Canada
Well, I've been using MP for few years now and had couple of HTPCs before - my first one was a regular Mini-Tower from Antec and then I got a SilverStone case, but I always hated all these big and ugly cases. It actually boggles my mind when I look through all the cases that are "HTPC oriented" - ugly, huge with lots of useless stuff (who came up with a few inch touchscreen LCD into the case??? ). As if those people who design them have no idea what HTPC is suppose to be. My SilverStone cost me over $200 1.5 years ago and I would love to get rid of it even for $20 now. Anyone? 
For the past 1-1.5 year I have been looking at all little motherboards that were being released waiting until I could get one that would play HD content. Well, with ION and Atom 330 it is possible now, so I decided to invest few hundred dollars into a little box (21x19x6 cm), that sits behind my TV on the VESA mounts away from my eyes and handles 1080p, 7.1 audio, WiFi N, etc. I am amazed and I love it.
So, my setup is as follows:
TV:
Basic TV for these days. Had it for over 3 years, and with me moving a lot around the world this is big enough to have.
MP client:
It is noiseless even with stock little fan that I can put onto the heatsink if I need to. Runs 1080p at about 10% CPU by offloading everything onto nVidia GPU.
This run me about $400 with shipping and duty for everything. I got mine on eBay @ MitxPC store.
Server:
I need to upgrade my case so I can have more HDD for my RAID, which I use not only for media, but for the rest of my data. But that's about it. Nothing fancy here.
Software:
What else?
I think that ION and Atom 330 is the best thing that happened to HTPC universe for a while
Cheers
P.S. If anyone is interested, I can put some pictures up.
For the past 1-1.5 year I have been looking at all little motherboards that were being released waiting until I could get one that would play HD content. Well, with ION and Atom 330 it is possible now, so I decided to invest few hundred dollars into a little box (21x19x6 cm), that sits behind my TV on the VESA mounts away from my eyes and handles 1080p, 7.1 audio, WiFi N, etc. I am amazed and I love it.
So, my setup is as follows:
TV:
- 32" LCD
Basic TV for these days. Had it for over 3 years, and with me moving a lot around the world this is big enough to have.
MP client:
- ZOTAC IONITX-D-E Motherboard (Atom 330, WiFi N, HDMI, DVI, S/PDIF, 8 USB, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet)
- M350 mini-ITX case
- Samsung SE-S084 External DVD writer
- 2GB RAM
- 250GB System Drive
- MCE remote
It is noiseless even with stock little fan that I can put onto the heatsink if I need to. Runs 1080p at about 10% CPU by offloading everything onto nVidia GPU.
This run me about $400 with shipping and duty for everything. I got mine on eBay @ MitxPC store.
Server:
- P4 3Ghz
- 1GB RAM
- HighPoint RocketRaid 2220 RAID Card
- 5x1TB WesternDigital Green HDD (in RAID5) = 4TB volume
- 500GB system drive
- LG DVD writer
- Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500
I need to upgrade my case so I can have more HDD for my RAID, which I use not only for media, but for the rest of my data. But that's about it. Nothing fancy here.
Software:
- Windows XP SP3
- MediaPortal 1.1.0.0 Beta1
- StreamedMP skin
- Haali MediaSplitter
- SAF codec/filter pack
- DaemonTools Lite
What else?
- Set MediaPortal up better - figure out extra plugins, skin customization
- Enjoy it daily
- Help few friends with their HTPC projects
I think that ION and Atom 330 is the best thing that happened to HTPC universe for a while
Cheers
P.S. If anyone is interested, I can put some pictures up.
