{ taihen.org } Log – getting older.

My Boxee Box

I was always fighting with my perfect home-theater idea, most of my setups based on low end devices that suppose deliver something always were failing here and there. On the other side I've always want to have a development server that I can upload my small projects (a real *nix box sitting in the corner) and maybe a backup then as well (through rsync). In the last year I was looking at couple projects like MythTV and XBMC, but still part missing here was hardware. Having desktop kind PC, just blowing air is not something you would like to have your livingroom (and it's not making your family happier) but rather on desk or hidden somewhere in the cabinet.
But finally I've found a box and a software that fulfill my needs with Boxee and Asrock ION 330 nettop.

Why Boxee? First of all I was looking only on open source software and basically there are two good players left on the field Boxee and XMBC as I see now. Well... almost, cause they are basically the same software (Boxee is build on top of XBMC). Boxee looked like most straight forward, plays any format I can think of, do video & audio rss and have tons of apps. It caught my eye for some time as I was waiting for original Boxee Box which look pretty awesome. But still time will come to check out XBMC and possibly Moovida (previously Elisa, Fluendo project). I'm not taking MythTV under consideration cause I'm not interested in recording.

Why Asrock? It's a slick device, small, quiet but still powerful for this particular need. Easily handle 720p and possibly 1080p video files ( can't test it, my TV can do only 720p ) and HDMI output. My version ION 330 HT comes with 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD and ... ir remote. Enough and remote is nice extra feature that I would buy anyway. All for less than 300E.