd consider it ^^
let us know how that box runs h.264 @ 1080p and 720P. also xvid at both respective resolutions.
mpeg-2 we don't want that :)
Runs h.264 720p fine, I know that for sure.
I'll have to encode a 1080 and try it.
althekiller
2007-08-20, 03:10
I like how there is hardware debate over software that is far from final. :)
well as a e-tailer i will lose my rights to sell if i even sell something to canada or mexico. str8 up cut off. It's called GREY market. The reason is they price fix to countries. I could sell USA gear to UK all day long, but you'd get no warranty, and when they found out i sold a C2D to you (serial # traceable 100%) no more selling. that would be bad like loss of 5-10 million in sales per year (dont confuse that with profit lol).
you can always rub some silver paste on a cpu call it "DAMAGED WARRANTY REPAIR" or "GIFT NON FUNCTIONAL" value $1 . Do you think they are going to plop the cpu in a 775 socket and test it? If it was bought from ebay as dead then is it your burden to test it before declaring it? :) No.
Auto parts are transmitted back and forth this way all the time. it works. It's not like your sending 100 trays of cpu's to the dude. But with no warranty, that kinda blows? he'd have to send it back to you yadda. It costs about $48 for 4lbs to ship without insurance using USPS to germany. fricken expensive and slow.
Well, realistically if you want to know how well your system can decode x264, just run it on any OS and it will give you a good idea.
But in saying that I wouldn't say it's an actual debate, someone just wondering if, in XBMC my system specs will be good for x264 Hi Def and full Hi Def video. Which would play a very similar frame rate, if not the same, from VLC in linux anyways, and probably VLC in Vista/XP...
yeah media player classic in vista can fully use AVIVO and PurevideoHD so you want to make sure you use something that doesn't use codecs which can use this acceleration in any OS since linux doesn't have it.
I just feel bad when the end-user mac mini purchaser leads them to something thats (slower?) than an original xbox1 and cost alot more.
Right now i think it would be safe to say for h264/vc-1/blu-ray/mpeg2 1080P:
2.4ghz Core 2 duo
2 DDR2-667 dual interleaved sticks of ram
Decent graphics card like 8600GTS/7900/ or best 8800 nvidia
standard "7200.10 class" fast hard drive
Yeah that should cover most formats for right now without stutter and handle hardware overlay with least pain.
It appears that coreavc is significantly faster than its OSS counterpart. I'm just now getting around to testing it (requires patching and compiling mplayer), but check out the findings in this review -- http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/video_dec.html
It seems to compare favorably to the hardware acceleration from ATI and NVIDIA. Does anyone have any real world experience with it to comment on whether the review gives an accurate picture of its performance?
that article is ancient. AVIVO (radeon 2600) and (8600gt(s)) PurevideoHD would annihilate coreavc nowadays using media player classic with the right combination of codecs.
let us know how coreavc turns out though, it is not free.
Also consider the bitrates of 1080p should be more along the lines of 20-40megabit. Things get alot hairier.
Iceman-UK
2007-08-23, 01:18
Just letting people know of a system I just banged up yesterday which runs 720P very nicely (haven't tried 1080).
I was surprised at how smooth and well it ran, considering the price.
CPU 1.6Ghz Core2Duo - $57
Mobo Cheap - $69
1GB 667 DDR2 - $70
Asus 8600 Geforce (Silent/HDMI/HDCP Compliant<(For an Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive) - $126
$287
I had the other items (case, power supply, Old HDD) so they weren't factored in.
I could get away with 512MB of RAM I think as well.
Very interesting results.
I have recently purchased a couple of Asus Pundit machines of differing specifications that I intend to trial XBMC-Linux on. I will let you know how I get on.
I have performed some tests with a mid-low end PC:
CPU 1.86 Core2Duo
Integrated Intel 965Q graphic card
Kubuntu 704, latest Intel drivers, 1.4 Mesa 6.5.2
XBMC set to run at 720p
Stream #1:
Container type: AVI OpenDML
Resolution: 960 x 540
FourCC: xvid/XVID
Resolution: 960 x 540 (*)
Framerate: 23.976 fps
Bitrate: 1484.041875 kbps
CPU: 10% to 15 %
Stream #2
Container type: matroska
Resolution: 1280 x 544
Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Framerate: 25 fps
User data: bitrate=4543
CPU: 30% to 35 %
Stream #3
First chunk of MPEG-2 the Transport Stream Test Patterns at:
http://www.w6rz.net/
i.e.
1080p@24.0, 40 Mbps CBR (with no zero stuffing) in a 48 Mbps Transport Stream
CPU: 50% to 55%
Looks like quite promising!
Cheers
Luigi
CPU: 50% to 55%
This means that one of your cores is maxed out...expect frame drops.
i found media-portal on vista skipped with haali (oddly only haali wrapped) blu-ray materail at 1.8ghz (E4300), bumping that up using the pin mod to 2.4ghz got rid of this problem. I believe the new FFDshow is starting to show up COREAVC for software decoding. You'd be pretty good to go with a core 2 duo overclocked 33%, dual interleaved ram, and a decent brute force video driver since it may be a long time until GPU enhancement like AVIVO/PUREvideo2 (HD) is presented to linux community.
no problems at all using alot of horsepower to soft decode and a decent amount of GPU raw bandwidth to play 1080p.
for linux that probably means those 256mbit ram interface 7xxx series cards will outrun the lowly 128bit 8500gt or 8600gt. In vista the 8500gt an 8600gt can play 1080p vids with like 10-20% cpu due to excellent driver support.
cost is high right now to use xbmc linux, alot higher than an xbox1 :) you know the ole xbox1 can play xvid 960x540 upsampled to 1920x1080i quite nicely. last time i checked the pawn shops they were wanting $50 lol. the price to jump to full 1080p is pretty hefty right now :)